Gabriel:
For an underground American band, one of the abiding pleasures of touring Europe is having your gigs untethered from the raw economics of ticket sales. In the US we were reduced to entertainers and entrepreneurs, responsible for drawing an audience, self-promotion, for selling a product that people wanted disguised as music/art (I mean… this was even before Web 2.0). That meant that if no one turns up at the show, it’s your fault and consequently you don’t get paid. Sometimes we would be playing a DIY space where it was understood that we’re all in this together, and the joy of being in community (and the compensations that come with it like friendship, a floor to sleep on, a vegan breakfast in the morning) makes it worth it even when you barely get a tank of gas for your trouble.

Europe has its own share of commercial entertainment, and its own underground networks of bar/door funded gigs at squats, clubs, etc., but the economics for YS and bands like us in the 2000’s was shaped by the fact that we were making “art”. Cultural centers (sometimes housed in squats, sometimes fancy institutions, sometimes itinerant) could resource funds from social democratic governments to put on non-commercial gigs on the premise that “culture” and “art” are social goods that need to be supported outside of the cut-throat logics of everyday capitalism. This meant that Yellow Swans could play to a few dozen people at Hybrida’s beautiful space on the River Torre, be fed, billeted, and paid well, offered home-made grappa, treated with dignity and respect. I still think about our show there as a quintessential example of the “good life” that being a noise musician at that time and place could afford. It wasn’t the most money, the most glamorous, the most luxurious, the biggest audience… It was in a way a quiet and humble experience, but one which combined the communal joy of a DIY show with the sophistication and economic stability of something more legit.

That beings said, if I remember correctly, Hybrida lost its funding and its space - apparently the aging, conservative population of Udine didn’t think people who went to “events connected with the alternative, improvised and contemporary avant-garde music scene” voted Right (though maybe Hybrida’s continued existence is why PD beat the fascists this year).

This recording captures us on tour prior to the release of AT ALL ENDS, working through some improvisations, but also a more or less faithful (if noisier) version of Mass Mirage as a bridge. It’s a powerful example of us at full force, in our zone, and one of the only releases out there that captures our set, start to finish. This ended up being (unintentionally) one of our last releases, coming out well after our hiatus, but I think it’s essential for anyone trying to understand our musical process, how we got from jam space, to tour, to album.