Pete Swanson - High Time/ Trees

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Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Mike on Tue 07 Feb, 2012.

Emerald Cocoon's excellent Alone/Together 7” series continues with this surprisingly coherent offering from psych/improv titan Pete “Yellow” Swanson, who this time round gives us a couple of covers of some of his favourite obscure New Zealand weirdness - 'High Time' by Dadamah, and then 'Trees' by Gate on the flip. Not being familiar with the originals, though, all I can tell you is that it's got shimmering, twinkling guitars and mumbly vocals and whenever he plays above a certain volume it peaks and distortion craps out all over the place, which actually creates a surprisingly effective variation in texture, volume and dynamics over the course of these two rambling songs, which both clock in at exactly five minutes. You didn't think it was just gonna be a straight pop record, did you? Not from our Pete. The back cover photo on here is superb, too, with our Swanson gurning in front of a cut-out of a buff, topless Einstein with an E=MC2 tattoo on its arm. Japes!

Pete Swanson's love for the New Zealand underground is no secret (rumour has it that he engineered the entire Yellow Swans New Zealand tour of 2005 just so he could procure a copy of The Pin Group 'Goes To Town' 12"), so we were pleasantly unsurprised when Pete turned in two re-imaginings of classic NZ underground tracks as his contribution to the Alone Together series. What surprised us greatly though was the form that they took: sparkling acoustic guitar, audible vocals, audible room tone – this was a Pete Swanson we'd never heard before. Although his signature degradation systems are still in place (both sides end with a blown-out acoustic guitar emulating dirty-needled distortion), acoustic strings, four walls and a voice dominate, dislocated just enough to give you the sense that the world ends at your bedroom walls. This is a sound that shouldn't be unfamiliar to anyone previously baptised by 4-track channelled lathe transmissions from the bottom of the world. The dusty gems re-interpreted here are 'High Time' by seminal Christchurch kvltists Dadamah (originally released as a 7" on the genius Majora label circa '91) and 'Trees' from Gate's recent downer-techno masterpiece 'A Republic Of Sadness', both are redolent of the darkest, coldest Dunedin winter as imagined from half a world away. Edition of 300.

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