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Swans Live at Cockpit | Leeds Music Scene
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It starts with the crashing of symbols before being joined by squealing pedal steel and distorted bass so loud you can feel your eyelids vibrating before finally gargantuan waves of doom-laden guitar join the fray. Things continue in this vein for the next ten minutes and in that time there is hardly a sound you would describe as music produced by the five faintly terrifying musicians (actually the bassist looks like your favourite hipster English teacher, which makes you wonder how he got mixed up in all this craziness) stalking the stage and yet there is something beguiling and hypnotic in the belligerence that is emanating from the stage.This then is the Swans live experience and it is all conducted by one Michael Gira, the uncompromising leader of the band for the past 35 years. For the most part his leadership consists mainly of instructing the band to play louder, which they do without question or hesitation no matter what their audiologists might have advised. A notoriously forbidding and prickly personality the singer has, before the first song has come to its shuddering conclusion, barked incomprehensible messages into the microphone, danced like someone enduring a voodoo exorcism and aimed a kick and......
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Live Review: Swans at The Cockpit, Leeds | Yorkshire Evening Post
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About an hour into tonight’s epic, positively punishing set, Swans drummer Phil Puleo launches into a solo. A spot of nimble wrist-work or technical showing-off, perhaps? Not quite: Puleo simply hammers a section of his kit with a vicious fury that suggests there’s serious beef between the musician and his instrument. This snapshot says a lot about Swans. The band built a reputation as the most confrontational band in existence during their late 80s/early to mid-90s peak. The New York outfit haven’t mellowed one bit since their recent reunion, which (very much against the unwritten rules of bands getting back together) has resulted in some of their very finest work, such as 2012’s monumental The Seer and brand new To Be Kind, the stretched-out, slowly igniting contents of which dominate the nostalgia-dodging setlist. Boss Swan Michael Gira isn’t quite as scary these days as his mean reputation from past decades suggests (there’s even a smile to the brave fans in the front). He’s a formidable presence nonetheless, gesticulating up and down like a particularly un-cute duckling trying to learn how to fly, staring out the capacity crowd, beating the living daylights out of his guitar or issuing what appear to be stern directives......
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Swans Live Review @ Trinity, Bristol | 365 Bristol
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As ever, one of many reasons to experience Swans live is M Gira himself. He progressed from gentle swaying to prowling about the stage to jumping, kicking and flailing his limbs around like a narcotic octopus. SWANS AT TRINITY IN BRISTOL Wednesday 28th May brought American experimental rock band, Swans, to Bristol in a characteristic furore of powerful noise. Support for the night came in the form of multidisciplinary Norwegian artist Jenny Hval. The stage set up was compromised of three musicians - a percussionist, a guitarist and Jenny herself on keys and vocals – this strange and ethereal band really found its niche audience, with most of the crowd exchanging appreciative nods between songs. Their sound was very interesting, a throbbing, pulsing rhythm with dainty yet powerful female vocals skating across the surface. Everything was endearing from the whispered ‘thankyou’s to the spontaneous mid-note hand tremors, definitely worth checking out for any fans of Swans or Grimes. The first five minutes of Swans’ set seemed to consist of purely feedback and dull noise, amped up to a dangerous level, the bass speakers looking frankly unstable as the vibrations bounced several pint glasses off the stage and onto the floor.......
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Swans Live Review @ Academy 2, Manchester | Silent Radio
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- ACADEMY 2, MANCHESTER - In a recent interview with The Quietus, Swans frontman Michael Gira confirmed an urban myth that his response to a sound engineer asking how the gig should sound was to punch him in the stomach and say “like that”. The engineer in question might feel fortunate to have only been struck once, as this evening’s 100 minute set offers a more violent assault than a single dig to the breadbox. Since reforming in 2010 Swans have gained mass critical acclaim for their marvellous and inimitable apocalyptic noise. This month saw the release of To Be Kind, the band’s thirteenth and best studio album. Such is the prolific writing form Gira finds himself in, they begin tonight with a brand new song not featured on the album. After a creeping and explorative start, ‘Frankie M’ gathers pace before thundering through your bones like an onrushing train. Twenty minutes later, Swans embark on the second song of the night. Unlike the opener, ‘A Little God In My Hands’ is familiar to fans and roars through the room causing staff to cower below the bar at the back of Academy 2. A slowed down ‘Oxygen’ is gloriously cinematic, suitable for......
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Swans @ Academy 2, Manchester | The Skinny
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Swans / Jenny Hval @ Academy 2, Manchester, 22 May LIVE REVIEW BY CHRIS OGDEN As two musicians with backgrounds in confrontational art, Michael Gira and Jenny Hval aren’t afraid to tackle the grubby desires of the body. Gira’s Swans are the epitome of brutal, beautiful power, their apocalyptic drones attempting to pound listeners into a state of ecstasy; Hval’s art is a more feminist one, subverting the male gaze by reclaiming her body as a conduit for expression. It makes for a visceral collaboration this evening, aiming for what Gira calls the “deep sex/death place” in our stomachs. “This body is not for vision!” Hval yelps in her familiarly titled opener The Seer, yodelling through swathes of dreamy synth. The studious fluidity of her identity is evident throughout as her voice stretches elastically from delicate cooing to provocative spoken word, her songs fretting about owning her face, her Norwegian-Australian voice and coffee. When Innocence is Kinky’s searing title track kicks in, and she shrieks about tearing her eyes out like Oedipus, watching Hval feels like being at a performance of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy or Beckett’s Not I. It’s loaded, unsettling, and vital. With Swans’ reputation for intentionally gruelling live sets, when Hval mentions that they are......