Seminal proto-Industrial band Swans are celebrating their 30th anniversary
with the release of the 2CD studio album "The Seer" and a triumphal world
tour, now in its 2nd month. They continue to garner ecstatic press,
another tiny sliver of which I include below. I do hope you might consider
taking this opportunity to cover the group via album review or feature.
I'm also including a link to an 11+ minute excerpt of "Apostate" from the
concert DVD that comes with the deluxe edition of "The Seer" for your
enjoyment or posting if ya wanna do that.

https://vimeo.com/45729481

Do let me know if you need the music.
------------------------------------

Notorious for playing at volumes so loud that audiences members reportedly
vomited, Swans, who débuted in the early eighties, took the lessons of the
discordant No Wave scene to an extreme. Over the ensuing years, the
vocalist Michael Gira and his revolving flock honed Swans into a more
stately, melodic endeavor, though no less drone-laden. “The Seer” is their
second album since returning from a thirteen-year dormancy, and its weight
and sprawl capture each era of their unique history.
-New Yorker 10/8

     They say that it’s better to burn out than fade away. But maybe it’s
also okay to take a break, to temporarily snuff the ember on the
incense stick of your rock-and-roll career, so you can burn out at a
later and, hopefully, more financially lucrative time. Or maybe that
adage just needs to be retired entirely, because, lately, rock bands
have gotten a lot better at getting back together.
     Take Swans, for example. When the violent and moody New York-based
noise rock group called it quits during the late ’90s, a golden-years
get-together seemed like an unthinkably horrible idea. During the
band’s mid-1980s prime, singer and ringleader Michael Gira was a
physically imposing presence — bare-chested, bellowing into the
microphone, throwing his body against the stage monitors. Gira is now
nearly 60, and that kind of behavior would probably land him in the
hospital.
     But muscle and bone mass aside, Swans never had much to do with
youth. It was about endurance. And Swans still have plenty of that.
On Friday night at the Black Cat, the band’s set ran for 21 / 2
hours.
Swans’ music, particularly their latest album and second post-reunion
effort, “The Seer,” possesses a theatricality that lends itself well to
this long-form delivery. The songs make heavy use of dynamics, slowly
building from near-silence to full blast and making sharp left turns from
beauty to violent catharsis. Over the years, neoclassical-leaning rock
groups such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Sunn O))) have adapted
certain aspects of Gira’s shtick, mainly the use of extended, bludgeoning
repetition to conjure an apocalyptic sentiment. On “The Seer,” Swans get a
return on their investment, swiping strains of plaintive melody and a
bottomless low end from their heavier progeny. And, like those groups,
they aren’t afraid to carry on at length.
     But even as the album’s title track stretched toward the 30-minute
mark, the crowd never thinned. By occupying large swaths of time,
Swans’ performance took on the character of an eerie but engaging
religious ritual, rather than a rock concert.
     And to further twist the knife, endurance-wise, Swans turned off the
club’s air conditioning before taking the stage. As the songs carried
on and grew in intensity, so did the heat and stink of the crowded
room. “Are you hot?” asked Gira during the set’s final stretch. “You
can take off your clothes. It would be so much better if you would.”
-Aaron Leitko./Sunday Washington Post 10/14.

