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'To Be Kind' Review | Dots and Dashes
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As was with The Seer now almost two years ago, there is much to admire in To Be Kind, not least its artwork. And Michael Gira’s Swans certainly aren’t without an army of admirers themselves, To Be Kind featuring cameos from the illustrious likes of St. Vincent and John Congleton, who also recorded this sprawling, two-hour opus (and did so, in part, at his Dallas studio). In addition, Swans have amassed a massive 121,141 Facebook likes at the time of our going to press (publish) – no mean feat for a band whose fan base have nigh on no interest, one suspects, in social media channels. But if Gira et al. seem irreconcilable with this particular URL, then IRL, they’ve never quite seemed to belong, either. In short, they appear to be of a realm alien to this, and for that alone, they’re indubitably due admiration anew. However, if their live performances have become more and more like punitive rituals over the years, eardrums suffering in the name of ungodly dissonance, then in The Seer, and To Be Kind subsequently, they’ve realised a lucidity to belie, but never belittle, the brutish force for which they’re now renowned. And this can be heard in the almost overwhelmingly compelling Screen Shot – eight pulsating minutes, propelled by......
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'To Be Kind' Review | The Quietus
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Swans - TO BE KIND "I love you!" reads Michael Gira's address to his listeners, signing off the note announcing the release of Swans' thirteenth studio album. The open warmth of the sentiment might contrast with their agonisingly intense early music, but it captures the most striking aspect of this latest phase of his group's life cycle - its generosity. After a few seconds of near-silence - save filigree-fine electronic tones lingering in the air, eddying gracefully upward like sunlit dust motes caught in a draft - To Be Kind's centrepiece 'Bring The Sun/Toussaint L'Ouverture' explodes to life with a series of cosmic shockwaves, each struck chord's impact greater than the last, causing the atmosphere to tremble around you. Even though it's expected, the shock is exquisitely tactile, enough to suck the air out of your lungs. Percussion lances through your body cavity like the shudder from a skipped heartbeat, guitar textures ripple like fingers dragged hard across the skin, the music's weight presses firmly yet gently against your chest and back. Then, surging in almost immediately afterwards, a mass release of pleasure hormones triggers off sheer, clear-minded exhilaration. These emotions will likely be familiar to anyone who's seen the reincarnated Swans......
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NME Recommends | 'To Be Kind' Review 9/10
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Swans - 'To Be Kind' A disturbing, cacophonous onslaught from the veteran experimentalists In 2010, after a 13-year break, Michael Gira resurrected his experimental post-punk outfit Swans. Avant-garde to the extreme, Gira’s music is an all-encompassing experience that somehow affects your entire sensory system. You don’t just hear it or listen to it, but feel it. This latest record is no exception. Take, for example, the disturbing apocalyptic onslaught of fourth track ‘Bring The Sun/Toussaint L’Ouverture’ – the song’s punishing, pulsating form and unsettling hypnotic chanting, not to mention the samples of distant screams and whinnying horses that appear towards the end, conjure up images of a stark, post-Armageddon landscape, strewn with corpses. At 34 minutes, it's comparable in length to some full albums, including The Strokes' 'Is This It', The Beatles' 'Revolver' and The Beach Boys' 'Pet Sounds'. All offer a more relaxing way to spend that amount of time, though it's a mere fleeting moment in Swans' sprawling world.Stretched across two discs, ‘To Be Kind’ lasts for two hours, its ten songs each mini-symphonies of discord and diseased unease. In addition to the above, four other tracks exceed ten minutes. The shortest, at just over five, is ‘Some Things We......
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Robert Barry Interview with Michael for the Basinski Series | The Quietus
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A Place To Dream: Arcadia, The Kitchen & The History Of NY Lofts With William Basinski's Arcadia Series opening this week in London, Robert Barry speaks with Basinski, Michael Gira and Rhys Chatham to trace the rich history of New York's artist-run loft spaces and the pioneering music they fostered. "Since the high renaissance, society has always found a place to go to dream." I'm speaking via Skype to Rhys Chatham, composer for 400 electric guitars and former curator to New York's legendary venue, The Kitchen. "Whether that was in Bohemia or one area or another area. For art to work," he says, "you need either patrons or government grants, you need press, and you needcheap rents." For Chatham and his contemporaries, those cheap rents could be found Downtown, in the southern end of Manhattan. A few decades later, when William Basinski was looking for a space to work, no struggling artist could afford to live in Manhattan, so he went to Brooklyn and opened his Arcadia in a former ironworks. It was "a beautiful, magical place," Basinski recalled wistfully in an interview last year for Tinymixtapes. Even the very name Arcadia evokes a utopian promise, an unspoilt idyll. In......
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'To Be Kind' Review | Uncut 8/10
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Another set of pulverising epics from Michael Gira... In 2006, when asked about the possibility of a Swans reunion, Michael Gira was unequivocal. “Absolutely not, never,” he announced. “Dead and gone. I have more interesting things to do.” It certainly looked that way. Since Swans’ dissolution in 1997, Gira had found new, rather hippyish kin in the shape of Akron/Family and Devendra Banhart, whose early albums he released on his label Young God, and was himself making new and worthwhile music with Angels Of Light, a project rooted in a more narrative, acoustic folk idiom. This was all a long way from early ‘80s Swans albums like Cop and Greed, grinding and assaultive noise symphonies forged in the white heat of New York’s no-wave scene. But for Gira, there was something beautiful to Swans. While writing for a new Angels Of Light album, Gira noted a recurring theme, of “the narrators' desire to dissolve, or be subsumed – to completely disappear into something greater than themselves.” In the end, they didn’t function as Angels Of Light songs, but they were something – and with that, Swans’ 2010 comeback, My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky. When discussing Swans, Gira......