The general trajectory of Pete Swanson's solo recordings is one of increased corrosion, where each new record he puts out bears a sound that atrophies a little more than the last. If you take in a few plot points-- say, 2011's Man with Potential, followed by 2012's Pro Style, and then this new EP for Mexican Summer/Software-- it feels like you're simultaneously witnessing a refinement of his vision and the gradual destruction of his core aesthetic. In a 2011 interview for the Out Door, Swanson discussed how he was often bugged about krautrock and electronic influences on his former band, Yellow Swans, and how the duo's early experiments were born out of "not being satisfied with what generally existed" in those styles. That sense of dissatisfaction has continued on the beat-heavy output under his own name, taking a scorched earth policy toward EDM that gleefully pulls out all the ugly innards of the genre.
Punk Authority, the latest in a string of wittily titled releases from Swanson, pulls everything into a bigger, fuller, more expansive framework. The title conveys confidence, even if it is some private, unexplained joke, and it's a feeling matched in the music. Here, everything is pushed up into the red. Even less cluttered moments, such as the clock-ticking beats that form an intro to the title track, are in the throes of deterioration, lost in an attempt to bend everything toward breaking point. At times there's only a tiny semblance of order peaking through the debris, but it's always there, just about keeping everything together. Still, it's hard not to think of this as some kind of end game that Swanson has been careering toward, especially when that title track is shunted into a pure whiteout phase that makes it hard to focus on anything other than the unholy shitstorm spewing out of your speakers.
Fortunately, Punk Authority is only concerned with the present, not the future or the past. This is Swanson finding a new type of delirium and wallowing in it, letting it expand and contract over four tracks that begin in unadulterated mania and never look back. It's obtrusive, even obnoxious at times. The first lick of noise from "C.O.P." feels like a bratty kid spitting in your eye and lifting your wallet from your pocket while you're still comprehending what happened. The bleepy motif strung throughout that track is the closest anything here gets to having a solid link to dance music, ultimately coming off like a version of LFO's "Freak" stretched out on a torture rack. There's something cleansing about returning for repeat plays, a sense of Swanson purging some unidentified horrors from his life. The silence that settles in at the end of the EP resembles the pause in time needed when comprehending a piece of really bad news.
The track that precedes that silence, the 13-minute "Life Ends at 30", is Swanson's wildest statement yet, a berserk piece of man vs. machine noise that's as bruising as it is euphoric. It's a dense work, plagued by a million tangential thoughts all piled up on top of one another, creating a sense of claustrophobia that never lets up. The term "nosebleed techno" has already been coined to define a sub-genre of hardcore, which is too bad; it would be the perfect ugly descriptor to hang around the neck of most of the material here. "Life Ends at 30" is a great example of Swanson’s ability to gain a form of lunatic momentum that positions him right on the brink of chaos. He doesn’t appear interested in total formlessness, instead reaching a place that gets as close as he can to all-out loss of control then just about pulling back. Getting there is a thrilling white-knuckle ride, like peering over the ledge for 30 minutes but never jumping off.
