Headed by master droneologist Mike Mare, the Destructo Swarmbots are back with their third disc, the follow-up to the excellent Mountain 3" CD that came out on Public Guilt a couple of years ago. Mike is probably better known for his involvement as a touring member with avant hiphop masters D�LEK and his excellent remix work for everyone from Genghis Tron to Isis to D�LEK, but for the past several years, he has also been creating some amazing and beautiful heavy dronescapes with his amorphous collective Destructo Swarmbots. I remember the first time that I saw the Swarmbots play, in Baltimore at the Talking Head right around the time that their 3" CD came out; they were touring as a duo, and conjured these huge walls of distorted rumble and smeared melodic textures from damaged guitars and electronics that shook the entire building. That set was one of the most deafening performances that I've ever heard at that club, a total crushing power-drone assault that dominated the room for nearly half an hour. On disc, however, Destructo Swarmbots are a gentler beast, still immensely heavy, but also more meditative and droning, and on Clear Light, Mare is flying solo as he sculpts some of his most isolationist droneworks yet. Clear Light's fold-out booklet and case depict some sort of abstract light textures, which could be anything from distorted beams of sunlight viewed from the bottom of a pond, to nebulous bodies of light glowing in deep space, and these abstracted visuals are pretty effective at capturing the shapeless glacial ambience that the album navigates through. The disc is split into four long tracks, opening with the 39-minute epic "Banta", a monstrous gleaming driftscape of slowly blossoming washes of heavy distorted feedback and fuzzy amplifier buzz coursing out across the heavens, while mournful minor key synths and strains of wah-pedal whoosh streak through the layers of buzz and drone, ending in a flurry of melted melodies. A gorgeous and hypnotic buzzscape of bowed and sustained guitars and bass, quite Troum-esque, but with the addition of some heavier bottom-end and distortion. The following track "Phases" barely reaches the 5-minute mark, but shifts the album suddenly into a dark field of screaming acid-guitar leads peeled off over an oozing drone pulse and sheets of shimmering starlit keyboards. "Fireberry" is another dark cavescape of droning low end feedback and shimmering chords with a minimal percussive loop and chant-like tones floating through the blackness. "Sipping on the Fog" closes the album with a distant, grinding distorted sludge riff buried in synth drone and chiming guitar notes, part Sunn O))) dirge and part Kranky Records dreamfloat. A totally solid exercise in heavy, guitar-based ambience, the Swarmbots have certainly headed into a darker direction with this album, advisable to those of you into Troum and Maeror Tri's amp hymns, the evocative guitar rumble of early Earth, Aidan Baker's solo stuff, and subterranean cosmic music.