PRESS
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Charlemagne Palestine | Interview
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Hungry Host | Marcus BoonSearching for the Golden SoundI spoke to Charlemagne Palestine by telephone, he in Belgium, in New York in the summer of 2001, after his return from a trip to Iceland. Palestine, as he himself says, met Pandit Pran Nath outside of the circle of musicians and composers associated with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, although his work is animated by a similar interest in minimalist strategies for composition and improvisation, and a concern with the transcendental qualities of sound. If you don't know Palestine's work, his interview with Brian Duguid should set you straight. For myself, I've never witnessed any of Palestine's legendary live performances, but I love the CDs of Strumming Music, Schlingen Blangen and Karenina, each of which overflows with euphoric intensity. In conversation, Palestine's voice has an extraordinary musical quality, full of spaces, half finished phrases that convey his meaning musically and poetically, always feeling their way beyond the words. M: How did you first meet Pran Nath? CP: It was at the end of the sixties ... I was living on the upper west side of Manhattan in a neighborhood that was known for jazz musicians. A neighbor of mine told......
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M. Gira | Live at the Derby | Review
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L.A. Weekly | Jay Babcockalone onstage with acoustic guitar and his many demons "Is it going to be like this all night?" someone asked me at the Derby's bar, three songs into an uneven, morose set by W.A.C.O., which followed an uneven, morose set of murder ballads and sea chanteys by Dame Darcy. I replied, "It's only gonna get worse -- or, I guess, better." Realizing that she and her pals were here looking for an evening of Johnny Red Hot and His Rootin' Tootin' Snazzy Dressers or whatever swing-type action used to be Friday-night fare at the Derby, I told her, "It's not gonna be a dance party here tonight." And it wasn't. It was Michael Gira, founder of '80s/'90s power-rock gods Swans, alone onstage with acoustic guitar and his many demons, singing to an audience seated on the Derby's dance floor and standing 'round the bar, straining necks to get a view of the man who almost single-handedly birthed, for better or worse, the industrial-rock genre. But there weren't really demons up there with Gira. When you see him play -- working himself into a red face, howling, playing repetitive guitar parts so ferociously that his fingers' calluses......
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M. Gira | Live at the Derby | Review
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L.A. Weekly | Jay Babcockalone onstage with acoustic guitar and his many demons "Is it going to be like this all night?" someone asked me at the Derby's bar, three songs into an uneven, morose set by W.A.C.O., which followed an uneven, morose set of murder ballads and sea chanteys by Dame Darcy. I replied, "It's only gonna get worse -- or, I guess, better." Realizing that she and her pals were here looking for an evening of Johnny Red Hot and His Rootin' Tootin' Snazzy Dressers or whatever swing-type action used to be Friday-night fare at the Derby, I told her, "It's not gonna be a dance party here tonight." And it wasn't. It was Michael Gira, founder of '80s/'90s power-rock gods Swans, alone onstage with acoustic guitar and his many demons, singing to an audience seated on the Derby's dance floor and standing 'round the bar, straining necks to get a view of the man who almost single-handedly birthed, for better or worse, the industrial-rock genre. But there weren't really demons up there with Gira. When you see him play -- working himself into a red face, howling, playing repetitive guitar parts so ferociously that his fingers' calluses......
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Angels of Light | We Were Alive ! | Review
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dustedmagazine.com | Nathan HoganVery AliveWith Murray Street sweeping away the summer¹s competition and sweeping up the critical accolades, maybe it¹s a good time to check in with Michael Gira. I mean, back in the early 1980s when SY was "just" a NYC noise/art-rock band, Gira¹s Swans were "just" that as well. The two shared plenty of stages, and it was easy to make comparisons between the former¹s discordant, aggressive swagger and the latter¹s bombastic, ear-bleeding shudder. Since that time, as so many publications large and small have tirelessly reiterated, Sonic Youth has pursued a quest to reconcile their avant-garde roots with more populist aims and structures. The people who like Murray Street, which is just about everyone who's heard it, hail it as a new benchmark in the band¹s quest to successfully marry the vanguard to the mainstream and simultaneously transcend both. Yes, Murray Street is as good a record as any in recent memory to have the force of the major label machine behind it, and it¹s exciting to watch  as it was with Washing Machine, as it must have been with Daydream Nation - the sheer variety of people who are eager to put themselves behind such......
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Avant lo-fi masterpiece....
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www.stylusmagazine.com | by Ed HowardWhen bedroom recording coincides with true geniusDevendra Banhart’s music, like so much that’s good in this world, is deceptively simple. One guy, an acoustic guitar, and a home recording studio rarely add up to rock bombast, and frequently can be a formula for masturbatory venting, but every so often someone gets it right, and the result is electrifying. Syd Barrett, on his post-Floyd solo albums, achieved just that balance of off-kilter genius and raw experimentation necessary to reach lo-fi nirvana, and Banhart’s self-assured, train-off-the-tracks debut comes close to matching Barrett’s effectiveness. Of course, unlike good old Syd, Banhart is probably not a schizophrenic acid casualty, and he definitely doesn’t have David Gilmour behind the mixing boards desperately trying to neaten things up. Banhart’s unadorned, unpretentious songs also verge much closer to folk than Barrett ever did. Like Dylan in his early Guthrie admiration phase, Banhart’s melodies capture the primitive simplicity (if not the actual sound) of back-country porch blues. Songs like “The Charles C. Leary†evoke the storytelling tradition in folk history, but without actually telling a coherent narrative. Again, like Barrett and Dylan, Banhart’s lyrics focus on images and poetic phrases, not tangibles, and his......