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Zack Adcock holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Memphis and a B.A. in Literature from the University of Illinois. He is also a freelance writer and a bookseller at Barnes & Noble and, come fall, hopes to hold a teaching position where he purports to mold young minds. Though he lives in the south, he longs to return to the midwest's four-season year, where he will again be able to experience the spring and fall. Until then he tries to stay indoors, in the central heat/air, where the climate remains tolerable enough to write.
Richard Swift is a shapeshifter, a musical sorceror of mythical proportion. Each of his releases shows a mastery of a different affect of pop music, and each one is unique in its own way. Pending the release (some as Richard Swift and some as Instruments of Science and Technology, his electronic moniker), you’re likely to find a completely different sound, but what’s been clear all along is that Richard Swift’s forte is using the elements of popular music to turn popular music on its ass. In that sense, As Onasis is perfectly in form.
This double-EP mines the history of early analog-recorded rock ‘n’ roll in a way that can only be compared to Tom Waits’ attempt to recapture a primally modern version of the gritty folk-recording style of early blues. Swift’s presence here is not exactly as songwriter, as it has been with his past releases The Novelist and Dressed Up For the Letdown. Rather, Swift’s forays deal with the voices of instruments as they could only sound without a digital recording process. Vocals provide instrumental accoutrement and instruments provide vocal-like affects; the result is a completely intoxicating, backwards form of pop music.
Some of the material on As Onassis recalls the rock ‘n’ blues field recordings of Ike Turner and Joe Bihari, now collected as The Modern Downhome Blues Sessions. Other moments sound like Beach Boys outtakes with the layers stripped out. Others sounds like the opposite of those Beach Boys recordings: just the layers with the structures removed. Simply put, what’s not here is digital studio glitz: this is music recorded to sound like the way it sounded when Swift played it in the studio. Chunky, distorted guitars with chord progressions that recall everything from Dick Dale to The White Stripes give way to Randy Newman-esque piano romps; equal parts carnival and juke joint.
If there’s a flaw to As Onassis, it’s perhaps that it’s simply an odd release. But it’s that same off-kilteredness that makes this pair of EPs so fascinating, too. Perhaps destined for love-hate status, as most innovative music is, As Onassis is Richard Swift at his most comical and obtuse, and ironically is also Swift at his most fundamentally sound.
