Taking flight from Bristol..

In an effort to offer something slightly different from the normal run of reviewing albums and EPs in 2019, I thought I'd pause to write a few words to observe one of the recent and most exciting finds currently in my playlist: Giant Swan.

The duo from Bristol have been around for nearly 5 years now, but Robin Stewart and Harry Wright flew totally under my radar simply because I hadn't tapped into their furious brand of hard beats and energetic live shows. In fact, it was their most recent performance at Melt Festival in Germany (reviewed by RA here) that got me curious, so I have gotten my hands on the limited amount of stuff they've released so far and had a good old listen. And it is exciting.

Described by others as "aggressive dance music", Giant Swan are managing - with a relatively lean release repertoire - to make an imprint on the live circuit, and one would expect the next logical progression from this will be to delve further into EPs or even a full-blown album.

Stewart and Wright are childhood friends and that is perhaps a big contributory factor in what enables them to perform so telepathically on stage; setting an undoubted precedent for anything that follows in terms of their craft.

Onto the music itself, which has an industrial, punk, metallic, techno, aggressive (yeah ok, sue me) and fervent quality to it, as beats and bass are king. There is grinding, howling and an insistence to the quality of the tracks that bridges the gaps between techno, bass and something else altogether. Its that uniqueness of aesthetic that Giant Swan find that makes them all the more intriguing to listen to, no more evident on tracks such as Architectural Hangover and High Waisted (from the 2018 High Waisted EP) or Pax Brittania (from the 2018 Whities 16 EP). Just a small insight into what you are letting yourself in for when you pull on the headphones. Easy listening it ain't...

Taking this one step further from their sporadic releases to a longer playing effort may require some focus for the duo to coalesce ideas, but there's also a school of thought that says if single or EP releases is what they do best in between touring and festival appearances, then why mess with that? Not everyone is destined to carve a path with a full album, and it has been the undoing of many current and former electronic artists whose strengths probably were more behind the decks mixing, remixing and making crowds go wild with (mostly other people's but occasional their own) music.

Maybe it's a case of be careful what you wish for, but I can't help thinking the next step for these guys - whatever it is - could be a relatively big one.

Badger x