DOVE YELLOW SWANS - LIVE DURING WAR CRIMES 3 CD (RTB#38) The final installment in the Live During War Crimes trilogy, this one being one of the last releases ever from Yellow Swans. Four unedited live sets from the bands last year in existence. Included are the PDX Pop Now set (July 2007), a live soundtrack to a film by Avalon Kalin (February 2008), a set from the Picador, Iowa City (October 2007), and the final US show in Chicago (June 2008). Big sounding stuff, very loud and very dense, with the melodic guitarwork being more prominent just as on the last couple of releases. Epic, sky-shredding beauty in a total playtime of 78 minutes. Mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk at Stereophonic Mastering. Comes in a gatefold sleeve with black felt, cover art by Ryan Boyle. --- We were always a working band. Always a live band. The other Live During War Crimes discs were all recorded by the band, edited by the band and intended to be presented as refined "works." This third, and final document breaks from that framework in that the sets are presented in their entirety and the music was recorded by other people. At some point mid-road dog mode, I lost the desire to record our shows at all, I think our MD recorder broke and I was tired of all the work all that documentation lead to. I just gave it up. We skipped the editing on this one too. Just let the sets be what they were. We were lucky enough that some of our fans and supporters didn't give up and managed to record some of our best shows. The recording of our final Chicago show was what pushed me to want this document to exist. That show was YS at it's best. It was our last show in the US. There were tons of friends out. We played well.. AND there happened to be this dude, Mike Carney there with a film crew and audio recording gear. We got the recording a few months after the show that included room mics and board recordings. This set really captures YS at it's most blurred and alien. The guitars are shimmering, the sound is densely textured with unknown chatter and clamor. There are no rough edges, but there is no stasis. The second track was recorded at the PDX Pop Now festival by John Wiese. This fest is a free, all-ages festival that happens every summer in Portland. The lineup of the festival is picked democratically. YS went on between hip-hop collective, Sandpeople, and Indie-country artists, Blitzen Trapper. HUH? We decided that we should use the opportunity of playing to a big room full of teens to really just go for it. The set was short, blazing and confused a hell of a lot of people. It was also a hell of a lot of fun for us. Well... It was for me.. Gabe played so aggressively that he tore off one of his fingernails mid set and bled everywhere. He just kept at it. Didn't stop for a second. He's always been a sport. Track three was a live soundtrack we did to a film by Avalon Kalin. This show was a night of musicians and filmmakers collaborating with the intent of exploring local landmarks. Avalon, Gabriel and myself decided that this statue of Joan Of Arc would be an excellent subject. This track was recorded by Marc Fischer and was played while Avalon lay on his back, shining lights on his film where he had circled a gold Joan who was galloping, reflecting light back into the camera. The last track was from the last show of our last full US tour. Iowa City. Picador. We were tour raw. Had been rolling with Mouthus for weeks and ditched them in NYC. Our plan was to leave town after the show and drive straight to Boise. We were at that point in the grind where you just don't care about much. It's all about the music and your personal wellbeing has been shot to hell for it. After this show a friend came up and gave me a hug. He said that the set felt intensely emotional and honest. That's about the highest compliment I've received. All I've ever wanted to do with this thing is to participate in an experience that is honest and real. He got it that night. That's all I needed. We packed up and hit the road. - Pete Swanson, November 2009 --- Tracklist: 1. AV-Aerie, Chicago, IL 6-9-08 (23 minutes) 2. PDX Pop Now! Portland, OR 8-5-07 (14 minutes) 3. Vision + Hearing, Portland, OR 2-27-08 (16 minutes) 4. Picador, Iowa City, IA 10-29-07 (26 minutes) --- PRESSING INFO! 500 copies. REVIEWS! Brainwashed Musiqe Machine Sound Of Music Special Interests #2 Tiny Mix Tapes Vital Weekly: DOVE YELLOW SWANS - LIVE DURING WAR CRIMES #3 (CD by Release The Bats) Some water has passed under the bridge, but here is at last the final episode of 'Live During War Crimes' (see also Vital Weekly 496 and 546), a collection of pieces recorded by Dove Yellow Swans. The pieces are fairly recent: from 2007 and 2008, and there is a story to each of them, which is unfortunately not on the cover, but perhaps it is on the website. Four pieces here that span almost the entire eighty minutes of what a CD can have. Perhaps we are dealing with complete concerts here? I wouldn't be surprised. Dove Yellow Swans is a duo of Pete Swanson on vocals, electronics and tape and GMS on guitar and tapes. They are a noise band who have a fairly distinctive feature: all of their live pieces start out fairly soft, and then gets slowly built up into this cascade of noise. When it reaches its climax, it usually stays there for a while, and sometimes that's perhaps too much. In a concert this works perhaps pretty well, but on CD this is sometimes a bit too much. Especially when the balance gets lost and thing drown on end. In the third and fourth piece (all four are untitled) the balance is much better and Dove Yellow Swans have their own fine blend of noise meeting psychedelics in which they proof to be fine masters of. Maybe its all a bit much to digest at once, but maybe you should play one piece a day, and create a festival for yourself by serving one Dove Yellow Swans concert a day. (FdW) Yellow Swans