PRESS
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Brainwashed: Swans, "White Light from the Mouth of Infinity/Love of Life"
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Brainwashed: Swans, "White Light from the Mouth of Infinity/Love of Life" With both albums out of print for a number of years, Michael Gira has (somewhat surprisingly) not only saw fit to present these two in their original forms, but as a deluxe vinyl box set (or less deluxe CD), expanded with a disc of period-specific rarities and outtakes. What was originally a drastic departure from what everyone expected from Swans is now somewhat less so, and with almost an additional 25 years since White Light from the Mouth of Infinity, their place in Swans' impeccable catalog makes perfect sense. Even removed from that, however, they are an exceptionally strong pair of American folk influenced albums that have lost none of their force or impact to this day. Young God Records The second major phase of Swans' career (roughly from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s) has always been a contentious one, for artist and fan alike. Many decried the shift away from the violent, seething, belligerent sound that characterized seminal records such as Cop or Filth, into a more melodic one as an example of the now-novel concept of 'selling out." The move towards actual song writing and......
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The Guardian: Why Swans' White Light from the Mouth of Infinity/Love of Life is the one box set you should hear this week – video
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The Guardian: Why Swans' White Light from the Mouth of Infinity/Love of Life is the one box set you should hear this week ...
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Mojo Album of the Week: White Light . . ./Love Of Life
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Swans White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity/Love Of LifeMUTE | CD LP Michael Gira’s early-’90s magnum opus plus its baroque follow-up, collected together in a new box set edition. By ANDREW PERRY DECEMBER 4, 2015 AS THE 1980s receded, Michael Gira evolved Swans on from the proto-industrial kerrang of Time Is Money (Bastard), into the jaw-dropping semi-acoustica of major label debut The Burning World. The latter’s disastrous sales for MCA only deepened Gira’s antipathy to all things corporate, prompting, on ’91’s self-released White Light…, a song called Failure – as crushing a study in despondency as any Mississippi blues. Behind that trouser-soiling album title, however, there also lurked staggeringly beautiful (if mournfully delivered) songs like Love Will Save You and, from Gira’s then-partner Jarboe, When She Breathes. With no middle ground between terrifying bleak-fests and hymns of romantic salvation (ie. no boring tracks), this exquisitely orchestrated double-LP is Gira’s masterpiece. The following year’s Love Of Life upholds the biblically revelatory vibe, but, laced through with found voice recordings, lacks the sense of all-eclipsing sublimation. ...
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The Line Of Best Fit review
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Freaking folk out: Swans’ early 90s classics rediscovered Words: Tamlin Magee / 04 DECEMBER 2015, 13:19 GMT Swans have been a vital fixture in experimental music for over two decades - and now Mute is reissuing White Light from the Mouth of Infinity and Love of Life, made available on vinyl for the first time since their initial release. The band's seventh and eighth studio albums, out in 1991 and 1992, marked a shift from the pummelling severity of their earlier work and crystallised Swans' transition into mastering a different kind of drama and intensity. Most of Swans' output up to White Light laid out the unspeakable and the taboo with uncompromising brutality. Frontman Michael Gira bellowed about violence, cops, murder, flesh, force, control, humiliation and sadism. When singer-songwriter Jarboe first joined Swans for 1986's Greed, that ferocity slowly began to soften, incorporating more orchestral arrangements and songs that weren't all-out no wave assaults. The major label release of The Burning World in 1989 was the clearest attempt by Swans to move away from that model to date, but it's worth noting that Gira lost a portion of creative control over the production of that album - and the band was promptly dropped from Uni Records as......
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The Guardian: Enduring Love: why Swans are more vital now than ever
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http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/04/enduring-love-why-swans-are-more-vital-now-than-ever Young God records this week reissued two classic early-90s Swans albums as a vinyl box set. White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity and Love of Life have both been remastered and come in with an extra CD of outtakes, rarities and contemporaneous live recordings, as well as two “rare posters”. “So what?” I hear a lot of people mutter. And, to be fair, Cult Band From Yesteryear Who Split Then Reformed Gets Reissue Treatment By Music Industry Circling The Drain And Desperate For One Last Pay Cheque is hardly hold-the-front-page news. It seems that in 2015 every single underground band you dimly remember/recall reading about from the 70s, 80s and 90s (as well as plenty you’ve never even heard of) have recently reformed and had their entire back catalogues remastered and reissued on the kind of weighty, expensive 180g vinyl you could beat a woolly mammoth to death with. And sadly in most cases, these reissue programmes only serve to confirm that the truly creative part of a once left-field band’s life is now over by means of contrast with what they are currently up to; which is often nostalgia-focussed live shows and the release of underwhelming and......