PRESS
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Swans | Soundtracks for the Blind | Review
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Melody Maker | Jonathan Selzerlike fragments from a world whose foundations are in the last stages of erosionSo this is it, the last album proper by my favourite, most fatalistic band, a band who could give rise to the most transcendent of feelings only because they'd detail their own limits with such meticulous care, a band who sensed such overwhelming destiny they were stricken by it. The first time I played a Swans record, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Listening to them now, ravaged, wretched, as terminal a document for the millenium as you'll ever encounter, they sound as though they're beyond belief, as tragic as an unrequited martyr. "Soundtracks For The Blind" is what's left now that all Swans' endeavour has burnt itself out. It's composed from shreds—tape loops, "found" samples, recorded testimonies of spiritually lost mid-Westerners—isolated moments blended together, like fragments from a world whose foundations are in the last stages of erosion. When they do become galvanised, it's not through any will of their own, so much as from a final, dying vision—but it's a glorious and redemptive vision, succumbing to an overpowering feeling of loss. Michael Gira has never sounded quite as raw, as......
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Swans | Soundtracks for the Blind | Review
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Columbus Guardian | Curtis Schieberdefies the easy pitfalls of the genreIt's all pretty hopeless, according to many poets since Baudelaire. That guiding axiom has been a powerful force in rock for a couple of decades. The stance—after more than a century—is surrounded by traps. Pretense, obviousness, and petty fashion await all but the most creative purveyors of the doom doctrine. Swans' "Soundtracks for the Blind" defies the easy pitfalls of the genre, calling, instead, for the listener's trust. The group's rhetoric purposely separates the doubters from the believers. After 15 years of musical assault, Swans' music is hard to ignore, prime mover Michael Gira hard to doubt. Perhaps the music's credibility is boosted by the fact that this double CD is planned to be the group's last. The album's tone reflects that finality, in waves of quiet resignation punctuated by a few truly peaceful moments. "The Beautiful Days" presents a calming drone, an ambient soundscape reminiscent of Fripp and Eno's seminal "An Index of Metals." Though much of the rest of the album mesmerizes with its sonic constructions ("Blood Section" is clangy and conjures the late Beatles; "I Love You this Much" is as jolting as witnessing an auto accident),......
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Swans | Soundtracks for the Blind | Review
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Columbus Guardian | Curtis Schieberdefies the easy pitfalls of the genreIt's all pretty hopeless, according to many poets since Baudelaire. That guiding axiom has been a powerful force in rock for a couple of decades. The stance—after more than a century—is surrounded by traps. Pretense, obviousness, and petty fashion await all but the most creative purveyors of the doom doctrine. Swans' "Soundtracks for the Blind" defies the easy pitfalls of the genre, calling, instead, for the listener's trust. The group's rhetoric purposely separates the doubters from the believers. After 15 years of musical assault, Swans' music is hard to ignore, prime mover Michael Gira hard to doubt. Perhaps the music's credibility is boosted by the fact that this double CD is planned to be the group's last. The album's tone reflects that finality, in waves of quiet resignation punctuated by a few truly peaceful moments. "The Beautiful Days" presents a calming drone, an ambient soundscape reminiscent of Fripp and Eno's seminal "An Index of Metals." Though much of the rest of the album mesmerizes with its sonic constructions ("Blood Section" is clangy and conjures the late Beatles; "I Love You this Much" is as jolting as witnessing an auto accident),......
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Charlemagne Palestine
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Amanita Records | Brian Duguidapproaches a piano like a climber approaches a mountain He does not play the instrument so much as he lets it test him: he starts each performance like an ascent, knowing that somewhere ahead there are the limits of the piano, and also the limits of him. It is entirely possible that he will reach neither, or both - when I saw him play in 1998 he finished the piece exhausted and the piano finished the piece with two of its strings at the lower end broken from the relentless pounding waves of music Palestine had forced from it. We heard the strings go, a sudden cracking sound after maybe fifty minutes of the music building. I had been looking at Palestine at the keyboard, swaying back and forth, drumming his leg relentlessly against the piano's leg to try and fight off the pain in his arms and fingers. Had been looking at the light catching the glass of brandy next to him and the shadows on the ten or so soft animals clustered upon the piano and round the stool: his real audience, the rest of us watchers reduced to shades as the ritual progressed.......
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Charlemagne Palestine | Interview
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EST Magazine | Brian Duguidone of minimalist music's unjustly neglected figuresLike Phill Niblock, Tony Conrad, Philip Corner or Yoshi Wada, Charlemagne Palestine (born plain Charles Martin in New York to Russian Jewish parents in 1947) is one of minimalist music's unjustly neglected figures, known to the lucky cognoscenti but perhaps too austere to survive the commercial crossover of late 70s minimalist music. This year, Robi Droli have reissued Charlemagne Palestine's long out-of-print Strumming Music (originally on Shandar in 1974), while Dutch label Barooni have reissued his Four Manifestations On Six Elements (originally put out by the Sonnabend Gallery). Palestine's earliest musical memories are of singing in a synagogue choir, a sacred drone that resurfaces throughout his own music. By the early sixties, he played carillon (the church bells) at St Thomas Church, near the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and performed music for the carillon by John Cage and Oliver Messiaen. He says: "I lived near the bells, played them right next to my body. The sound became physical, visceral, each crack of the clapper was like a small earthquake". This later led to an interest in tubular bells. At one performance in New York in 1973, he......