by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Mezzanine Swimmers is the "shaky noisy hypno-pop" project of Brooklyn's Mike Green, best known as half of experimental punk duo Video Daughters. On Friday, January 19th, the project is set to release Black Cat In Heat via Fire Talk and Already Dead Tapes, an abrasive new album of blown out carnage, distorted noise, and under the most unlikely of circumstances, mesmerizing pop songs. While your speakers try their best to simply hold on for dear life, Mezzanine Swimmers pushes their sound as far as it will go, optimally setting blips and bleeps against one other, tinkering with plodding bass lines, and letting melodies bounce back and forth. The futuristic sound is menacing and mysterious, with Green's vocals providing the only sign of human life left in existence of the record's careening gray soundscapes and intricate rhythms.
Channeling both beat driven pop and the absence of accessibility at times, it's Mezzanine Swimmer's ability to combine the two into something structured and approachable that is really something to behold. "Cinnamon Gurl," the album opener (and very much not a Neil Young cover) is a stunning introduction, a sparse electronic doom-pop ballad, built on a creeping electronic warbles and a deceptively wild layered rhythm, the song is both bright and claustrophobic. The album's title track opts for a more staggering approach, a big blistering beat that feels as though it could come apart at any minute is paired with a sonic murmur that threatens to derail it all, but only bolsters that static cling of the eventual monotone vocal delivery. The further into the wild Mezzanine Swimmers travel ("Louis Warship"), the more anything seems possible. There record's b-side opts for a relative respite, a more peaceful and serene manipulation of electronic distortion lends itself to gorgeous cuts like "#night #death," "Bathwater Soldier," and "Little Freak". The album breathes with life and emotion even in it's most mechanical states, an all encompassing trip into the improvised world of controlled noise and deconstructed pop.
Mezzanine Swimmers' Black Cat In Heat is out January 19th via Fire Talk / Already Dead Tapes.