LEVIATHAN I & II
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Leviathan I & II are two full-length albums exploring the beast of grief that befalls us after a difficult loss. The albums are a return to guitar and Swartz’s shoegaze roots as seen on his Nighttide album and his work in the band Au Revoir Borealis. But this is a darker and noisier outing than previous releases. It is the sound of an inner beast being allowed to wail in pain and expressing gratitude for being seen and heard. It is an album filled with deep, swelling guitar distortion, walls of noise, dense fields of guitar/modular synth drone, and neon glowing fuzz. It’s equal parts shoegaze, drone metal and Blade Runner ambience.
Swartz et is the music project of Detroit-based artist and musician Steve Swartz. His music has been described as atmospheric and immense. This is largely due to his earliest sound influences as a child growing up among the fields of Iowa and the mighty Great Lakes. Nature has always been the biggest inspiration, but musical influences eventually became artists such as Ennio Morricone, Vangelis, The Cure, Brian Eno, and The Cocteau Twins.
The late 90s found him playing in the Detroit music scene as guitar player for the shoegaze band Au Revoir Borealis. As the band’s activity faded, Steve continued to explore worlds of sound through guitar, synthesizers and field audio. His albums explore themes around our vast inner worlds and the creatures that in habit them (grief, anxiety, joy, happiness, anger, desire, etc.) in hopes of illuminating the mysteries and universals of our shared human experience.