Pitchfork

Considering how prolific they are, (D) Yellow Swans have an uncanny knack for making each of their records sound like the best yet. Once a given release recedes into the duo's vast catalog, the question of which LP is superior seems pointless. On the first few listens, Psychic Secession, Drift, Dreamed, and even the bombastic, cartoonish Bring the Neon War Home all sounded like new steps forward. So it's not especially surprising that the limited-edition Global Clone, despite being a rather nondescript collection of untitled selections from previously released cassettes, feels like another first-look revelation.

The most noticeable change here is a surprising lack of rhythm. Most Yellow Swans records deploy all kinds of pulsating beats-- anything from a pounding drum machine to a wavy background rumble. Here, few discernible beats emerge, yet each piece still throbs to an insistent internal clock. Track 1 traces slow sonic curves, ringing like a massive bell pushed up and down by tidal drones. Track 3 plays with perceptions of time, chopping itself into tiny blips, then melting vocal screeches into rippling tones. Tracks 4 and 5, the only two taken from the same cassette (last year's Damaged Yellow Swans on 23 Productions), use volume as a weapon, building an intense rattle that at one point sounds like violins sawed into crunchy ones and zeroes.

Almost as long as those four pieces combined is Track 2, a 23-minute trip down a widening river of electronic fuzz. It could take thousands of words to describe this piece's colorful landscape, but highlights include a quick pound that blurs into percussive chatter, heavy moans that merge with distortion like ghosts fading into clouds, and a huge buzz that rustles your skin even more than it blows your ears. Yellow Swans tracks approximating this length are hardly scarce, but this one stands with the duo's best epics.

Global Clone has been tagged with terms like 'lovely,' 'dreamy,' and 'gorgeous,' and I don't disagree. But you probably need to have already dunked your head pretty deep into Yellow Swans' discography to hear the album in that light. At first, the penetrating whine of Track 1, the siren blasts of Track 4, and the gale-force howls of Track 5 might seem like forbidding walls of harsh sound, especially with no obvious beat to grab onto. Since the album needs to be punctured a bit to get to the soft noises and fluid drones inside, the uninitiated might be better off starting with any of the previous records listed above. But don't wait too long to get to Global Clone. Given this duo's track record, it won't be the best Yellow Swans album for long.