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Swans glide into Detroit | Interview
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the Daily | Ted WattsWant a great marketing gimmick? Look no further than to long term ambient rockers the Swans.With the release of its newest album, "Soundtracks for the Blind," the band (meaning the two primaries, Michael Gira and the mono-sobriqueted Jarboe) announced that it wasn't going to record any more studio albums and that its next tour would be the last. It's the old carnival trick: "Last chance to see!" Like all the ads have said, tonight is the Swans' final area appearance - with a special live line-up, including ex-Cop Shoot Cop drummer Phil Puleo to boot. Frontman Gira spoke about the winding down of his band in an interview with The Michigan Daily earlier this week. "I wanted to do one last thing," Gira said. "I did this album. I decided it would be the last one, and I wanted to do a final tour to put a lid on it. It's 15 years of largely frustrating and pointless work so I decided to finish with a bang or a whimper, depending on how you look at it. "I have a lot of ideas, music I want to do," Gira explained, "but I think the name Swans......
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The Final Sacrifice - M. Gira retires Swans
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Jordon N. Mamone | CMJ"$250.000!" spits Michael Gira. "Christ! You could almost have my penis for that!"Swans' mastermind and founder has made it known that he's seriously put that price on hacking off his right pinkie. "[I] could get a patron," he explains. "He or she could have it and put it in aspic and put it on their mantelpiece, and then I would live." With the same sort of severing conviction. Gira has also an decided to terminate Swans after 15 or uncompromising years. "I found that the name itself has become a sort of hindrance, because people have preconceptions about it and it's just hard to break free from," he says, smoking a cigar backstage at Irving Plaza, just before the band's last N.Y.C. show. "Also, just mentally, I think it's a nice way to trick myself into going into new terrain." Swans' career-long devotion to extremity is legendary. Over the course of ten studio albums and a slew of EPs, singles, live records and "official bootlegs," they've developed from a slow, rhythmically potent noise-rock band into a slow, rhythmically potent avant-rock singularity equally capable of lush, stunning power and dark, semi-acoustic dirges. "I always looked at music......
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Swans | Soundtracks for the Blind | Review
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The Equipment Authority | Kurt B. Reighleyan ambitious collage that folds found sounds, tape loops, and studio recordings into a dense aural melangeOften compared with Sonic Youth, Swans has consistently displayed greater stylistic diversity than its down-town N.Y.C. art-noise colleagues without deviating from frontman Michael Gira's singularly bleak vision. This, the band's last release (supposedly Swans is calling it quits), is no exception. It's an ambitious collage that folds found sounds, tape loops, and studio recordings into a dense aural melange. Soundtracks for the Blind eschews conventional verse/chorus/bridge structures, favoring experiments with timbre and juxtaposition instead. The 1-2-3 transition from the disorienting samples of "Her Mouth is Filled with Honey" into the churning rock repetitions of "Blood Section," followed by the twisted howl of "Hypogirl" (sung by longtime collaborator Jarboe), could prompt a case of whiplash. Testimonies from unspecified individuals, as in the unnerving "Minus Something," offset majestic instrumental interludes of cello, bells, guitar, and keyboards. Often the most captivating elements border on subliminal, such as the fax tones buried in "Red Velvet Corridor" or the organ accents of "I Love You This Much." The cumulative sensation of Soundtracks' disparate elements is akin to eavesdropping on dozens of psychotherapy sessions,......
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Swans | Soundtracks for the Blind | Review
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CMJ | Jon FineCMJ February 1997 critic pick for the monthSoundtracks for the Blind is the final studio album from SWANS, and though it's impossible to imagine a document that could provide a summing up to their 15 years recorded output, this two-hour-plus double CD (budget priced and beautifully packaged) covers enough ground to serve as an apt final testament. The cast of characters here includes old-school SWANS Norman Westberg and Al Kizys as well as Vudi late of American Music Club. Like recent SWANS shows, Soundtracks for the Blind's peaks approach a religious intensity. The orchestral sweep and lyrical bent of "Helpless Child" and "The Sound" (which cumulatively clock in at almost 30 minutes) best exemplify the approach, but, like few other multi-disc sets, the whole coheres better than its individual parts. Strewn throughout the album are lengthy instrumental passages, sundry soundscapes and drone pieces, some of which bubble under recorded monologues—children's chants, the ruminations of an old man losing his sight—in a cliched-sounding combination that works much better than you'd expect. A tour will follow in early 1997, and it's hard to imagine anyone interested in the more adventurous aspects and history of the independent rock scene not......
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Swans | Soundtracks for the Blind | Review
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Magnet #27 | Laura DeMarcoa landscape fraught with intensity and experimentationBorn in the New York underground noise scene 15 years ago, Swans have turned out some of the most consistently dark, eerie and unconventionally passionate (not to mention slowest) music around. Soundtracks For The Blind, the final Swans record, is no exception. Ranging from epic highs to the darkest lows, this double album is a disturbing journey through a landscape fraught with intensity and experimentation. Beginning with a barely audible but immensely nuanced melody, the record grows from delicate noise to pure noise to the techno "Volcano"; this marks an unusual foray into disco for the group, although Jarboe's wispy vocals seem perfectly suited to the style. Soundtracks continue to change, from the jangly pop of "Blood Section" and the western rock of "Hypogirl," to the chaotic catharsis of "YRP" and "Surrogate Drone." As unconventional as ever, Soundtracks For The Blind is Swans most finely realized, daring use of sound yet. An uncompromising swan song....