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Angels of Light | Everything is Good Here | Review
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village voice | Sasha Frere-Joneswonderfully unpredictable...In the early '80s, he started the ultimate all-or-nothing band, Swans, who actually made good on downtown's fascination with terror and power. The standard Swans approach was two basses, an unidentified mass of guitar, and Gira's baritone howl all laying into a drastically slow riff for what felt like an hour. No fun, my babe, no fun, but also kind of beautiful. The excess might suggest a romantic, but Gira's always been a puritan. His early lyrics combined the disembodied pronouns of Jenny Holzer's slogans with critical flags (rape, flesh, power, slaves, cops). Repeat it like liturgy and the result is performance-art rock that industrial goths watered down for big bux throughout the '90s: "Unconscious repression degrades the real thing/You can't kill a criminal need/When you're polluted with fear you need comfort/You can't kill what you don't see." My brother went to New York and all he got was this lousy art-rock record! Everyone else sounded tentative next to the Swans, even if you wanted nothing to do with them. Swans' ability to return every measure like an ox as strong as the ox they had been five minutes before was no joke. That claustrophobic......
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Everything is Good Here/Please Come Home
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Fake Jazz Magazine | by david christensenRemarkable, striking, frightening, and beautifulThis is the first Angels of Light album I have heard, so I have no context in which to place it in terms of releases under that moniker. However, because Angels of Light is essentially Michael Gira, formerly of the Swans, I will proceed from that context. I have never liked the Swans. When they were heavy, they were unbelievably heavy. But there was no fun, no swing, no wildness, no abandon. It was all calculated portentousness and ART. In short, boring, lifeless and antithetical to rock and roll. When they stopped being heavy, that just left the other. Angels of Light is far beyond the Swans in terms of quality. A number of the songs are remarkable, striking, frightening, and beautiful. "All Souls' Rising" charges forward along a mean riff, propelled by a bizarrely martial beat, chanting, and dissonant organs. Immediately following is "Kosinski," with its delicate melody, sweet arpeggios, and layers of warm ambiance. At the other end of the spectrum is "Rose of Los Angeles," where multiple tracks of intense vocals and crazy flutes create a rising spiral of madness. At the apex is "Sunset Park," which......
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Michael Gira | Biography
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Handbook Magazine | R.W. HesslerWHAT WILL COME: CATCHING UP WITH MICHAEL GIRA THE ARTICLE BELOW WAS WRITTEN BY RW HESSLER AND IT APPEARS COURTESY OF HANDBOOK MAGAZINE (SF). IT SERVES HERE AS AN ALL-AROUND OVERVIEW AND BIO OF MICHAEL GIRA. October, 2002--Michael Gira performs live at San Francisco's Noe Valley Ministry, an intimate stage that is used on Sundays for the purpose of Christian Fellowship, but has been shared by thousands of national/international music and performance acts, secular and otherwise, in the organization's grass roots effort to invite and embrace the diversity of their immediate community. The stage has exceptionally warm and inviting acoustics, the perfect setting for a solo Gira and his acoustic guitar; his presence and semi-formal dress is reminiscent of a backwoods minister, his very countenance and smoldering eyes suggesting that he has walked into the very mouth of Hell and has lived to tell the story... Gira paces the stage like a prisoner, carefully measuring the dimensions of his cell; he personally oversees the few, simple technical specifications his performance requires after opening band Vetiver (featuring the talents of rising Young God Records artist Devandra Banhart, whose first recording OH ME OH MY... is making quite......
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Devendra Banhart | Oh Me Oh My | Review
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Chicago Maroon | Alex MahlerFolk music for the hyperactive People are talking about Devendra Banhart, and not without reason. At the age of 22 he's already appeared in Rolling Stone in his underwear. You might be thinking that a number of people have accomplished this, but perhaps only in this case is such an achievement due to natural musical talent rather than some plastic good looks. Over the span of a couple months, Banhart's debut album, Oh Me Oh My... has created a storm of critical attention proclaiming him a prodigy who is creating some of the freshest and most distinct new music. Love it or hate it, Banhart's music is unique. He combines fingerpicking acoustic guitar with crooning falsetto vocals and idiosyncratic, absurd lyrics. Either it sounds sublime and strikes a very special chord with you, or it's excruciating to listen to. The album is full of overdubs and Banhart's voice sings over itself repeatedly with a haunting, unworldly quality. But this is no slick achievement of studio engineering. To describe Banhart's music as low-fi is an understatement, as the crackles, pops, and hisses indeed sound as if they were recorded on an answering machine, as he claims. The......
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Devendra Banhart at Tonic, NYC
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‘Sup | by Catherine Despontlive InterviewI remember the first time I heard Devendra Banhart. It was one month to the day before this interview, January 16, sometime before 11AM, as I arrived at the ‘Sup office. Marisa had just gotten the album from Young God Records and was giving it a listen. It took me less than half a song to be swept away by it, because enjoying Devendra’s music is like reading a great book: It can carry you off and set you down in a different universe, but you need to be a reader. His music isn’t esoteric, but it is mysterious and requires that you be willing to follow his lead. Although it engulfed me immediately, I could also see why someone might not be taken up by it. The album, Oh Me Oh My the Way the Day Goes By the Sun is Setting Dogs are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit, is an eccentric collection of hand clapping, guitar picking, whistles, and the sweetest singing followed by occasional shouts. The songs, conceived as demos, were recorded on warbling four-tracks and many of them die within 30 seconds. They could be compared to folk music the......