Swervedriver’s raise:demos comes from the weeks before their 1991 debut, when the London band were shaping songs in Studio 4 at Playground Studios, Camden Town. Adam Franklin’s left-channel guitar and vocals push against Jimmy Hartridge’s right-channel guitar, with Adi Vines on bass and Graham Bonnar behind the drums. The four-track Portastudio setup keeps the meters in the red, so the sound is all overloaded amps, pedal buzz, tape hiss and sudden bursts of volume. It’s rough, but the playing has a useful directness.
Several of these songs would become central to Raise, and you can hear the arrangements taking shape in “Sandblasted”, “Sunset”, “Sci Flyer” and “Feel So Real”. Tempos lurch forward without much polish, while the guitars move from thick, grinding chords to bright melodic lines. The release also includes an unused session version of “Son Of Mustang Ford”, cleaner than the other tracks but still carrying the band’s hard-edged attack. Fans of early Swervedriver, Creation Records’ early 1990s guitar scene and the rough mechanics of shoegaze demos will find plenty here, though anyone wanting a clean studio document should start with Raise itself.
