Those with an ear open to loud experimental music of a certain stripe may already be aware of some of the members of Sex Swing. Despite being debutants here, all players already have day jobs knocking out tunes with a variety of cult noiseniks including Part Chip, Mugstar, Dead Neanderthals, Dethscalator and the mighty Earth.
To call Sex Swing a “supergroup”, however, would stretch anyone’s definition of the term but it is something special when a group of musicians, with a myriad of other projects to keep them busy, turn out such a powerful collaboration. Like an improvisation on the experimental side of The Stooges’ monumental Funhouse album, Sex Swing is in turns brutal and urgent; disorientating and spaced-out but always inspired. And all with the mad free jazz sax squawks of Colin Webster for added spice.
It’s anything but predictable in its experimental and squalid intensity
The most straightforward tunes on Sex Swing are the motorik juggernaut “Karnak” and the immense “Night Time Worker”: a live favourite that has Dan Chandler intoning “Driving… driving… English countryside” as all hell is let loose in dirty sonic eddies and a relentless pounding that is both hypnotic and unforgiving. Elsewhere, it is more disorientating and whoozy with improvisational head spins. “A Natural Satellite” opens the disc as a menacing spectre of what is to come with pulsating expectation before bleeding into the primitive dirge of growls and throbs with Chandler’s half-heard vocals buried deep in the mix of “Grace Jones”. “The Murder of Maria Marten” has shades of the Butthole Surfers’ disconcerting Rembrandt Pussyhorse sound, while “Murder Witness” brings the trip to an end with a minimalist industrial groove and Webster’s wild howling sax, twisted into almost unimaginable sonic shapes by loops and effects boxes.
Sex Swing is a scorched-earth monster that could strip the enamel off your teeth, but it’s anything but predictable in its experimental and squalid intensity.
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