yellow swans

Going Places (Limited Vinyl Edition)

*Truly intense album from this incredible band - bringing together visceral noise components and drone pop for their last ever studio album - Initial copies of this limited vinyl edition come with a bonus full-length CD album 'Being There' - miss out at your peril.....* Legendary American noise unit Yellow Swans return with what is purportedly their final studio album and without doubt their most devastating collection of noise/drone recordings yet, a majestically defining album of collapsing supernova psychedelics. The announcement of their split in 2008 was met with shock from a community who've faithfully traced their arc over countless limited edition CDr's, cassettes and vinyl for an equally insurmountable number of labels. The only silver-lining was the revelation they would release a final swansong (there, I said it) album, drawing a line under their considerable achievements. 'Going Places' is a viciously emotional final flare, witnessing the duo burning their final supply of nuclear energies in spectacular form. The album was dreamt and executed in the downtime following an incessant touring schedule, lending a more considered approach compared with their usual improvised brutality, perhaps guided by a kosmiche narrative into an altogether more introspective black hole of harmonics comparable to Tim Hecker and Brian Eno fuelled by a primordial rage. Also quite spectacularly, they've harnessed a similar power to Astral Social Club's cosmic pulses, giving a booming, slow-burning propulsion to their irreversible trajectory on tracks like 'Foiled' and 'Limited Space' which simultaneously should appeal to fans of the darkest industrial sonics of Kareem or even Jochem Peteri's much underrated 154 project. This ominous layer of bass is also applied to 'New Life' to more subtle effect, carefully counting down to null-point while truly vast harmonics unfold overhead, dispersing solar density with the control and refinement of Fennesz before the final phase of gravitational collapse occurs on the haunting 'Going Places'. A dense cacophany fills our aural view, howling solar winds and space dust degrade the surface before all is sucked into a void of silence. As we mentioned, initial vinyl copies come with a bonus full-length CD of four longer tracks included to intensify the experience, featuring the skull-pressured 'Foil', plus the drifting wasteland scour of 'Comedy Hypnosis', a longer version of the incredible 'Public Space' and the charred remains of 'Inhabitants'. Pay this album some dues and play it as loud as you can manage for a genuinely rewarding headf*ck experience. Immense.