     Allow this humble narrator to correct a misapprehension held by
listeners who don't know Swans intimately. Michael Gira's shifting
membership noise rock ensemble does not embrace doom or gloom in its
sound or lyrics. During its nearly 30 years of an on-and-off
existence, there's certainly been dread, existential or otherwise, in
Gira's incendiary words, his handsomely low vocals, and his
thunderously looming sound-scapes. But there are God, love, and
bright shards of luminescence in the bandleader's dense, abrasive
shadow play as well.
     Leonard Cohen's "Anthem" comes to mind here: "There is a crack in
everything/That's how the light gets in."
     The on-again (since 2010) Swans made the most powerful howl of its
career with two albums in 2012, We Rose From Your Bed With the Sun in
Our Head and The Seer. They took the stage of Union Transfer by storm
on Saturday night with loud, towering rage and sage wisdom seething
from every pore.
     With his guitar set to "stun" and his vocals drenched in echo, Gira
crooned through the vibrating metal swell and shifting dynamics of
"To be Kind" with subdued elegance.
     There was epic distorted feedback in the grand riffing of "Avatar"
and the pulsing "She Loves Us." The shifting tonalities of each song,
along with Gira's guitar, producing an occasional lonely prairie
twang that would feel right at home on a Johnny Cash album. But
during those same moments, the powerhouse rumble of low insistent
tom-toms and clanging chimes was an equally puissant force, as though
two separate but equal tornadoes were attacking one coast. You
couldn't call Gira's voice the calm eye of that storm. Instead, it
was a slow dazzle, a steady drone that punctuated each tune's wild
winds.
     "Put your knife in me/Walk away/I'm worthless," Gira cackled through
the pile-driving, cymbal-clashing clamor that was "Coward." Like
witnesses gawking at an accident, listeners couldn't turn away from
Swans' harshest sounds, which were like symphonies of colliding
steel.
-A.D. Amorosi/Philadelphia Inquirer 10/15

      …no record pushed me through with greater impact than The Seer, the
startlingly awesome and ambitious new work from Michael Gira’s
Swans.
You should buy this record, if you can find it—the LP is currently in
between pressings, but you can still easily find Compact Disc ($18),
Special Edition 2CD/DVD ($23), MP3 ($14), and even WAV ($18) versions.
Visit Young God Records for more info. I had called all my local sources,
and none of them had the LP, so I wound up buying it from a dealer in
Washington (state). It’s gorgeous and I love it.
UPDATE: If you, too, have been waiting anxiously for the vinyl, you're in
luck: Revolver USA, Young God Records' distributor, hopes to have new
supply to stores within the next few weeks. Revolver regrets the delay,
citing enormous pre-holiday demand at vinyl pressing plants—which,
ultimately, is a sign of good things to come for vinyl lovers.
     The Seer is epic in scope and scale: There are 11 tracks, including
one 10-minute track, two 20-minute tracks, and a 30-minute track.
There are guest appearances by Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Al and Mimi
(Low), members of Akron/Family, members of Big Blood, Ben Frost, and
many others. There are accordions, harmonicas, vibraphones,
clarinets, contra bassoons, dulcimers, orchestral bells, pianos,
acoustic and electric mandolins, fifty million electric guitars,
fires, stars. The album is, by turns, noisy, chaotic, quiet,
controlled, massive, miniscule, pulverizing, gentle, terrifying,
welcoming, dreary, ecstatic, pious, profane; always beautiful, always
moving, always compelling.
     It’s the coolest thing I’ve heard all year.
     Now that I own The Seer on LP, and now that we have just about
completed our Recommended Components Collector’s Edition and December
issues, I would love to spend the weekend doing little else but
listening to the record, over and over and over again, on my home
system…
-Steve Mejias/Stereophile.com 10/10

     Once the junkyard dogs of New York post-punk, Swans crafted a more
delicate sound over the course of their original 1982-97 run.
Restarted in 2010, the group retains some of the folkie and Moroccan
elements introduced in the late ’80s. But Swans leader Michael Gira
remains a sonic extremist, as he demonstrates with the two-CD,
two-hour release “The Seer.”
     The album is not as punishing as the band’s early work, but it’s far
from easygoing. It includes long passages of pounding repetition,
with three tracks that each run more than 19 minutes. Yet gentle
timbres nestle among the thuds and drones, and female guest vocalists
mellow several tunes. “A Piece of the Sky” features multitracked
trills by former Swans singer Jarboe, while “Song for a Warrior”
employs piano, strings, steel guitar and the soprano of Yeah Yeah
Yeahs frontwoman Karen O. The title track opens with bagpipes, and
“The Apostate” closes the album with free-jazz saxophone honks.
      The sax parries with Gira’s gruff voice in a long incantatory
section that’s typical of the band’s current method. The
trance-oriented grooves and the album’s title suggest that Swans
want nothing less than to elicit visions. As Gira chants in “The
Seer,” a dazzlingly complex 32-minute suite: “I see it
all / I see it all.”
-Mark jenkins/Washington Post 10/12

