SWANS: Double CD out in May; press praise for preceding album "The Seer"

Young God Records is delighted to announce the release of a new album,To Be Kind, […]
March 26, 2014

Young God Records is delighted to announce the release of a new album,To Be Kind, out on May 13, 2014. The album will be released on Young God Records (North America) and Mute in the rest of the world. Its predecessor The Seer got some amazing press coverage and I'm including a few highlights for your edification.
--------------------------
... the sound of a celestial sledgehammer descending...
-Douglas Wolk/Time Magazine 12/7

...Swans is more awesome (in the "Moby-Dick" sense) now than when were when they were young.
- Sasha Frere Jones/newyorker.com/online/blog 12/31

The trance-oriented grooves and the album's title suggest that Swans want nothing less than to elicit visions. ..Mark jenkins/Washington Post 10/12..the real coup is the music's unexpected fluidity and Technicolor expansiveness...
-Jordan N. Mamone/Time Out NY 10/1
... its weight and sprawl capture each era of their unique history.
New Yorker 10/8
...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.
- Aaron Leitko./Sunday Washington Post 10/14.

...But there are God, love, and bright shards of luminescence in the bandleader's dense, abrasive shadow play ...loud, towering rage and sage wisdom seething from every pore ...listeners couldn't turn away from Swans' harshest sounds, which were like symphonies of colliding steel...
- A.D. Amorosi/Philadelphia Inquirer 10/15
...what the closing ceremonies for the human race might sound like...
- Ian Cohen/Pitchfork.com 8/15
...Swans make their grandest statement yet for their 30th birthday...
- Will Hermes/Rolling Stone 9/27

...The Seer is focused, cohesive, and wide-eyed. Chillingly so...Gira's pagan prayer hints at secrets and shadows...a savage, inhuman noise outfit that's more biomechanical than industrial...distills Swans into a seething, churning protoplasm of grace and dissonance... It's the most harrowing, exhausting, cathartic, transcendental piece of music Gira has ever put to tape. ..
-Jason Heller/AVClub.com 9/18

...The Seer comes closer to capturing the hypnosis of live Swans than anything released before,... Swans introduce an emotion they haven't explored much before: intimacy.
- Ben Donnelly/Dustedmagazine.com 8/27

... The Seer is far brighter and more rapturous than anything in the Swans canon...It's the kind of ritualistic cleansing that demands destruction, then rebuilding in the wake of chaos...The Seer isn't set in stone - it's a living, breathing work at war with its beautifully damned existence...
-Lars Gotrich/NPR.org 8/19

...This is The Seer, a masterpiece of post-rock and experimental composition that burrows into subterranean worlds and speaks with ultimate truth about spirituality, childhood, and the madness of the future of the mankind. ...
-Jeremy Larson/ConsequenceOfSound.com 8/30

...Moving from light to heavy, melodic to dissonant, gentle to violent over the course of its two discs and eleven songs, The Seer traverses the history of human emotion. ..
Michael Toland/Blurt-online.com 8/27

...This version of Swans sounded solid from the start in 2010, but it's growing more special... It often feels like an act of generosity, or at least an outpouring, but it retains its fortresslike quality, its sense of not becoming common
-Ben Ratliff/NYTimes.com 6/17

Are Swans the best live band in the world right now? ...
-Phillip Sherburne/Spin.com 5/30

Swansare a band that conjure primal forms of power: thunder and lightning, fire and brimstone, master over slave, predator over prey...Noise has never been as much of a concern in Swans' music as pure dissonance; of the way certain combinations of notes literally cause the air to vibrate more violently than others...Like airplanes, Swans take their taxiing and descent as seriously as their flight...the music is not coming from inside its players but existing, like a spirit, somewhere outside and between them...For 30 years Swans have challenged the boundaries between beauty and ugliness, music and noise, catharsis and abuse. ..
-Mike Powell/Pitchfork.com 8/27

...The Seer reads like an exploration of divine madness...in struggling against that ecstatic force, the divine light sometimes reveals to The Seer the vastness of its power, crushing it into oblivion...Its depth and emotional force reach a level that has become exceedingly scarce. ..It's an exhausting and maddening document, but one can't help but emerge from it filled with a renewed radiance. ..

Matthew Phillips/TinyMixTapes.com

A NOTE FROM MICHAEL GIRA:
Hello There,We (Swans) have recently completed our new album. It is currently being mastered at the time of this writing. It is called To Be Kind. The release date is set for May 13, 2014. It will be available as a triple vinyl album, a double CD, and a 2XCD Deluxe Edition that will include a live DVD. It will also be available digitally.The album was produced by me, and it was recorded by the venerable John Congleton at Sonic Ranch, outside El Paso Texas, and further recordings and mixing were accomplished at John's studio in Dallas, Texas. We commenced rehearsals as Sonic Ranch in early October 2013, began recording soon thereafter, then completed the process of mixing with John in Dallas by mid December 2013.A good portion of the material for this album was developed live during the Swans tours of 2012/13. Much of the music was otherwise conjured in the studio environment.The recordings and entire process of this album were generously and perhapsvaingloriously funded by Swans supporters through our auspices atyounggodrecords.comvia the release of a special, handmade 2xCD live album entitled Not Here / Not Now. See details here:https://bit.ly/1igMi70

The Swans are: Michael Gira, Norman Westberg, Christoph Hahn, Phil Puleo, Thor Harris, Christopher Pravdica.

Special Guests for this record include (among many others): Little Annie (Annie sang a duet with me on the song Some Things We Do, the strings for which were ecstatically arranged and played by Julia Kent); St. Vincent (Annie Clark sang numerous, multi-tracked vocals throughout the record); Cold Specks (Al contributed numerous multi-tracked vocals to the song "Bring the Sun"); Bill Rieflin (honorary Swan Bill played too many instruments to list here, ranging from additional drums, to synthesizers, to piano, to electric guitar and so on. He has been afrequent contributorto Swans and Angels of Light and is currently playing with King Crimson)...

https://younggodrecords.com

Source:
Howling Wolf
linkcrossmenucross-circle linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram