Swan Sounds: week 37



And!! It's back.

After four weeks of little more than immediate, horny, light and tight, depth deprived (which is not a bad thing)  summer chunes played at the raunchiest, sense deprived, high on anticipation & low on delivery, bars and clubs, it's time to dive into the (often) more lush, rich,  ambitious soundscapes of the 'serious'. Yeah, take that one with a palmfull of salt.

Judging by the headlines of my favourite websites, summer was not  a hot (:o) season for 'big' releases. I'ma pound on my chest fort getting the hang of this music scouting business, so I know now that the good stuff is coming out right about now.. like the oh so higly anticipated St. Vincent record!

Allright allright allright. The music.

Wrapping you first in Textures, a fiercely kind Dutch prog-metal unit who return with LP nr4: Dualism, a follow up to the career highpoint, the 2008 Silhouettes, Dualism is something of a predicatble step forward for a band who obviously enjoyed basking in the rays of newfound glory. The first single, reaching home, is a testimony of an ambition only half-met on the new album; radio friendly (if there was such a thing as a rock music platform in this country), melodic, features a clear hook and ambient which envelops around your senses like a fatboy around a well shaped ass. YAHW! The album is something of a balancing act between their first love, straight prog, and their recently expanded taste for the melodic and warm. While dualism, being the albumm title, sets this up.. it's still something of an undeveloped affair; rather than being a cohesive whole the songs every now and than crash into each other and kill off previously established rapport. Dualism is in that respect exactly what it says it is, two bands going at it hard.... So I'd say..try harder and marry the two already, proper (!) in holy matrimony of prog melody love! To balance my own act, there aren't really any bad cuts on this record, just less fitting ones.



The second tune for this week is a cut from the new The Field record, a looping state of mind. I am not going to elaborate on that too much, considering it has been properly reviewed by everyone else. It's a record superior to from here we go sublime, in that it (unlike its title may suggest) adds a new element to the The Field's trademark atmospheric loops: more progressions, more basslines, more percussion, in short 'more of everything for the better'! Undeniably awesome it definitely earns a spin of all who have an ear for comfort. This thing's called it's up there, and it is:





This weeks closing act, rather than something new (in all honesty I still need to give Strange Mercy the time it deserves), is gon' be animal collective's - bluish. Still a quality track off the 2009 Meriwater Post Pavillon, the (h)it record of the year.