     You’d be forgiven for balking at frontman Michael Gira’s
quasi-facetious claim that Swans’ current effort, The Seer, is “the
culmination” of every previous album in his oeuvre. Yet you’d be an
ass for allowing such hyperbole to sour you on this resplendent
119-minute beast. While the record lacks the cohesive punch of 2010’s
My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky—the veteran group’s
maiden voyage after a 13-year dormancy—it compensates by tackling
rapturous extremes with an almost playful looseness.
     The album’s press release trumpets unobtrusive guest appearances by
Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O and former Swans chanteuse Jarboe, but
the real coup is the music’s unexpected fluidity and Technicolor
expansiveness. Sotto voce growling and panting plus
cross-contaminated percussion turn the patented locksteps of “The
Apostate” and “Mother of the World” into thundering, Brobdingnagian
bump-and-grinds; by contrast, several shorter tracks are among the
gentlest in Gira’s repertoire.
All of this, though, pales compared with Swans’ awe-inspiring live sets.
For two straight hours, double drummers bash at bells and gongs, and
Christoph Hahn’s lap-steel guitar screams like Lucifer’s nagging wife.
Gira, a strapping gent pushing 60, might gaze heavenward, fondle himself
and roar deliriously about transcendental light or Lady Gaga invading his
mind and genitals. Ingested at top volume in a sweltering venue, a more
potent combo of substance and spectacle, volatility and charisma,
provocation and entertainment would be hard to imagine.
—Jordan N. Mamone/ Time Out NY 10/1

     If not for music, Michael Gira predicts he’d still be a construction
worker. It was his day job during the early ’80s, when he trashed and
renovated New York lofts and apartments. At the end of 10 hours’
labor, however, Gira pursued another form of release with his band,
Swans, pounding with guitars instead of hammers.
     “I’m hanging Sheetrock still, just with sound,” says Gira, who
revived Swans in 2010 after a 13-year hiatus. In the process he’s
refined elements of both the band’s brutal early work and its
atmospheric later permutations.
“The first seven years of Swans were pretty much watching the room empty
as we played,” Gira recalls. The band emerged in the wake of New York’s No
Wave scene, sharing roots with Sonic Youth in the loud,
minimalism-inspired guitar orchestras of Glenn Branca, though also
reflecting the primal repetition of the blues.
     “It was an extreme experience that I had to have, and I inflicted it
on the audience,” Gira says of that confrontational period. “These
days, it’s a little more inclusive. I look at [the music] as an
instigator of joy, whereas I don’t think I would’ve ever used that
word in those days.”
     It’s a sound both matured and expanded on Swans’ new two-disc album,
The Seer, which patiently develops riffs and rhythms into cyclical
crescendos that can prove incessant and unsettling, as the band
strives for something like a Sufi state of ecstasy.
     “There are lots of nuances within the basic chord,” says Gira, now
58. “It’s just an open swirl that you can lose yourself in. That’s
what I gravitated toward, from growing up in the ’60s, listening to
psychedelic music. It’s just looking for the peak experience inside
the sound. But it’s not that highfalutin. The Stooges did the same
thing in a [proto-punk] way.”
Swans incubated songs for The Seer onstage during their last tour and
continued to build on them in the studio. The title track and “The
Apostate” run 32 and 23 minutes respectively and have stretched longer on
a tour that hits the Paradise on Oct. 11.
     “It’s very structured, but there’s lots of room within the sections
to move around,” Gira says. “I just let the thing grow and corral it
into shape. The music sort of dictates where things go. I’m not a
composer, so I kind of respond to what’s happening at the moment,
sort of like a film director, like Cassavetes.”
     Gira says he’s been trying to make records that work like soundtracks
since the late ’80s. “In that instance, you’d need poignant, quiet
moments as well as the more eruptive or apocalyptic things,” he says.
To that end, The Seer features a broader palette than 2010’s largely
austere My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, including
strings as well as backup vocals from Akron/Family (the psych-rock
combo that Gira launched on his Young Gods label), Alan Sparhawk and
Mimi Parker from indie-rockers Low, and Gira’s ex-wife and onetime
Swans mate, Jarboe.
     On this album, however, the female presence centers on an aching lead
vocal from Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O on “Song for a
Warrior,” which shines as a stark, acoustic changeup. “I felt like
some cranky old man trying to sing this beautiful lullaby,” Gira
says. “I’m a producer as well as a singer, so I try to remain
objective. Where my voice isn’t working, I try to get someone else.”
     But on tour, says Gira, “I guess what we’re doing is a man thing.”
That’s the impression cast by a shaggy, oft-shirtless guy named Thor
Harris banging chimes in a chiseled, stern-faced ensemble that also
features lap-steel force Christoph Hahn, longtime guitarist Norman
Westberg, bassist Christopher Pravdica and drummer Phil Puleo.
     On tour, the band’s been serving brand new pieces as well as a few
tracks from The Seer, ignoring My Father Will Guide Me in favor of
resurrecting “Coward,” an ’80s song that “doesn’t sound like the
recording at all.” Gira dismisses nostalgia. “I’d rather die,” he
says of reciting old material. “It has to be something that makes me
feel like I’m maximizing my potential on Earth.”
- Paul Robicheau/Improper Bostonian October

