PRESS » SWANS
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'To Be Kind' Review | Uncut 8/10
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Another set of pulverising epics from Michael Gira... In 2006, when asked about the possibility of a Swans reunion, Michael Gira was unequivocal. “Absolutely not, never,” he announced. “Dead and gone. I have more interesting things to do.” It certainly looked that way. Since Swans’ dissolution in 1997, Gira had found new, rather hippyish kin in the shape of Akron/Family and Devendra Banhart, whose early albums he released on his label Young God, and was himself making new and worthwhile music with Angels Of Light, a project rooted in a more narrative, acoustic folk idiom. This was all a long way from early ‘80s Swans albums like Cop and Greed, grinding and assaultive noise symphonies forged in the white heat of New York’s no-wave scene. But for Gira, there was something beautiful to Swans. While writing for a new Angels Of Light album, Gira noted a recurring theme, of “the narrators' desire to dissolve, or be subsumed – to completely disappear into something greater than themselves.” In the end, they didn’t function as Angels Of Light songs, but they were something – and with that, Swans’ 2010 comeback, My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky. When discussing Swans, Gira......
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Being And Nothingness: The Meditations Of Michael Gira | Clash Music
() - Michael Gira, SWANS
From the corrosive angular aggression of 1983’s ‘Filth’ and the following year’s ‘Cop’ LPs, through their ‘gentler’ but still uncompromising middle period,Swans have been intermittently howling into the void for over 30 years. Resurrected in spectacular fashion in 2010, after a 13-year hiatus, the experimental avant-garde noise merchants have since released three albums to considerable critical acclaim. Discussing their latest album ‘To Be Kind’, the art of collaboration and live performance, frontman Michael Gira shares his muscular meditations and ministrations with Clash. Swans’ music is about immediacy, capturing the ‘moment’. Are the records simply consolidating what you’re creating in a live environment? There’s a couple of different ways of describing the experience of Swans. One is the live experience, of course, which is utterly immediate, and it’s always a challenge to keep it so. We have structures that we work with, songs in some cases, but you always want keep it alive and for that reason over the last couple of years we’ve decided just to let the songs be malleable and let them change into something if they decide that they want to [do so] of their own accord. And the performance for us is hopefully an all-consuming experience. If it’s working, it’s......
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This Is My Sermon: M Gira Of Swans Speaks To John Doran | The Quietus
() - Michael Gira, SWANS
Ahead of the release of magnificent new Swans album To Be Kind, Michael Gira speaks to John Doran about that LP's ferocious grooves, his role as band leader, Haitian history, the early days of the group, and his terror at the ever-increasing commercialisation of our society. Photography by Jennifer Church, Sebastien Sighell and Matias Coral I read something very smart about Swans that was posted on the music discussion board ILM about twelve years ago. A poster made a comparison which was so unusual it threw some fresh light on the subject at hand (often the best kind of comparisons to make). After saying Michael Gira's rock group were philosophically similar to the hip hop duo Clipse, the person known as EC said: "Both Clipse and Swans find social reality at the intersection of sex, money, and power. They view everything else as pretty fluff, designed to obscure the harsh truth. The difference is, Gira and co. sound traumatised by this discovery, whereas Malice and Pusha T sound like they're doing a gleeful dance." I mention this comparison to an unfailingly polite, dapper and healthy-looking Gira at Mute's in-house studio in West London. Swans are releasing their thirteenth......
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This Is Sound Check | Swans 'To Be Kind' 4.3/5 Stars
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In 2010 SWANS awoke from their 14 year chrysalis, releasing a magnificently twisted record that was both eerily beautiful and filled with malevolent noise. My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky revealed that Swans had transformed from the Industrial brutes of Filth into a group of musicians psychedelically hell-bent on achieving the infinite. 2012’s The Seer was even grander, sprawling and huge in scope – it was hard to believe that anything Gira & co. could summon up afterwards would ever top it… but then again, Swans were never a band to shy away from a challenge. Swans’ thirteenth studio album is a sprawling ear-fuck of a record, beautifully ugly and delicately piercing. A near contradiction of an album if it weren’t for the fact that the two opposite ends of the spectrum blend together so effortlessly. ‘Just A Little Boy’ opens with an intro that harks back to the muddy, ambient textures of Soundtracks for the Blind. That is until Gira begins squealing of childhood humiliation – “I’m just a little boy” – all the while shards of canned laughter echo disembodied in the mix, sounding if David Lynch directed a sitcom. As exemplified by artwork featuring Bob Biggs’ crying and disembodied baby heads,......
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Metal Hammer Names 'To Be Kind' Album of the Month
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