2432 - SWANS - The Seer, Disc One (2012)
SWANS
''THE SEER, DISC ONE''
AUGUST 28 2012
119:12
DISC ONE
1/Lunacy
Michael Gira/6:08
2/Mother of the World
Michael Gira/9:57
3/The Wolf
Michael Gira / Christoph Hahn / Thor Harris / Christopher Pravdica / Phil Puleo / Norman Westberg/1:35
4/The Seer
Michael Gira/32:14
5/The Seer Returns
Michael Gira / Christoph Hahn / Thor Harris / Christopher Pravdica / Phil Puleo / Norman Westberg/6:17
6/93 Ave. B Blues
Michael Gira/5:21
7/The Daughter Brings the Water
Michael Gira/2:40
DISC TWO
1/Song For a Warrior
Michael Gira/3:58
2/Avatar
Michael Gira / Christoph Hahn / Thor Harris / Christopher Pravdica / Phil Puleo / Norman Westberg/8:51
3/A Piece of the Sky
Michael Gira/19:10
4/The Apostate
Michael Gira / Christoph Hahn / Thor Harris / Christopher Pravdica / Phil Puleo / Norman Westberg/23:01
Eszter Balint /Guest Artist, Violin
Birgit Cassis Staudt /Accordion, Guest Artist
Ben Frost /Guest Artist, Sounds
Michael Gira /Casio, Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar (Electric), Harmonica, Producer, Sounds, Vocals
Bryce Goggin /Guest Artist, Piano
Christoph Hahn /Guitar (Electric), Lap Steel Guitar, Vocals
Thor Harris /Clarinet, Drums, Hammer Dulcimer, Orchestral Bells, Percussion, Piano, Vibraphone, Vocals
Iain Graham /Bagpipes, Guest Artist
Dana Janssen /Guest Artist, Vocals (Background)
Jarboe /Guest Artist, Vocals
Colleen Kinsella /Accordion, Dulcimer, Guest Artist, Guitar, Instrumentation, Piano, Vocals
Bruce Lamont /Guest Artist, Horn
Sean "Grasshopper" Mackowiak /Clarinet, Electronic Mandolin, Guest Artist, Mandolin
Shon Mahoney /Guest Artist, Jew's-Harp
Kevin McMahon /Drums, Guest Artist, Guitar (Electric), Sounds
Caleb Mulkerin /Accordion, Dulcimer, Guest Artist, Guitar, Instrumentation, Piano, Vocals
Karen O /Guest Artist, Vocals
Seth Olinsky /Guest Artist, Vocals (Background)
Christopher Pravdica /Bass Guitar, Vocals
Phil Puleo /Drums, Hammer Dulcimer, Percussion, Vocals
Bill Rieflin /Casio, Drums, Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar (Bass), Guitar (Electric), Organ, Percussion, Piano, Synthesizer, Vocals
Stefan Rocke /Contrabassoon, Guest Artist
Robert Rutman /Guest Artist, Steel Cello
Jane Scarpatoni /Cello, Guest Artist
Miles Seaton /Guest Artist, Vocals (Background)
Norman Westberg /Guitar (Electric), Vocals
REVIEW
by Thom Jurek
Michael Gira claims that Swans' The Seer took 30 years to make: "it's the culmination of every previous Swans album as well as any other music I've ever made, been involved in or imagined." This is not hyperbole. Two years after My Father Will Lead Me Up to a Rope to the Sky, The Seer is the most sprawling, ambitious, thoughtfully conceived and tightly performed recording in the band's catalog -- also not hyperbole -- over two discs, two hours, and 11 tracks. And it is not an endurance test, but an argument for compulsive listening. It's an exquisitely wrought journey through post-rock, electronic soundscapes, haunting acoustic songs, punishing noise, and (lots of) percussion. While the extremes of Filth are rare here, their roots are clearly present, as is everything else, from Cop to White Light from the Mouth of Infinity to Soundtracks for the Blind to Angels of Light. The previous musical incarnations of Swans have been honed to sharpened points, carving new musical and sonic terrain from rock into an intensely focused whole. "Lunacy" opens it with tight, seamless repetition and builds to shattering crescendo as a prolonged introduction, before chanted vocals (Alan and Mimi from Low guest) enter. They eventually give way to open-ended, restrained instrumental explorations, creating a suite-like construction in just over six minutes. The 32-minute title cut uses every tool in the Swans arsenal like a hammer, from nearly maddening repetition and clattering dissonance to nuanced space; dynamics to multivalent, layered electronic textures. Its coda, the six-minute "The Seer Returns," features tribal, shuffling floor toms and bass drums. Former member Jarboe appears on the 19-minute "Piece of the Sky." After a long intro that includes field recordings and industrial noise, her hovering