     Arising from the cracks of the New York City postpunk scene in the
early 1980s, Swans' music is a genre unto itself. An otherworldly
sonic disturbance, their sound is aggression turned musical. Not
obnoxious noise but fearsome magnificence.
     The band's clever turns take you from cacophony to gorgeous
compositions. Luscious melodies and soaring moments of bliss are
juxtaposed with the din. The effect is potent, both dark and
beautiful.
Swans founder Michael Gira spoke to us from his New York home at the edge
of the Catskills. He ruminated on how a musical project he thought he had
buried 13 years ago somehow rose again from the grave. Gira is known for
his ponderous baritone, the perfect vessel for lyrics like: "And I am the
Sun/I rise above the world/And when the light goes out/I kill another
child." This summer morning, though, the 58-year-old's voice is bright and
eager to talk about The Seer, Swans' new, epic, two-hour masterpiece.
"The mood is contained in the music," explains Gira. "It's discovered
along the way. I don't set out or try to illustrate some sort of ideas or
teach anybody anything. I don't bring some sort of message other than what
develops inside the music. It just feels great." He pauses to let out a
laugh. "It feels great to play, and I hope the audience feels ecstasy when
we play." Despite the music's sometimes-ominous quality, there are moments
of bliss to be found. "On this record, there's so many different
atmospheres and dynamics," he says, "but I suppose one salient aspect is
the kind of total overwhelming sound that we achieve sometimes, which I
think is a very positive thing. I love it. But there's lots of nuance in
it. Everything needs everything else in order to allow it to shine. I
think the loud parts don't sound as big without the quiet parts, and I
think the quiet parts sound even more poign-ant because of the other
things." The Seer is a listening journey, capturing other dimensions and
landscapes of raw emotion, sex, and religion with a surreal cinematic
quality. For instance, opening with the patter of rain, "A Piece of the
Sky" explores sustained builds of noise for most of its 19 minutes. Layers
of an exhaling chorus of female voices, à la Philip Glass' "Music With
Changing Parts," become blissful bells, groaning electric guitars, and
perky banjo on a languid seesaw rhythm.
      The wordless chorus is provided by once-regular Swans member -- she
of the golden voice -- Jarboe. Though Jarboe contributes as a guest
on The Seer, Swans' only constant has been Gira. He decided to
retire the band in 1997 after a farewell tour to explore more
reserved but still elegant tunes via his project Angels of Light.
But in 2009, the ghost of Swans beckoned. "I wanted to experience
the sounds that Swans was capable of, and to do that, it didn't seem
right to call it Angels of Light," he explains. "It'd been so long
since I worked in the way Swans worked that it seemed fresh, and
it's given me a new life, in a way."
      The latest version of the band includes longtime guitarist Norman
Westberg, Swans regular Christoph Hahn on lap steel and electric
guitar, percussionists Phil Puleo and Thor Harris, and bassist
Christopher Pravdica.
Gira has high praise for his cohorts. He explains that the music comes
from a chain of sonic explorations. Songs off The Seer started as
improvisations the band often explored in front of live audiences on its
tour last year. Four began as instrumentals, some of which lasted longer
than 20 minutes live. For Swans, performing is a process of discovery, not
an attempt to manipulate something with instruments. "At the best moments,
music plays you and not the opposite. As the sound grows, it seems like
the music's leading us, and we find new things. That's why some of these
pieces on the record are so long. We started playing them live, and they
just kept growing and morphing just through performing, and it's not like
you're playing verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure. It's open. That
doesn't mean it's improvisational. We're all in the sound."
     Otherwise, the band plays only new songs from what was its first
album in nearly 15 years: My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the
Sky. "I don't want to go out and replicate what's on record or see
peoples' need to experience something how it used to be," Gira
explains. "I just want to make new music." Gira doesn't do this to
piss anyone off who might come hoping to hear the band's cover of Joy
Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," which became its calling card
to major labels in the late 1980s. Gira and bandmates work just for
the present.
      Swans fans span the gamut of musical tastes and desires, from those
who love noise and gloom to fans of jazz. "They know it's not going
to be some nostalgia tour," Gira says of his followers. "The
responses I saw last year to the tour were absolutely tremendous,
the best year we ever had. I think the Swans people come expecting
to see something unique and something towards a different kind of
journey, and I just don't really want to be like a lot of other
bands who try to sound like their records. I want to make something
immediate and real happen. That's what we're after."
-Hans Morgenstern/Broward Palm Beach New Times 10/9

