Yellow Swans Out Of Practice 2

After marking their return following 15 years on ice, Out of Practice Volume 2 is an unflinching exposition of the duo’s omnivorous tastes and mettle for white hot psychedelia. In a typical style they assume versions of their early selves, circa roles in Portland’s burgeoning noise scene, around the turn of the millennium, when they would collapse myriad influences - noise, industrial, drone, hardcore, dub, free improv and modern composition - into a blistering maelstrom, and record an almost innumerable slew of releases until disbanding in 2008. Since their cheerio, Pete Swanson has issued occasional solo works and helped Jed Bindeman build the Freedom to Spend label into a notable showcase of their sprawling tastes, whilst Gabe has carved a solid path of drone works under his own name for the likes of Shelter Press and Miasmah. Reunited, they now remind us to the thrill of USA’s noise nexus in the ‘00s, when everyone from Wolf Eyes to Bill Kouligas and 0PN would emerge with wildly differing styles that could still be placed on the same page, and which felt like a big fuck off to preceding eras. That formative buzz fuels the YS cuts here, which both started out with playback samples of their respective influences, mutated and masticated by their overdriven onslaught. In ‘Oblivion Access 6-16-23’, recorded live in Austin on their first show in 15 years, they chew the hell out of 13th Floor Elevators - the psychedelic rock analog to their psych noise - murking a tape loop for nearly 10 minutes of pounding bass and wall-of-noise distortion, before the original sample is revealed in the vinegar strokes. Better yet, the B-side sees them rinse out Suicide into coruscating clouds of greyscale noise bliss that short circuits distinctions of late stage The Caretaker and Alberich, and almost feels like it could have come out via V/Vm Test Records’ in its heyday.