Raise:Demos

The winter of 1990/91: heady times for Swervedriver. The band is freshly signed to Creation Records and are holed up inside Playground Studios in London, recording the demos for what will be the Raise LP on a Tascam Portastudio.

Whole songs, basic ideas, jams, riffs or sometimes mere fragments are all filtered through the channels of an outdated mixing desk. The audio quality is not pristine: you may hear an occasional bum note or a dropped beat here and there. You will definitely hear the hiss of amplifiers and the buzz of FX pedals, but most importantly you will also hear the songs as they first emerged: fresh and, to all intents and purposes, played live.

Raise:Demos contains the best moments of those original portastudio tapes, expertly restored and rebalanced by Tim Turan, but still raw and immediate in a way that transports you straight into that grimy rehearsal room in Camden Town over 35 years ago