История группы Swirlies: Перемены и Эволюция Звука

After a semester of birding, Bernick returned and Swirlies enjoyed a brief period of performing as a quintet made up of two guitars, two bass guitars and a drum kit until Andrews left in June 1993 to become a radio DJ. At this point Blonder Tongue Audio Baton was released, and the band embarked on their first nation wide tour with the original line up of Bernick, Carmody, Drucker, and Tutunjian. Later that year Swirlies released the Brokedick Car EP which contained remixes of songs from Blonder Tongue alongside a couple of outtakes. In Fall 1993, Ben Drucker was replaced by Anthony DeLuca on drums, and the band did a series of short tours on the East Coast college circuit. In January, 1994, the band did their first tour of Europe, which included a session recorded for John Peel. Directly after the tour, Seana Carmody left Swirlies to lead the pop group Syrup USA.

Christina Files joined Swirlies on guitar, synths, and vocals in early 1994, and that summer the band began work on their next album. After being branded both "shoegaze"' and "chimp rock" early in their career, the band was exploring new musical directions and invented a name for their ethos, emblazoning it in the title of their 1995 EP, Sneaky Flutes and Sneaky Flute Music. The seven song mini album was a forerunner to their full length masterwork, 1996's They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glittering World of the Salons. The album added more synth driven electronica and a few dance beats to their foundations in angular noise pop, drawing some reasonable comparisons to Stereolab and their Krautrock forebears. More member changes occurred during this time: In 1995 DeLuca left and Gavin McCarthy manned the drum kit for two U. S. tours before moving on to work in his own group Karate. Swirlies briefly played as a trio before Adam Pierce stepped in to play drums. Files left Swirlies to play with Victory at Sea and was replaced in 1997 by guitarist Rob Laakso. In 1998 the group remixed songs from the Salons sessions for the album Strictly East Coast Sneaky Flute Music featuring collaborations with producer Rich Costey, DJ Spooky, Soul Slinger, Mice Parade, various friends of the band, plus an abundance of field recordings as had been tradition on other Swirlies releases.

Swirles continued as a four piece under the Damon Rob Andy Adam arrangement into the new millennium. Swirlies offshoot The Yes Girls (the core lineup but with Lavender Diamond's Ron Regé on drums) toured the U. S. with Timonium, and in Denmark as an opener for Mew on their Half the World is Watching Me tour. The endeavor culminated in the release of the home made album Damon Andy Rob Ron: The Yes Girls in 2000 on Sneaky Flute Empire/Pehr and a limited edition live album on Sneaky Flute Empire. The band began to settle into being an outfit with a cast of guest musicians who revolved in and out of the group to accommodate other members' academic, career, and family commitments: Seana Carmody, Vanessa Downing, and Damon's sister Kara Tutunjian often joined onstage for live vocals, Mike Walker and Tarquin Katis occasionally sat in for Bernick on bass, as well as Ken Bernard and Kevin Shea for Adam Pierce on drums. Deborah Warfield joined the band as vocalist circa 2000, also playing guitar and keyboards live. Swirlies eventually released Cats of the Wild, Vol. 2 on Bubblecore Records in 2003, collecting new material alongside revamped studio versions of Yes Girls songs, plus outtakes from Swirlies' early 90s recordings.

The group, though sometimes sparse in regards to output, has never disbanded. They played a few shows in the northeastern U. S. in 2009 and 2011, toured the Eastern Seaboard and Midwest in 2013 with Kurt Vile, with Elliott Malvas on bass in lieu of Andy, and in 2015 Swirlies co founder Seana Carmody rejoined the group for a two week tour of the eastern U. S. and Canada to commemorate the band's 25th year of existence. In 2016, Joyful Noise Recordings released a new Swirlies song (Fantastic Trumpets Forever) on flexi disc, and Taang! Records reissued the Blonder Tongue Audio Baton LP on vinyl. In 2017 they toured the west coast in the U. S. and in 2018 the south and east coast of the U. S. in support of the Philadelphia based rock band Nothing.

Since their earliest demo tape, each Swirlies appearance has been marked with "This is Swirlies number " in order of its release. In addition to their "official" releases, Swirlies have produced a number of cassingles, CDs, and free downloadable albums on their own Sneaky Flute Empire label. Beginning in 2005 the band began to curate recordings of live performances and radio sessions in limited runs under the name "Swirlies' Magic Strop." The first three of these were issued via their website as MP3 only albums, including a mock rock opera about Meg Zamula, a former writer for Pitchfork. In 2015, the band's 1994 Peel Sessions were issued on a 7 inch called Orce vs. Dragon, and in 2018 the band put out a 12 inch EP called Magic Strop Tonight compiling tracks from the Los Angeles radio show Part Time Punks and new studio songs from their "Fantastic Trumpets Forever" single. Bassist Andy Bernick maintains a label and website called Richmond County Archives that publishes material from the band's periphery. The site also serves as Swirlies' official web presence. A Swirlies tribute album, Sneaky Flute Moods: A Tribute to the Swirlies, was released online by Reverse Engine in April 2012. Singer/guitarist Damon Tutunjian produced Mew's debut album and performed in some capacity on their first five albums. He also produced a number of tracks for The Wicked Farleys debut 7 inch and first LP. He played guitar in the original incarnation of Lansing Dreiden in the late 1990s and in the Danish band Ghost Society in 2010. In 2013, he joined Swedish band I Am Super Ape on bass guitar and synths and produced their single "Monki", featuring Mark Lanegan on vocals. He recently produced the debut album for the Swedish multi instrumentalist Majken.