PRESS
Overall impression: good.
Mark Weddle
The Body Haters / The Body Lovers are the first post-SWANS releases from Michael Gira.
The Body Haters is a single track, predominantly instrumental accompaniment to last year's superb Body Lovers "Number One of Three". Whereas the Lovers disc was more varied in sound and mood, the Haters disc focuses solely on a shifting drone throughout the 34 minutes and 13 seconds (with the exception of some heavily processed, moaning vocals by Jarboe in the latter part). "34:13" was obviously created by feeding sounds into a Macintosh (as evidenced by the black & white front and back cover art of the slipcase) and processing them, a technique which Gira also used to great effect on the final SWANS cds. The drone is fairly minimal and changes every few minutes either via an effect, a new loop being added or an old one replaced. It's not nearly as harsh as I expected it to be ... the last few minutes of the disc are by far the most aggressive, the rest is relatively tame as far as drones go. Good stuff, but not nearly as orgasmic as the more varied and collaborative Body Lovers effort. I also prefer the drone pieces on the SWANS albums "Soundtracks for the Blind" and "Die Tür Ist Zu" over the Body Haters. Look for the next Gira project, The Angels of Light and the next Jarboe album later this summer …