Swarm [New 2023 Mix & Remaster]

by Bambara

supported by

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ another banger from post-punk's answer to the Menendez brothers and their long-suffering sidekick. Favorite track: Her Sister Touya.

savag3duck Swarm is the mesh of bambaras earlier noise and the more lyrically focused albums that would follow it and it works very well. The production is a large step up above dreamviolence (and I expect this new remix will be even better) but retains many elements of that album while doing its own thing. Favorite track: Filled Up With Night.

JP One of Bambara's most formative albums being re-released on vinyl is amazing! Apologetically dark, noisy, distant, and ambient. A welcomed fever dream of an album. Favorite track: All the Ugly Things.

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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
2023 Remix by Drew Vandenberg (Shadow on Everything, Stray); remaster by Carl Saff. Limited edition of 200 copies on Clear Vinyl.

Includes unlimited streaming of Swarm [New 2023 Mix & Remaster] via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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edition of 200

Purchasable with gift card

$25 USD or more

1.	Clearing Out the Weeds 03:01	buy track
2.	Her Sister Touya 02:51	buy track
3.	An Ill Son 04:08	buy track
4.	Black 02:58	buy track
5.	Like Waves 02:38	buy track
6.	I Don't Mind 02:05	buy track
7.	Filled Up With Night 02:52	buy track
8.	It's Nothing 03:14	buy track
9.	All the Ugly Things 02:05	buy track
10.	I Can't Recall 01:09	buy track
11.	In Bars 01:47	buy track
12.	As Her 02:24	buy track

about

Now, for the first time ever – thanks to a 2023 remix from Drew Vandenberg (Shadow on Everything, Stray) and a remaster from Carl Saff – Bambara 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 band’s later recordings. For fans of Bambara’s 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.

Upon Swarm’s 2016 release (originally on the great Arrowhawk Records), 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 Bateh’s 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.

Tiny Mix Tapes praised Dreamviolence, the band’s 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.”

credits

released August 4, 2023

2023 remix: Drew Vandenberg
2023 remaster: Carl Saff
Originally released on Arrowhawk Records

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about

Bambara Brooklyn, New York

bambaranyc.com

shows

Oct 26

7th St Entry

Minneapolis, MN
Nov 09

Mercury Lounge

New York (NYC), NY

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