For all the talk about clichéd autumnal treats and tropes, we often forget that this is the season of death. Plants are literally entering into a process of decay and retreat before the oncoming chill…the dread cold. So it makes perfect sense that we often trot out our talk of hauntings and general spookiness during the month of October with Halloween being the culminating carnival of souls. The fall is a haunted time, a brisk wind, the smell of dying leaves and the onset of the silence resulting from the various animals retreating to wherever they wait out the winter, it all leaves us feeling that slight twinge, that we are powerless before that simple movement of time. So what better way to celebrate this danse macabre then with a properly spooky local album, enter Swolyats.

This recording was technically completed over 8 years ago but Eric Kendall (full disclosure: Eric is a good friend of mine…great guy really, you should meet him sometime) recently rereleased it on Soundcloud just in time for Halloween. Eric posted the album along with the following background information. “So...8 years ago I decided to start this project with the sole purpose of creating an album to give to friends in the spirit of Halloween. With the help of some friends and past/present/future band mates, we made it happen. The method of these recordings sometimes involved a main idea followed by tracking various instruments and field recordings with no knowledge of what was recorded beforehand, just to see if chance could create something somewhat listenable and eerie. Unfortunately, we never finished it by Halloween 05' and the tracks and files were gradually lost over the years. Until now!”  The result of this project is roughly 40 minutes of tense, unsettling atmospheric music that plays like the soundtrack to a now obscure 70’s horror film.

Swolyat evokes a certain sense of haunting, one that works through the layering and continuation of unease with no actual release or catharsis. Mixing outside elements throughout, the album moves along intercut with dissonance and garbled together field recordings. These field recordings are the most unsettling element, garbled noises and otherworldly chants evincing nothing but faint recognition with a minute of laughter being the only clear time you can identify something. It leaves you unsure and slightly confused, deeply nervous. Running through all of that are moments of low, droning, melodies lurching towards their conclusion.

Hauntings work best when the spectral element is only half present, teasing us at something terrible but never showing us its true nature, letting our imaginations fill in the gory details. Here we have these half recognitions and low droning hums and buzzes to signal we should be uncomfortable, physically and mentally.

Catharsis is often disappointing, the reveal mitigating our terror and causing us to question what frightened us in the first place. The monster is never as scary as what we come up with on our own. Luckily, Swolyat offers no catharis, only false endings. The dread continues throughout and the album never really releases us, only ending in cacophony of found sound and chants. While listening, I happened to notice some scratching on my door that I am sure has been there since I moved into this apartment but which I had previously missed. The music and the sudden recognition made me nervous, had something come in and done this recently, was that something still there? Was it coming back for me? Of course these thoughts are fleeting and irrational but often we can only talk ourselves down from our fears, themselves rarely rooted in logic. Swolyats evokes this irrational, often suppressed terror, bringing us close to it, letting it run through us. It is an excellent soundtrack to this most haunted season. We present it to you in full below.