Yellow Swans

Finely dressed in a full-colour Maya Miller sleeve, this split release from Ex Cocaine and Yellow Swans captures two wildly differing bands on great form. Ex-Cocaine is the collaboration between guitarist and vocalist Brian Ramirez and percussionist Mike Casler, who fashion psych-heavy instrumental jams leading way out into oblivion, even having a go at a Meat Puppets cover on 'Sexy Music'. Yellow Swans meanwhile don't come nearly so close to that sort of song formatting, instead offering a single 16-minute noise dirge. The piece seems to shift from dark, low-end tones toward the more vicious, brass-like sounds that rear up out of the distortion towards the end. This is just the latest in a line of highly successful split LPs from Not Not Fun which bring together two very different artists under a single banner, and this one's right up there with the Christina Carter/Pocahaunted emission from a while back. Excellent.