voice is multitracked in a wide-open, blissed-out drone before thundering post-rock and experimental drones eventually find Gira (with Jarboe backing) singing what may be the story of their partnership. Karen O from Yeah Yeah Yeahs, sings "Song for a Warrior," a gorgeous number that commences as a country waltz before opening onto a shimmering, nearly opulent instrumental terrain before gradually stripping its way back to even starker sonic folk terrain. It's Gira speaking through that feminine voice, offering his own statement of purpose and accepting its cost. Set closer, the 23-minute "Apostate," is Swans at their most punishing. Given its length, it takes its time getting there, but when the chaos and world-shaking begin, the band leans full-on into the abyss to deliver a nearly frightening conclusion; Gira employs the full range of his powerful voice in the heart of the maelstrom before a stampede of drums pushes the track out onto other side of oblivion. The Seer is unquestionably a work of ecstatic beauty; it encompasses everything because it is everything. It references the aesthetic developed by Swans, and moves it past current musical boundaries and onto a new sonic frontier, where they stand, as they have always stood, alone.
BIOGRAPHY
by Thom Jurek
Swans were born during the heyday of New York's no wave reaction to punk rock, on the Lower East Side. Led by brainchild, guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter Michael Gira, the group was formed after the demise of his first New York outfit, Circus Mort. Swans' first lineup consisted of Gira, guitarist Sue Hanel, and drummer Jonathan Kane. The trio played with kindred spirits Sonic Youth and did some rudimentary recordings that showcased the abrasive, percussively assaultive sonics Swans were later identified with. These initial sides surfaced on the Body to Body, Job to Job compilation. A different lineup included Kane, guitarist Bob Pezzola, and Daniel Galli-Duani on saxophone; they released a self-titled EP in 1982. The personnel changed again for the band's powerful debut, Filth, issued in 1983 on Germany's Zensor imprint. It included Gira, Kane, guitarist Norman Westberg, bassist Harry Crosby, and percussionist/drummer Roli Mosimann.
Swans began to garner an audience in Europe. Kane left after Filth was released, and Swans, who were becoming known for their sheer musical brutality as well as Gira's lyrics about violence, extreme sex, power, rage, and the margins of human depravity (sometimes in the same song), began to garner a cult following at home with the release of 1984's Cop. The sound was essentially the same: extreme volume, slower than molasses tempos, detuned guitars, distorted electronics, and overamped drums and percussion, but there were discernible traces of something approaching melody in Gira's compositions and vocalizing. Further evidence of this new "accessibility" was heard on 1985's untitled EP, which featured the provocatively titled "Raping a Slave." It later became the EP's title. Swans' touring was relentless, and while anything even approaching popularity avoided them in the United States, their European audiences grew exponentially.
The band issued the EP Time Is Money (Bastard) and the full-length Greed at the beginning of 1986 and another album, Holy Money, and the A Screw EP later. Holy Money marked a real change in the band's sound, though its tactics were largely the same: the entrance into the band of two new influential presences: vocalist/keyboardist Jarboe and bassist Algis Kizys, who began, albeit subtly at first, to shift the band's attack into something less assaultive sonically yet no less jarring emotionally. Jarboe and Kizys would remain members of Swans until the group's extended hiatus began in 1997. Jarboe, who actually was a member of the band as early as Holy Money, would become a settled, foil-like presence for Gira as co-lead vocalist. Her presence signified the addition of a new set of dynamics and textures to the more brutal soundscapes the band put forth in its past. That said, when called upon to do so, she was no less primal or forceful than Gira as a singer.
