Black Swan is all about distance—everything from the persona to the cover to the music on this anonymous artist’s first LP is meant to play with the edges of perception, expectation, and composition. All of this is handled with an extraordinary degree of maturity and control, resulting in one of the most beautiful and unique listening experiences of the year so far.
Broadly, Black Swan has been categorized as drone (and by the artist as “drones for bleeding hearts”). Mostly, this means coating all sounds in a transfixing, woolly layer of ambience, with “magnetic tape disturbances,” crackling, nonmusical sounds, and other textural ephemera offering a unique sound environment in which the musical passages come and go. But if the texture is what sets Black Swan apart from any modern classical work, then what sets it apart from most drone records is that the album is, from start to finish, extremely musical. Oftentimes such and atmospheric work can become tepid and noncommittal, relying on loops or field recordings, or single chords. But the Swan isn’t afraid to make real musical decisions and to work with melodies, chords, and other tools to cultivate atmosphere. Like sitting in a church, or walking a long hallway with many rooms, the musical passages are incomplete because they emerge and fade, but within themselves, they are always fully developed.
But the mystery remains mesmerizing. Side A begins with a majestic descending line almost jarring in its beauty, which dissolves away and reprises thrillingly at the very end of side B. At the end of the first side, we hear some plucked and swirling strings that sound like the music to the title sequence of a Warner Brothers cartoon; finally there is rich choral singing. Are these samples from LPs? Are they recorded somehow using a keyboard and processed? At times there seem to be distant guitar drones as well, especially on the darker and more feedback-laden second side. It’s impossible to be sure of what sound sources one is hearing at almost any point, but Black Swan keeps the answers within reach—only obscured in the haze of distance that he/she cultivates so deeply. All of these elements hover just out of reach like mirages, and their constant interest is the great triumph of this album, all the way up to the very last sweet, long, serene decay.
10/10