     With its high volume and repetition, Swans is a rock Philip Glass
Ensemble on steroids.
     That was the first lasting impression I gathered from the veteran
“noise rock” band’s nearly two-hour show at the Bourbon Theatre
Thursday night.
The Glass comparison works, in part, because of the length of the Swans
songs. While the band retains a rock structure in their compositions, when
they stretch out to more than 20 minutes, they are much more like a long
serious music piece than a pop or rock song.
     Then there’s the dense orchestration of the instruments -- two
guitars, bass, steel guitar, drum and percussion -- each in its
place, creating driving soundscapes that surge and flow with dynamic
intensity. That's like the Glass Ensemble, the minimalist composers
small group, as well.
      While leader Michael Gira stepped to the mic for part of nearly
every song, Swans sure aren’t about the words. It is about making
powerful, transportive music -- at extreme volume.
      How loud was it in the Bourbon? My iPhone db apps (I’ve got two)
each consistenltly registered in the 110 db range. A professional
meter caught the peaks of the sound at 120 dbs, just 10 below the
level of instant hearing damage.
     That’s why a Bourbon cocktail waitress circled through the crowd with
her tray loaded up with packages of foam earplugs. “That’s
hospitality,” the Bourbon’s Jeremiah Moore yelled to me when she
walked. It was also survival.
     Swans aren’t particularly performative. Outside of Gira making doing
some stomping and once dropping to his knees, it’s stand and play
your instrument time.
      Throw in the amplified aural assault and Swans isn't a band you
going to see night after night. But catching Swans once is bracing.
-Kent Wolgamott/journalstar.com/blog 9/21

For more information and materials contact:

Howard Wuelfing
Howlin' Wuelf Media
215-428-9119
http://howlinwuelf.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/howlinwuelf
http://howlinwuelf.blogspot.com/

"You've got all that is really needed,
to save this dying world
from it's funkless self" - Parliament