Yellow Swans

Yellow Swans – Drift

Oakland based Yellow Swans have garnered a reputation for their extreme electronic assaults. Their music viewed as a bitter fusion of spastic drum machine rhythms, lashing spilt wire firestorms and shuddering feral pulses. This study in the quieter aspects of the noise genre comes as something of a surprise.

The Drift is spilt into three long tracks that swell and recede like a computer virus eating away at an aging hard drive. The sound stripped of drums and percussion is a static wave. Swirls of reverb drenched interference, sound modulation and high pitched electronic whine. The extreme nature of the treatment given to the sounds makes it impossible to pinpoint their source. Swells of arching desolated distortion crash against brief clipped bassnotes, strange undulations melt into granular question marks.

Yellow Swans show remarkable skill for creating space and progression out of shards of electronic detritus. Each movement evolves and decomposes. A dense matted web of sound will build and thicken before shattering into blissful hiss and a slow burning buzz and drone. The fleeting moments of aural overload are buttressed by long periods of drifting beautiful noise. Drift’s swarming electronics, lonely disintegrations flicking sonic spittle and open end vista are a liberation. I have been lost in this for days, dive in and disappear.

Tony Heywood (c) 2006