PRESS
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Interview with Michael Gira of Swans
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last sigh press | Kim Alexander and Michael Lundconducted at the Double Door, Chicago IllinoisWe wandered into the bar early and cold from the brisk winter air to find Gira, which did take some doing in the catacomb like basement of the club. After checking out a number of rooms in the place, we heard voices coming from down the end of a hallway. Slowly we were guided by the deep droning of a male voices, only to peek around an open door to see Michael Gira in the company of two other journalists, peppering him with questions. Gira was sitting on an old 50s style couch, with a crumpled 50s style lamp on a little end table next to him. He wore a big Stetson style felt cowboy hat, and as we entered the room quietly, the brim of his hat lifted, his head turned towards us, and feeling his eyes upon us, the cigar in his hand touched his lips. This was the last tour for Swans, and quite frankly, we were pretty happy to have a chat with him. The rest is history... -- Michael C. Lund. --- Michael Gira : Is this going to be downloaded?......
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Swans | Soundtracks for the Blind | Review
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METROLAND, Albany, NY | J. Eric Smitha whole that transcends its parts by devouring and eradicating themSoundtracks for the Blind is a two-disc set featuring found sounds, live tracks, tape loops, hand-held cassette recordings and multi-track studio works by various Swans incarnations—all digitally manipulated, molested, collaged and compiled into a whole that transcends its parts by devouring and eradicating them. Swans mainstays Michael Gira and Jarboe have announced that this will be Swans' final studio album, and that after a farewell tour this spring, the 15-year old band will be replaced by two new projects: The Body Lovers (specializing in lengthy shifting, mutating, mangled, musical and non-musical sound passages) and the Pleasure Seekers (offering long narrative songs in a primarily acoustic format). There's a rub that comes from knowing Gira and Jarboe's future plans: Soundtracks for the Blind is a powerful record filled with lengthy slow-burners, acoustic passages and molested soundscapes—which of course makes it seem more like the first Pleasure Seekers or Body Lovers album than like the last Swans record. This feeling of not-Swans and nextness is exacerbated by the fact that Gira and Jarboe are the only two performers on Soundtracks without the word "guest" appended to......
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Swans | Soundtracks for the Blind | Review
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METROLAND, Albany, NY | J. Eric Smitha whole that transcends its parts by devouring and eradicating themSoundtracks for the Blind is a two-disc set featuring found sounds, live tracks, tape loops, hand-held cassette recordings and multi-track studio works by various Swans incarnations—all digitally manipulated, molested, collaged and compiled into a whole that transcends its parts by devouring and eradicating them. Swans mainstays Michael Gira and Jarboe have announced that this will be Swans' final studio album, and that after a farewell tour this spring, the 15-year old band will be replaced by two new projects: The Body Lovers (specializing in lengthy shifting, mutating, mangled, musical and non-musical sound passages) and the Pleasure Seekers (offering long narrative songs in a primarily acoustic format). There's a rub that comes from knowing Gira and Jarboe's future plans: Soundtracks for the Blind is a powerful record filled with lengthy slow-burners, acoustic passages and molested soundscapes—which of course makes it seem more like the first Pleasure Seekers or Body Lovers album than like the last Swans record. This feeling of not-Swans and nextness is exacerbated by the fact that Gira and Jarboe are the only two performers on Soundtracks without the word "guest" appended to......
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Swans | Soundtracks for the Blind | Review
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Sound Views Subterranean Music & Culture | Chesley H.it's something of a masterpieceThematic and nonbattering yet still penetratingly eerie sound, from these veteran noise minstrels. It's a two CD set, released on the eve of their supposedly final tour, and yes, it's something of a masterpiece. Repeating melodies, twisted through tangles of effects and grandiose drama, weave a creepy epic that follows through from beginning to end, occasionally with vocals, often without. A few tracks feature samples of a phlegmy voiced man talking about some order of sordid exploit, while others about illness and loss of vision. I'm not sure to what end these literal segments means, but regardless, the whole still encompasses a relentless ominous sense. Track number seven on the first disc comes in the form of an idiosyncratic dance number—indicting a certain overly exposed, insatiable media beastess. Curiously, each word of the refrain in that song ultimately contorts into the word "whore." Considering that it comes from Jarboe, the velocity of many years experience inside the dirty machinations of rotten rock, adds pressure to the words' impact. As a whole, this record is a testament to time and toil that interlaces aesthetic and substance together in one......
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Swans | Soundtracks for the Blind | Review
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Lumpe Housea disturbing zenith of every good and bad idea the Swans have embraced throughout their long careerAt least 15 torturous years of experience and idea have been distilled into a 2 CD set heavy with delicate melodies and apology, creating a disturbing zenith of every good and bad idea the Swans have embraced throughout their long No New York career. Pieces of conversation, crude and also plaintive vocals by Jarboe, songs more appropriate for World of Skin albums, Gira's poetry, soft instrumental interludes, struggling parts of curiosities culminate in an uncomfortably dramatic display of anguish and relief, a gutted and forsaken attempt at forcing the final fingers down the throats of the Swans as a collective band forever. From this point on it's a long look backwards, which Atavistic is aiding by reissuing a vast back catalog of material, and helping make this legendary band available post mortem. This is one of the most unpleasant yet cathartic and esoteric collections of Swans songs, a final affirmation of the horrors of perpetual internal breakdown coupled with a nihilistic public cry for attention by a band so seeped in a perpetual cycle of sin and salvation it can no longer hold......