PRESS
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LA Music Blog show preview
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SHOW PREVIEW: SWANS @ THE FONDA THEATRE Probably the last time you’ll see them this way…August 29th, 2016 David Fisch You can say you’ve been to the Eight Wonders of the World. You can say you’ve gone skydiving. You can say you’ve taken a SpaceX flight to the outer reaches of the atmosphere. Can you really say you’ve experienced a Swans show, though? Okay, so all of the thrilling things above are pretty cool, but there’s nothing like a Swans concertexperience. The incredibly experimental rock group headed by the one-and-only Michael Gira will be performing this Friday, September 2nd, at the always-excellent Fonda Theatre right here in Hollywood, and while tickets are currently available for this all-ages event, I bet they won’t be for longIf you’ve seen Swans in any formation over the course of their thirty-year history, then you know you really have no idea what you’re in for at the show, and that’s one of the most refreshing and rare feelings in this day and age. Only in the last decade has Swans regrouped into a new and synergistic band, producing four records that ultimately melt into each other over the course of about nine hours, and with......
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Digital In Berlin Recomended
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Swans + Anna von Hausswolff at Huxleys Neue Welt / Tuesday, 18.10.2016 By Ani Samperi · On 29. August 2016As he who owns the voice of God, we let Michael Gira introduce Swans himself: „I started Swans in 1982 in NYC. At the time, I had no musical skills whatsoever, just instinct and a need to make something happen. The music changed constantly over the years, and I’m gratified it reached, and continues to reach, a fair number of people. After 15 years, I decided to end Swans, as the name had become a burden and the associations no longer fit with what I wanted to do into the future.“ Fast-forward 13 years, after pursuing Angels of Light and recording and producing a diverse roster of artists for his Young God label, Michael Gira decided to reconvene his legendary group Swans: „After 5 Angels Of Light albums, I needed a way to move FORWARD, in a new direction, and it just so happens that revivifying the idea of Swans is allowing me to do that.” There are signs that Gira himself has mellowed out over the years, although this shining veneer may simply be a sign that he’s learned to......
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Spectrum Culture Interview
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Interview: Michael Gira of Swans DAVID HARRIS AUGUST 30, 2016 “Certainly, we are not Kanye West.”It was a bleary morning when Michael Gira called me via Skype from his New Mexico home. Twenty-plus years my senior, the Swans front man sounded wide awake and alert for such an early hour, ready to discuss The Glowing Man, the new double-album that will likely be his last with this iteration of the band. Although Gira is one of the most intense musicians making music today, he was amiable and good-natured. During a swift 20 minutes we talked about the idea of darkness, Spanish art and losing oneself in performance. I am proud to present the Spectrum Culture interview with Michael Gira. In the liner notes to The Seer, you wrote a special note asking fans to not upload the music to the internet. I am curious how much the internet has actually contributed to the resurgent popularity of Swans. It’s a double-edged sword. It has been a tremendous help in the sense that its tendrils reach everywhere. I don’t know why, but the music has reached a lot of people, particularly young people, to the extent that a lot of our live......
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New Yorker Bowery Preview
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Night Life SWANSJuly 29 2016 In 2010, after a thirteen-year hiatus, the restless musical provocateur Michael Gira reformed this iconic No Wave-era group. Consciously avoiding nostalgia, the band began an exhilarating second life, as vital and occasionally terrifying as its first incarnation, when it was the confrontational enfant terrible of early-eighties downtown New York. The reformed lineup includes many former associates, among them Gira’s visionary alter ego, the guitarist Norman Westberg. Last month, the band released a new double album, “The Glowing Man,” which Gira has said will be the last studio record of this incarnation. (The group will disband after a lengthy worldwide tour.) Like its three recent predecessors, “The Glowing Man” relies heavily on repetition, ritualistic rhythm, and ecstatic, violent climaxes. But it also features many quiet, ruminative passages and a more varied sonic tableau, highlighted by a contribution from the experimental cellist Okkyung Lee and by the hundred different instruments played by the group’s periodic special guest, Bill Rieflin. With Okkyung Lee opening solo. Bowery Ballroom6 Delancey St.New York, NY 10002http://boweryballroom.com212-533-2111...
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Dangerous Minds Interview / Live Video Premere
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NEVER BEFORE SEEN FOOTAGE OF SWANS IN CONCERT; A DM EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE In its nearly 35-year history, the utterly singular band Swans has elevated American underground music to high art, appealing to fans of goth, no-wave, industrial, experimental noise, and doom metal without ever actually expressing or even properly fitting in to any of those genres. By the late ‘80s, the band’s very name became a badge for a musical chimera of brutality and grandeur that nobody else has ever quite matched, though some black metal bands like Ulver and post-metal bands like Isis have veered admirably close. The first incarnation of the band reached its apotheosis with the utterly magnificent 1987 album Children of God (though this writer also favors the dizzyingly experimentalGreed/Holy Money era of the band), on which the band’s singer, leader, and lone constant member Michael Gira cut his trademark tales of self-abasement and profound suffering with heavy doses of religious imagery. It was fucking jarring at the time—when the band that became notorious for songs like “Money is Flesh” and “Raping a Slave” made a masterpiece double LP on the opening song of which its singer bellowed PRAISE THE LORD! PRAISE GOD!, that shit turned......