BAMBARA – Swarm (2023 Reissue) – LP – Red Vinyl

LP – Limited EditionRed Vinyl.

Upon Swarms 2016 release, Brooklyn-based Bambara had been honing their noise-rock brutalism since forming in Athens, Georgia in 2009. On Swarm, their second full-length, the band began to pull their approach into sharp focus, and the result was a foundational triumph.

After the pure noise experimentation of their 2013 debut Dreamviolence, here the band began to develop many of their later trademarks. Marrying the maniacal ravings of The Birthday Party and the brutality of early Swans with the tangled roots-punk of The Gun Club, the spotlight started to fall on vocalist/guitarist Reid Batehs lyrics as well as the Spaghetti western atmospherics that would come to the fore to such effect on later releases such as Shadow On Everything and Stray.

For fans of Bambaras visceral and pummeling performances, which led to extensive touring opportunities along rising star contemporaries such as Gilla Band, Algiers, and IDLES before earning the band their own headlining slot on multiple international tours, Swarm will serve as a sort of missing link. Now, for the first time ever, live-set favorites such as the brooding An Ill Son, the flawlessly dynamic Black, and the pop-snarled All the Ugly Things can be listened to at a level of audio fidelity on par with the bands later recordings.

Tiny Mix Tapes praised Dreamviolence, the bands first LP, by saying that complete, utter anguish has never sounded this good. Swarm made it sound even better. With these 12 songs, Bambara proved that sometimes the only way to confront a fucked-up world is to sink to its level. As Henry Rollins succinctly summed it up at the time, this is a REALLY cool record.

Swarm… is a beautifully dynamic nightmare. NPR

Since 2008, Bambara have reined nigh-unintelligible noise into something more artfully restrained, but the wildness remains intact. Pitchfork

Bambara hail from Athens, Georgia, famously home to REM and The B-52s, but what they do is far noisier, angrier, scarier. They sound like a band always on the lookout for something bigger. The Quietus

Bambara write chaotic songs held together with formless washes of noise and anxious vocal drones, crafting pallid but vibrant pieces that thrashed with…mutant energy.
VICE

Tracklist:

A1. Clearing Out The Weeds
A2. Her Sister Touya
A3. An Ill Son
A4. Black
A5. Like Waves
A6. I Don’t Mind

B1. Filled Up With Night
B2. It’s Nothing
B3. All The Ugly Things
B4. I Can’t Recall
B5. In Bars
B6. As Her