2011’s electronic swansong Old Raves End saw Swarms lift Burial’s haunted street-ridden footwork to the clouds, spacing the stapled rhythms apart and letting the angelic drones breathe blue-sky echoes. Swarms' whimsical production nods to the likings of such ambient post-rockers as Hammock and Sigur Rós, trading the grimy floorboard synthesizers of their UK upbringing for breezy delay pedals and aerial drones. Their harping low-end rhythms loftily bounced and coiled off blankets of cordial atmosphere, balancing each track in waves of segued echo and reverb. Swarms' followup EP is no different in that sense, as it continues their emphasis on atmosphere and fluttering bass prompts, though what’s found scattered throughout Low Sun is new territory for Swarms.
As hinted by the slightly cliché silhouette of a pretty girl looking distressed in smeared makeup on the cover, Low Sun introduces Swarms embracing the realm cloudy contemporary R&B. In the vein of Clams Casino and the Weeknd, Swarms shed their UK bass roots almost completely as they lay back and score the ambient aftermath of soiled LA beach parties and tender monochrome nights. The sparse, borderline-minimal bass pounds sustaining the palate are still intact, but the title track opener abruptly makes it clear that here, sampling is key. Be it smooth velvet-laced hoo’s and coo’s in harmonious echo, faint auto-tune back drift, or icy vocal filler through love-letter reverb, what was simply atmosphere before has turned into full-on sentimentality throughout the EP.
Whether or not the change from tight atmospheric bass to subdued and laid-back R&B is ultimately negative is a matter of how you embrace subtlety. The atmospheric production on Swarms' previous work feels open to interpretation; the drones, delays, reverb, and echo all painting the backdrop as a part of a sound unique to Swarms, free from obvious comparison. On the other hand Low Sun’s ambiance often times comes off as forced, unable to free itself from its influences. Though it’s important to take note that what made Old Raves End great wasn’t how adventurous or groundbreaking it was, it was how breathtaking and beautiful they managed to make cold, lifeless machinery sound. In that sense Low Sun succeeds as a brief followup from a duo challenging their sound with mixed results, yet concluding they can still put out some of the most beautiful electronic music against it all.
[Swarms Bandcamp]
[Stream/Buy the Low Sun EP from Swarms]
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