It’s hard to overstate how important the improvised music community in Portland was to Yellow Swans. It’s also hard to give it a name, though sometimes as a shorthand we call it “the Super Unity crew”, or “the 411 crew” after the warehouse that briefly formed the secret headquarters of Portland free music during the early-oughts. It was populated by a vast sprawling network of weirdos and misfits, art school drop-outs, musicl school drop-outs, fuck school drop-outs, and heaps of folks who had never attempted collectiely improvised music before falling under the influence of this scene. There was very little in common idiomatically with the people playing together, some having entered through jazz, some through rock, some through just picking up an instrument, or object, to see what it sounded like. What they had in common was a method, a third-ear approach to listening more than playing, and a collective drive to experiment with freedom through sound. Yellow Swans spent a lot of time hanging out at their gigs, sharing food, listening to music, goofing off, going to protests, drinking and smoking with these folks.

Super Unity came into being the same Winter that Yellow Swans was first duking it out with our shitty gear in a Portland basement. They had started as a trio featuring Joseph Foster (English), JP Jenkins (Bird; Ghosting) and Bryan Eubanks (GOD), whose collective work is well represented by the Collective Jyrk sibling label Rasbliutto. The FJE Trio became Super Unity when they were joined by Kelvin Pittman (of the unsung legends Rocket Science and the N---- Loving F----) and Matthew “Toto” Voga, and later on Lief Sundstrom of GOD. Over the years the group would expand and contract, sometimes performing as a big band version called Super Duper Unity (a convenient way to get their perennially broke community into a gig without paying cover). Super Unity also included as a member dancer Kathleen Keogh, and the Box Set came with a flip-book that featured the band as movers. Each box was hand made by members of the group, with both Pete and I gripping Brian's resin caked versions full of grassy detritus.

It would be hard to contrast Yellow Swans more concretely than by juxtaposing us against Super Unity, but just like them we were trying to listen beyond the obvious superficial sound events, listening deeper into the textures of noise. Their noise world was the ambience that surrounded them, the crash of bottles at a bar, car noise and sirens in the street, heavy breathing and cleared throats.

The world would be well served by someone going deep into the digital and physical archives of this band and their related projects (starting with the Super Unity Blogspot page that somehow is still a thing). Digging into their own writing you might get a sense of the perverse marriage of dadaist humor and high art seriousness that under-girds - and explains - this project. By way of example, here was the announcement that Super Unity made when we first released this box: “POOPY LOOPY DOOPY DOOO! It has come to the attention of $uper Unity that JYRK will be releasing a 5 cd box set spanning a big piece of ye $U ouververvre! We could not be more! I hope I get one!”

- GMS, 2020