Swords We Swallow; an introduction.

Spring is finally almost here, which means that it seems like an appropriate time to introduce a new medium-blurring art-project from the Asbjorn Arts Collective. Fresh air brings fresh ideas, right?

Swords We Swallow is predominantly a musical project, but with a definite visual-art component, and very possibly some performance-art facets.... and probably eventually also an eclectic DJ tag-team, once we get our unorthodox rigs situated. You all know how much I love to play games of "which part is the art" with my projects.

This little start-up began when Sara Jane and I were working on material for the noisy, experimental electro-rock outfit Tipsy Cougar that the two of us comprise half of. We found ourselves writing song material that didn't exactly fit in with the mission-statement of that outfit, but we liked the songs, and still wanted to put them to use. The music itself has thus-far been less noisy, yet more abstract. There are still electronic elements, but also alot more folk-ish stuff, and quite a bit less in-your-face spasm-danciness and attitude. We plan to record a limited-press E.P. soon... right now we're thinking three songs, five or six tracks. We plan to release these in hand-numbered, one-of-a-kind packaging. Of course, this is all hypothetical right now; we're still in the writing stage. (on that note, if anyone with some simple recording equipment wants to help us to track the E.P. in the coming weeks, please be in touch... an extra ear and someone to man the faders would be fun.)

Anyone who's been reading this blog for a while probably remembers that I have a bit of an ongoing/ recurring project that involves transparency in the art-process; that the process can be art itself. With that intention in mind, I'll submit here a couple such specimens related to Swords We Swallow, in its formative stages.

Some of you may have seen a video that I posted to my Myspace and Facebook pages over the last couple days, billed as a sort of Swords We Swallow trailer. Yes, it's very odd. I like to think of this video as a bit of "spontaneous art," a facet of the art-process-as-art project. This video had initially neither intention nor concept. We were merely trying to figure out how to use a webcam device and accompanying software-program. As we tossed different clips into the clips, we would tweak it to fit into "hey, this looks like..." sort of after-thoughts. We thought that it was amusing, and somehow perversely relevant to the project that we were working on. So, we decided to share. With that said, enjoy the chaos.



In other transparency-related aspects of the project, some of you may have seen a web poll that was floating around recently to help us try to name the new act. We gave you three options, and although all three received scattered votes, Swords We Swallow won by a decent margin (which is good, since that's the one that both Sara and I were pulling for anyway by the time the poll ended.)

Over the course of the polling-process, I had said that the three finalists had been culled from a lengthy list... and a couple people asked to see the rest of the options. I replied to them that most of the others were eliminated for fairly obvious logistical reasons, but that I might post the list at some point just for fun anyway. I think I might get to that in my next entry... the list serves a little bit like a very odd piece of spontaneous poetry.

In other related news, Tipsy Cougar is almost finished recording and compiling our debut demo, "Immaculate Conceptions." We plan to record two more tracks, and then figure out how to get this noisy piece of grimy, throbbing mess into your hands in the most perverse way possible.