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Vinyl District Glowing Man Review
Graded on a Curve: Swans, The Glowing Man BY JOSEPH NEFF | JUNE 21, 2016http://www.thevinyldistrict.com/storefront/2016/06/graded-on-a-curve-swans-the-glowing-man/ Swans is a formidable behemoth amongst bands. Swans is also the recording and performance entity of one Michael Gira, and with The Glowing Man he’s effectively closed the door on the latest incarnation of his group. Having recommenced activity back in 2010, the two prior Swans studio albums are sprawling examples of collective massiveness and this latest installment is no different; clocking in just shy of two hours, it’s a sustained and immense thrust of... Read more...
Spin Glowing Man Review
Review: Swans’ Actual Swan Song Is a Cloud of Unknowing on ‘The Glowing Man’ SPIN Rating: 8 of 10Release Date: June 17, 2016Label: Young God Zoe Camp http://www.spin.com/2016/06/review-swans-the-glowing-man/ It had to end eventually. Six years after Michael Gira resurrected his pivotal drone outfit Swans in 2010, the time has come to lay them to rest. Over the past three decades, the eldritch New York-based band — led by Gira, keyboardist/vocalist Jarboe, and guitar wizard Norman Westberg — have expanded the boundaries of what we call “heavy music,” slowly morphing from... Read more...
Pitchfork Glowing Man Review
Swans - The Glowing ManSwans close their current chapter on a subdued but powerful note.by Saby Reyes-Kulkarnihttp://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21994-the-glowing-man/Musical careers rarely end with clean resolutions, which makes sense given that bands usually don’t get to plan their own exits. And even when they do, farewell gestures tend to leave a lingering taste of anticlimax. The Glowing Man, the final album by the current lineup of Swans, marks an exception to this rule, much as Swans have broken pretty much all modern rock norms. From 1982 to 1997, and then again from 2010 until... Read more...
The Line of Best Fit Glowing Man Review
Swans take a bow on The Glowing ManBy Brian Coneyhttp://www.thelineofbestfit.com/reviews/albums/swans-the-glowing-man For all their masterfully foreboding, skull-rattling ire – not least on their last two studio albums in their current guise, the equally emphatic The Seer and To Be Kind – it’s safe to say Michael Gira’s Swans aren’t exactly widely famed for their darling expressions of affection and amour. Peer a little further behind the veil, however, and you’ll discover love – not hate nor rage nor misery – informing latter-day Swans’ orchestrated fury and seismic might. Equating the band’s... Read more...
mxdwn Glowing Man Review
Swans - The Glowing ManBY DREW PITThttp://music.mxdwn.com/2016/06/17/reviews/swans-the-glowing-man/Unrelenting, Violent, Calculated, and Revelatory Blood, gore, nails, bones, and shattered teeth. This is the dark and pungent world Swans has inhabited since forming as a project of Michael Gira in 1982. Since then, they have gone on to create some of the bleakest, most trying, and ultimately most compelling music to come from the experimental scene. Beginning as members of the No Wave scene out of New York, they quickly rose to prominence as a result of their unyielding brutality and ever shifting sonic pallet.... Read more...
Smells Like Infinite Sadness Glowing Man Review
Swans ‘The Glowing Man’ Review: Michael Gira concludes current Swans lineup with hypnotic results. ★★★★★ NYC’s noise rock icons Swans have had an impressive career trajectory this decade. For a band that started in the early 80’s, reforming in 2005 after a 15-year hiatus, they sound as hungry, raw and exploratory as ever. Following 2012’s brilliantly dark The Seer and 2014’s overwhelming opus To Be Kind, the group are now back with The Glowing Man (due June 17 on Young God Records) billed as the last album to feature its... Read more...
Freq Glowing Man REview
Swans – The Glowing Manhttp://freq.org.uk/reviews/swans-the-glowing-man/Sister track “The Cloud Of Unknowing” (named after a fourteenth century Christian text) pretty much cements Swans’ well-deserved reputation as the kaiju of rock (well, OK, that’s actually my definition, but it seems to match everyone else’, so I don’t think “reputation”’s too much of a stretch); it’s the sound of a beautiful and terrible creature being born and laying waste to your cities, to the point where you don’t know whether to call in the army or just fall on your knees and worship the... Read more...
Stack Glowing Man Review
Swans - The Glowing Manby Chris Murryhttp://stack.net.au/music/reviews/the-glowing-man-swans If Francis Bacon needed inspiration to enter even darker territory when putting oil to canvas, he’d have Swans at ear-bleeding levels.  This isn’t an album, it’s a séance, as you’ll no doubt experience in all 25 minutes of Cloud of Unknowing. The wolves of doom are breathing at your hind and you're engulfed in an erotically moreish, cinematic and intoxicating tunnel of desire. Then there’s the broken cabaret that is The World Looks Red/The World Looks Black, a leaning tower of blackened glass... Read more...
The Big Take Over Glowing Man Review
Swans - The Glowing Man (Young God) by Chuck Foster http://bigtakeover.com/recordings/swans-the-glowing-man-young-godIn 2010, Michael Gira resurrected Swans after fourteen years of inactivity with My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky, which blended the gospel overtones of 1987’s Children of God with his more recent work in Angels of Light. The Seerfollowed two years later, further bridging the gap between the two artistic statements while taking a noticeably harder edge that drew more from Swans, especially their White Light from the Mouth of Infinity/Love of Life period in... Read more...
Sound Lab Glowing Man Review
The Glowing ManSwans By Kevin Ortonhttp://soundblab.com/reviews/albums/9606-swans-the-glowing-man Once again Michael Gira and this latest incarnation of Swans have spawned a work of terrifying beauty with The Glowing Man. “Surrender” Gira bellows on the opening track, ‘Cloud of Forgetting’. Which is good advice when it comes to this stirring and intense album. After the ‘Cloud of Forgetting’ draws to a moody close with Gira growling, “children run” we’re soon caught up in the ‘Cloud of Unknowing’. Beginning with some unsettling atmospherics, ‘Unknowing’ is a restless, sometimes harrowing journey which at times, breaks into... Read more...

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