With Oblivion Access now under way in Austin, much of the chatter among festival-goers is kraut rock progenitors Faust playing a 50th anniversary show on Saturday evening.
Other potentially once-in-a-lifetime engagements are happening, too. Dylan Carlson and his long-running Earth project are poised to play their second album from start to finish, with some special guests in tow. Underground metal legends Ludicra are slated to play their second-to-last gig ever.
And then there’s the Flenser showcase and the red-hot label’s litany of buzzed-out bands, not to mention Justin Broaderick performing a series of shows with not just Godflesh but some of his lesser-known projects too.
But among all the rare performances happening at OA, one of the most coveted will be Yellow Swans playing their first show in 15 years late Friday night. The reunited Portland, Oregon-based noisemakers have released over 50 recordings and toured internationally over the course of its nine-year existence. Now they’re looking to log more miles on the odometer.
Earlier this month, we caught up Yellow Swans Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman for an extensive conversation that not only covered Oblivion Access and why they got back together, but how they would never sacrifice their friendship just for the sake of keeping Yellow Swans alive.
So, what happened to you guys after Yellow Swans broke up 15 years ago?
Pete: When we were doing the band, neither of us went to college. As soon as the band broke up, we both got degrees and started careers. Our last album, Going Places, was pretty literal. We both felt like we had put off the rest of our lives; we were spending so much time with the band.
Did your fans get the reference?
Gabe: They had to. Our fans appreciated that we had a good sense of humor. We took what we did really seriously, but we didn’t take ourselves too seriously. When we announced our last record and that we were breaking up, it wasn’t a big surprise. We were going places geographically and changing our life situations.
Were there any hard feelings?
Gabe: I mean, we weren’t enjoying touring together. The music was really good; we still cared about the project, and we were still friends, but it was getting real frayed at the edges. It was the exhaustion of the tour and actually living together sometimes. For me at least, it felt like I needed to choose between a friendship or a band that probably had one more year of life left. I decided I’d rather be Pete’s friend and break up the band.
We didn’t have the space to grow in ways that we needed to because we were always on tour. Things were feeling repetitive. The shows didn’t feel as dynamic. We needed to pivot. But once we decided that the band was gonna break up… (we transitioned into) another phase of the project, one that artistically was more successful. Our live sets were, to my mind, as good as they ever were—maybe better than they ever. Both Pete and I are incredibly proud of the last year of recording that we did. By the end, it was just all improvisation.
That explains why you put out so many releases.
Pete: Just to clarify, we recorded everything in rehearsal, recorded every live show, and (recorded) all those releases. It’s a lot. And we left a lot on the floor.
Would you rather be called the Guided by Voices or Throbbing Gristle of Experimental Music?
Gabe: The Throbbing Gristle of American Indie Rock? Yeah.
That band would be a shoe-in for Oblivion Access. Speaking of which, what compelled or inspired your to get back together for Oblivion Access?
Gabe: Pete and I had talked about playing music together again when we broke up. It was with the understanding that there was no foreclosed possibility that we could never play again. You know, it just was simply gonna be a question of when would be the right time. And it wasn’t the right time for at least a decade.
Then I went down to L.A. and played with Pete. He was living there. I was living in Santa Cruz. We decided to play just to see what it felt like, and it felt good. It sounded remarkably like us without a lot of effort. So we asked our booking agent to tell us if something came along that would be appropriate for us and would also have the resources in order to play again.
When I looked at Oblivion Access’ website, I was… honestly, in this political moment, I was like, “Do I wanna play in a festival in Texas… in a moment when trans folks are under attack, where folks of color are facing incredible struggles (there)?” But it seemed like (Oblivion is) really about trying to create a collective, community-based experience that is inclusive but focused on extreme music cultures and a pretty broad array of extreme music cultures. And I thought, “You know, this is actually a kind of festival that we would’ve played back in the day.”
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“(Oblivion is) really about trying to create a collective, community-based experience that is inclusive but focused on extreme music cultures and a pretty broad array of extreme music cultures.”
–Gabriel Mindel Saloman of Yellow Swans
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Is this gonna be your first show where you’ll be subjected to people taking photos with their phones while you’re playing?
Gabe: That’s a good question. I’s funny to think about how much time has passed. What’ll be different about this? We’ll find out. We were so accustomed to being a lot of people’s first noise band… and I still think we’re gonna be radically different from anything else at that festival. But there is a whole other context—socially, culturally—for what we do that didn’t exist at the time that we would’ve played a festival like that before.
Pete, can you elaborate on that?
Pete: There’s a change in technology that’s quite significant that you brought up, but I also think that there’s a very significant shift in what underground culture means now, you know? The world that Gabe and I came up in, there was this established post-hardcore touring circuit and media infrastructure and all this stuff that was very explicitly opposed to the mainstream. And that was like the world that we kind of slid into.
There was like a strong radical ethic that wasn’t just about political but also economic accessibility and pushing back against unfettered capitalism. About presenting an alternative to mainstream music culture, which, you know, has its pluses and minuses.
The critical infrastructure that was decidedly underground has slowly eroded. We don’t have as robust resources. We don’t have as complex of a dialogue as we had previously. At this point, I don’t know how we would operate as a band not being able to tour as easily because of the cost of living, not being able to distribute CDs the same way that we did before. It’s totally different.
Even though you’re headed into uncharted waters, it sounds like a blast, given the nature of your personalities that you described earlier.
I’m looking forward to it. It’s gonna be a test for us to see if it’s gonna keep going. But it’s feeling good so far.
Yellow Swans will perform at Elysium nightclub on Friday (technically, early Saturday) from 12:45-1:45 a.m.
For more profiles on Oblivion Access participants, check out our brand-new interviews with Midwife, City of Caterpillar, Cloak, Cloud Rat, Bosse-de-Nage, Pallbearer, and the festival’s co-founders.
Photo courtesy of Yellow Swans
