“Kramer set up a mobile recording contraption in the pad I was decamped in, the Florida sunshine flowing through the palm leaves, lithe lizards skittering across the windowsills, and we just went for it. Kramer had the idea to cover a Joy Division tune, a left turn from the improvisations we had been tracking, though wholly in keeping with both our sensibilities of light and dark unifying in transcendent songwriting, both of us devotees of ‘the song’ as well as ‘the freedom’. What transpired is They Came Like Swallows… a sonic activism… our duo exchange for human dignity, it is our soul music for any semblance of a peaceful planet.” ~ Thurston

And at first I confess I had a real problem with what is essentially a very uplifting positive body of work, I really could not marry what is a thing of beauty, a wonderful piece of art with the idea that it should be Seven Requiems for the Children of Gaza. I mean, I can’t even begin to start to imagine what it must be like to be a child in Gaza, to even have a childhood in Gaza? Surely there is no childhood? Surely to even be alive in Gaza is some kind of living hell, some kind of who knows what? Some kind of pit of despair, some very bleak black painting that’s impossible to actually paint? Somewhere where pretty much all hope and everything else is gone, where everything is maybe at best replaced by rage or maybe just anger or emptiness? Replaced with, well, I don’t even begin to know what? Something very very black, bleak, dark, something with everything this rather beautifully refined body of work isn’t? 

But then it did start to dawn this is about dignity, it is “our soul music for any semblance of a peaceful planet”. I’ve been listening to little else for the last four or five days since this album from Bonner Kramer and Thurston Moore landed here. The album has been on repeat as I work in here, as I paint and work and bitch about stupidly unimportant things like pulling art shows together, as I moan about the rain and the lack of decent painting light and the need to paint even though no one needs another painting…

“Two giants of alternative/experimental music join creative forces for the first time in their storied, nearly 50-year careers. A startlingly cohesive union that burns through landscapes of primitive outsider rock, avant-garde composition, progressive ambient and further locales boldly and beautifully unnamable…” so reads the press release and yes, the first track to be shared, the opening track on the album is kind of typical of what the album is (not sure about those visuals with the video though? A little too obvious? Misleading? A little too in your face when really the music isn’t). 

Maybe this is music that doesn’t need anything else? That doesn’t need the visual noise of a video? Maybe just listen to it rather than watch it?  

But then is that opening track, the one they’ve chosen to release as a first taste, is it as typical of the whole album as I just said it was? Probably not.  They Came Like Swallows is beautiful, They Came Like Swallows is solemn, considered, strong, They Came Like Swallows glows with warmth, with colour, and yes, once you let it, with hope.  And then there’s Insight, at the end of it all, apparently the starting point of or at least a turning point for the whole collaboration and I remember when we were young, and hey don’t you know you were right, and I’m not afraid any more and this really really (really) is an exceptionally beautiful version ofInsight, a special moment in time and time indeed taken to care for all the people not there…. 

And they’re not afraid any more and the words of Ian Curtis and the perfect ending to and album, Insight a (beautiful) Joy Division cover that is so much much more than just another cover…

“Kramer and I reconnected in Miami, Florida, a few years back, many many years after each of us had departed NYC on separate life adventures. It was only a matter of time before Kramer and I started making plans to record together and with his irrepressible due diligence he quickly set up a mobile recording contraption in the pad I was decamped in, the Florida sunshine flowing through the palm leaves, lithe lizards skittering across the window sills, and we just went for it. Kramer had the idea to cover a Joy Division tune, a left turn from the improvisations we had been tracking, though wholly in keeping with both our sensibilities of light and dark unifying in transcendent songwriting, both of us devotees of ‘the song’ as well as ‘the freedom.’ What transpired is They Came Like Swallows, a session we immediately felt should exist as a prayer to the war-torn souls of the families of Palestine continually decimated by the brutality of genocide. We agreed beyond words to offer our music as a sonic activism and as a beneficent energy. This album is our duo exchange for human dignity, it is our soul music for any semblance of a peaceful planet”. ~Thurston Moore   

They Came Like Swallows is the first album-length collaboration between Thurston Moore and Kramer (now officially Bonner Kramer), “two giants of alternative/experimental music. The accomplishments and influence of these two artists in the world of independent music cannot be overstated and the result of their artistic union is a startlingly cohesive statement that burns through landscapes of primitive outsider rock, avant-garde composition, progressive ambient and further locales boldly and beautifully unnamable”. 

Seems that “for the first time in our nearly 45 years of friendship, we had identical time windows open to make a record together,” recounts Kramer. And as someone said, after all this time, when you really would have expected something of this length to have happened long ago, not a moment was wasted as the two of them tapped into “the heightened core of improvisational tension across these seven offerings”.

it really is, once you unravel it all, once you let it spend proper time in your space, once you let yourself really listen to that (very special) closing piece of music and especially the perfectly sung words (and insight) of Ian Curtis, and then go back and start again (and again), once you let it in, then yes, this is, as futile as it might seem, a sonic activism, a positive… it is their exchange for human dignity, it is soul music for any semblance of a peaceful planet, it is also two people working so well together, a chemistry.

And once again, to quote Sean Scully once more, it is “art as a force for good”, for hope. This is beautifully hopeful music and without hope what is there? This is a beautiful hopeful piece of art the two of them have made…  (sw)

Bonner Kramer | Thurston Moore – They Came Like Swallows ~ Seven Requiems for the Children of Gaza is out May 1st on Silver Current.

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