In 1987 the band moved to Caroline Records and issued Children of God, a double album that marked the real transition between the two parts of the band’s sound. Gira openly embraced the softer aspects being added to Swans' sonic architecture. Further evidence is provided by the beginning of Gira and Jarboe’s new side project, Skin (World of Skin in the United States), whose first album, Blood, Women, Roses, on which Jarboe was featured on lead vocals, was released. A subsequent album, Shame, Humility, Revenge, with Gira on lead vocals, was also recorded at the same time, but released a year later. The German-only Swans set Real Love, a semi-official bootleg, was issued in 1987. Another double album, Feel Good Now, was issued by Rough Trade Records in 1988. Interestingly, despite Swans gaining attention for their own material (they regularly appeared in the pages of the British weeklies and each new release brought more laudatory ink) and even placing albums on the indie charts' lower rungs, it was ironically a single, a cover of Joy Division's immortal “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” that climbed the independent charts in June, and nearly topped them.
Fantastically, Swans were offered -- and signed -- a contract with major label MCA Records. “Saved,” their first single for the label, was almost mainstream, given the band’s roots. The subsequent album, The Burning World, produced by Bill Laswell, featured another cover; this one a gorgeous reading of Blind Faith's “Can’t Find My Way Home.” The aggressive, savage brutality of the band’s earlier recorded sound had been almost entirely supplanted by a much more somber, elegiac, and acoustic approach to music-making, with lyrics sung (rather than shouted or screamed) in duet between Gira and Jarboe; Westberg played as much acoustic guitar as electric, Jarboe’s keyboards all but floated through the mix, and Kizys employed the upper ranges of his bass as never before. The record didn't sell enough to please MCA, however, and the band was dropped.
Live performances from Swans were another story. The group continued to play a violent music at outrageous volumes that were punishing for audience members, and sometimes displayed shocking and provocative stage antics. Crowds only grew. With critical backlash mounting and the band faced with new listeners, Gira gambled -- or reacted, depending on whose point of view one listens to. Instead of following up The Burning World with another album, he formed his own label, Young God, and spent the next few years reissuing earlier Swans material. Gira and Jarboe issued their final World of Skin album, Ten Songs for Another World, in 1990, but Swans didn’t release another album until the stellar White Light from the Mouth of Infinity appeared in 1991. It was their most commercially viable yet adventurously experimental set to date, with a myriad of textures, dynamics, and sophisticated production techniques. Various forms of electronics were added to the other instruments, creating depth and dimension in the band’s sound. The band toured the album in front of its largest audiences. In 1992 Swans issued the full-length Love of Life and the live set Omniscience.
In 1993 Jarboe released her first solo project, Beautiful People Ltd., in collaboration with keyboardist Lary Seven, offering an entirely different side of her mysterious multi-octave vocal persona in Swans -- it was a collection of neo-psychedelic pop songs. Gira, meanwhile, wrote fiction in earnest, resulting in the publication of his first book, The Consumer and Other Stories, published by Henry Rollins' 2.13.61 Press in 1995. Swans also resurfaced with the lauded The Great Annihilator. Jarboe issued her second solo offering, Sacrificial Cake, and Gira released his first solo album, Drainland, to boot. After touring with all the new material, the band reconvened later in the year to begin recording Soundtracks for the Blind, which was issued by Young God in 1996. The band did a final tour before Gira announced in early 1997 that Swans were finished. He began a new recording project that focused on his songwriting called the Angels of Light, and continued running Young God, a label that became an innovative force in independent music. Jarboe pursued a successful solo career, often employing former members of Swans as well as collaborating with artists including Tool's Maynard James Keenan and Jesu's Justin Broadrick, to name just two of the dozens. Gira also continued writing and publishing fiction.
In 2009, news surfaced via the Young God home page that Gira might reconvene Swans for a set of songs he had written. In early 2010 the words “SWANS ARE NOT DEAD” appeared on his MySpace page. The new version of the band consisted of former as well as new members including guitarists Westberg and Christoph Hahn, drummer/percussionist Phil Puleo and drummer Thor Harris, and bassist Chris Pravdica. The band recorded the album My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, which was released in September of 2010 on Young God. The live album We Rose from Your Bed with the Sun in Our Head followed in 2012. In August of that year, Swans released the sprawling double album, The Seer, an album that Gira claimed was 30 years in the making.
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