Świetnej jakości nagrania koncertowe z lat 1995 - 1997

UTWORY:

Disc One         
1    Feel Happiness         16:57
2    Low Life Form         4:54
3    Not Alone         13:12
4    Blood on Yr Hands         2:59
5    Hypogirl         3:22
6    I Crawled         10:05
7    I am the Sun         5:26
8    Blood Promise         15:23
    

Disc Two         
1    Final Sac         8:43
2    The Sound         12:51
3    I See Them All Lined Up         6:26
4    Lavender         8:02
5    Yr Prp         8:51
6    Yum Yab         4:36
7    Helpless Child         17:44
8    M/F         3:25


M. Gira: vocal, guitar;
Jarbone: vocal, keyboard;
Larry Mullins: percussion, vibraphone;
Vudi: guitar, keyboard;
Joe Goldring: bass guitar

2/25/1998 | SF Weekly | Dave Clifford
Attrition‹the act of wearing away a surface through repeated rubbing, or the gradual reduction of will through constant waves of repetition‹is the defining characteristic of Swans. In the 15-year existence of the now-finished group, vocalist/guitarist Michael Gira and a revolving door of contributors‹the most significant of these being longtime vocalist/keyboardist Jarboe‹sought to isolate and exaggerate the limitations of music. Where rhythm and melody traditionally embody a song, Swans have dissected it. Where lyrical themes traditionally ignore the visceral and brutal sides of sexuality, Swans have sought to magnify them.
On early recordings like Filth and Young God, Swans hammered single or double beats of a measure and a melody into plodding tempos. The result was simplistic, brutal, and anti-melodic. But once Gira had mastered the form, he abandoned it in favor of a new sound, one in which chiming Middle Eastern drones were infused with a rhythmic impulsion. The melodicism cost the band a considerable following in the early 90s.
Swans Are Dead, the final act of attrition, contains live recordings culled from their final world tours of 1995 and 1997. Here, as clever as always, Swans' music atomizes rhythm and melody by taking repetition to an extreme, almost aberrant degree, to a point where the music is transformed into a behemoth machine that simultaneously disrupts and illuminates its own internal structure. On the album opener, "Feel Happiness," the rhythm of a standard bar is frozen, as a repeated snare crack and cymbal crash compound beneath drop-tuned droning bass, guitars, and keyboard. Similar to the way a skipping CD or record plucks a small element from a passage and disrupts its logic, the repetition of flowing cymbals and a fragmented guitar melody disrupts a normal rock song.
Many of the songs performed on these final tours were versions of older Swans material, reworked to emphasize certain melodic, lyrical, and rhythmic subtleties. "Blood Promise," the syrupy 1994 ballad, is stripped to a torturous chiming drone of guitars and flaring cymbals. "I Crawled" is reworked from its original crushing plod into a tense narrative with slowly building crescendos.
Still, it is songs like "The Sound" and "Not Alone" that jarringly demonstrate Swans' tasteful flirtation with streamlined melodies. Compounding several harmonies of instruments that swirl continuously in mantra form, the group creates a sound of constant elevation and rhythmic attrition. "The Sound" begins as a murmur of keyboards, vibraphone, and lightly thumping percussion, and a simple melody is slowly built within the repetitive modulation between two notes. The structure has fractured and musical order is, if only briefly, transcended. Which is exactly the aim of Swans' music‹to give the taste of ecstatic annihilation. And here, a blissful farewell.


2/19/1998 | TimeOut New York | Issue No. 126 | Jordan N. Mamone Review |
Over the course of a 15-year existence, Swans built up a solid reputation for blinding intensity and brutal honesty. Leader Michael Gira was so unafraid to explore the limits of the crushingly leaden and the mystically ethereal that his compositions and from-the-gut emotional frankness occasionally verged on the ridiculous. More often, his tunnel vision and severity intensified music of a singular power unmatched in its sensuous physicality and visionary depth.
Swans leave behind a legacy as the most radical aesthetic dissenters from the golden age of '80s NYC tumult rock, yet also as the most faithful adherents to that scene's sternness and experimental edge. A force of extremes and paradoxes, their bowing out with an exorbitant but necessary double-live CD is only appropriate. Swans Are Dead is rough going if you're averse to Gira's obsessively dark, rhythmic repetition, but otherwise it's a rewarding final chronicle of one of the most fascinating forces ever to grace a stage.
Gira & Co.'s discography is rich in masterful concert documents, and this pristinely recorded capper is no different. Swans Are Dead skirts redundancy by drawing from the band's twilight works but also including reinterpretations of old pile drivers; the industrial thuds of "I Crawled" and "Your Property" are every bit as methodical and grandiose as their '84 renditions but now boast aggro-elegant, complex arrangements and the dramatic, seductive pipes of keyboardist Jarboe in lieu of Gira's tough roar. These rewrites fit in perfectly with the more recent stuff (including two all-new epics), which is still huge and richly textured but often similarly mutated. "Low Life Form," from Gira's spartan '95 solo LP, swells into an immobilizing tidal wave, while the once cold, steely "I Am the Sun" turns into a perversely choleric cabaret shuffle.
Although Swans Are Dead splits its discs between a 1995 lineup and the 1997 final tour personnel, the musicianship is uniformly distinctive and flawless. If the set fails in any way, it's due to an inability to capture the volume, imposing vastness and intoxicating vibe of live Swans. But with the band buried and a Huysmansian conglomeration of home stereo, virtual reality and hypnotism yet to be invented, Swans Are Dead will have to suffice as the ultimate sensory blowout.
 

Live CD compiled for Great Annihilator World Tour and Final Tour.

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