PRESS
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Q&A with M.Gira from Uncut Magazine
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HOW GIRA GOT HIS GROOVE BACK: THE SWANS FRONTMAN ON KLIMT, KUTI AND TANTRIC SEX - Fact Magazine Feature
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HOW GIRA GOT HIS GROOVE BACK: THE SWANS FRONTMAN ON KLIMT, KUTI AND TANTRIC SEX It doesn’t feel like an exaggeration to say that, at its peak, ‘Bring The Sun / Toussaint L’Ouverture’ – the opus at the centre of Swans’ latest album To Be Kind - sounds like the heavens being ripped open. Then again, the aim of Swans’ music has never been mere sonic affect, but shared sublime experience. Steering the band towards that common goal is the visionary Michael Gira. On stage, he contorts and flails, guiding the band like a possessed conductor, and it’s easy to imagine him acting similarly in the studio, sculpting chaos into complex narratives. Indeed, when discussing how many of the songs on To Be Kind were written during an intensive touring period, Gira explains, “The music developed organically, with me generally acting as the director and trying to get the music to take on a life of its own.” That life of its own, the beating heart that makes To Be Kind so powerful, like The Seer in 2012 and My Father Will Guide Me Up By A Rope To The Sky in 2010, is tricky to pin down. Rather than the sheer brute force of earlier Swans albums such as Young God, dialectical oppositions dominate To Be......
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This Is Fake DIY - To Be Kind review
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Swans expand North American tour, share new live video (Consequence of Sound)
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http://consequenceofsound.net/2014/04/swans-expand-north-american-tour-share-new-live-video/ Swans have extended their upcoming world tour with a new string of U.S. dates for this fall. The iconic post-rockers will trek down the West Coast in early September, starting in Seattle on the 2nd and ending in Hollywood on the 11th. They already have a hefty number of stops mapped out from May to July, and you can find their entire docket ahead. The band’s year-long tour comes in support of their forthcoming recordTo Be Kind, due out May 13th via Young Gods/Mute Records. Featuring the guest talents of St. Vincent’s Annie Clark, Cold Specks, Little Annie, and Bill Rieflin, the album was partially funded by a live album culled from Swans’ 2012-2013 world tour. It’s fitting, then, that they’ve also released a concert video to coincide with the new dates. Below, watch the band deliver a truly forceful rendition of “Just A Boy” during last year’s Hellfest in Clisson, France. Swans 2014 Tour Dates:05/14 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat *05/15 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer *05/17 – Boston, MA @ Royale Nightclub *05/18 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom *05/19 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg *05/22 – Manchester, UK @ Academy 2 *05/23 – Newcastle, UK @ Hoults Yard *05/24 – Glasgow, UK @ The Arches *05/25 – Aberdeen, UK......
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Paraphilia Magazine To Be Kind album review
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SWANS: TO BE KINDBy Christopher Nosnibor Swans aren’t dead. Not by any stretch. As we all know by now, they’d simply been in hibernation, and all the time Michael Gira was releasing delicate, acoustic-led albums with Angels of Light, poison was festering in his veins until Swans were, through artistic necessity, reborn, a magnificent chimera of malformed beauty. To Be Kind, the third album since their return in 2010, is their most staggering yet. It does, naturally, bear all the hallmarks of Swans from throughout their lengthy history. It also very clearly belongs to the era that began with the emergence of My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope to the Sky. Yet it also very definitely represents a further evolution. And, clocking in once more at a colossal two hours, it’s fucking epic. But the fact To Be Kind spans a time in which empires rise and fall, wars are won and lost and new species evolve and become extinct is a mere detail of the bigger picture. The weight, the depth, the intensity… To Be Kind feels somehow beyond human scale. It begins in vintage fashion. ‘Screen Shot’ is hypnotic in its repetitions. Gira’s vocal is familiar, yet somehow different, his monotone delivery......