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Wink Wink 2011 - A bit of a change this year

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KvP:
Swans / Young God errata!


Skin - Blood, Women, Roses

Skin (aka World of Skin) was Jarboe and Michael Gira's non-Swans collaborative project, undertaken in the late 80's. Blood, Women, Roses is essentially a Jarboe solo record, and it showcases Jarboe as a vocalist and arranger. It's split largely between dramatic, gothy balladry ("The Man I Love", "One Thousand Years") and post-industrial of various sorts (the strikingly Coil-esque "Red Rose", "Come Out").


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Skin - Shame, Humility, Revenge

The Gira-centric companion to Blood, Women, Roses, perhaps the first release to showcase his interest in less aggressive music. It's still very dark - Gira's monotone delivery juts out from the music like a cold slab of black rock. Production-wise it's quite similar to Musick to Play in the Dark-era Coil. Not to touch on that comparison too much, but it's often really pretty, even if it is unblinkingly dark. Contains a dirge-y, plaintive cover of "I Wanna Be Your Dog" that may be the only thing Gira's ever done that contains a modicum of winking humor.


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Flux Information Sciences - Private / Public

Flux Information Sciences was an industrial-punk / no wave outfit that kicked around the underground before releasing one album on Young God (this one) and breaking up in 2001. It's a really fascinating little record - full of fast, clattering noise rock. Young God claimed that it was recorded before a live audience that was stripped naked and blindfolded. There are electronic ("World Class Fuck") and post-rock ("Love") interludes among all the amphetamine rock vignettes ("Dollar Days", "Supermarket"). They kept the idea of good industrial rock alive for a scant few years longer than it had any right to be. Former member Chris Pradvica went on to play bass / jew's harp / "gadgets" on My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope to the Sky and tour as a member of Swans, as well as play in post-Flux outfit SERVICES.

For those interested, it looks like the entirety of the band's discography (including previously unreleased material) up for free download on their barebones web page. Private / Public is not included, presumably because Young God needs the money.

*Actually, it's worth noting that if you like Swans or Angels of Light, if you buy anything from Young God's website by those two groups, it will come signed by Michael Gira, because he has a vested interest in keeping the relationship between fans and the label close. It really is just him running the thing. Consider buying your favorite Swans record on CD or something.*


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Angels of Light put out 5 studio albums, one live recording and one split (with Akron/Family) between 1999 and 2007, but I only have two of their studio albums :( If you're interested in Gira's folk pursuits, seek them out!


The Angels of Light - Everything Is Good Here / Please Come Home

The Angels Of Light's third album, released in 2003. Features Gira in high-energy mode, but with any semblance of metal or industrial erased and replaced with cacophonous folk and twang influences. "All Souls' Rising" would become a live favorite, but "Rose of Los Angeles" also displays a restless, excitable spirit. Some of the quieter songs, like "The Family God" and especially "Kosinski", are perhaps the most affecting songs Gira has produced when not in Shock and Awe mode. It certainly proved that Gira could operate entirely outside the crushing sphere of Swans and still succeed musically.

--- Quote from: Pitchfork (8.6 review) ---To a certain extent, most of us are still living sheltered lives, insofar as we rarely confront our spirituality, reject our families, or cross our internal lines of social decency. Beliefs and codes vary from person to person like wardrobes, but very few people are willful, foolish or terminally self-aware enough to defy their own. Cultural expectations-- "absurd and malignant" or otherwise-- have sway, and the precious, indecent few who manage to outrun them are usually viewed as outcasts or criminals (though sometimes as prophets). Aside from whatever laws they break, criminals rob us of our conventions: Through acts of violence and upheaval, they force us to confront our boundaries. For some, ignoring the tenuous line between right and wrong is an easy feat, but for others, personal demons are as controlling as any backlog of cultural norms. From the sound of Everything Is Good Here/Please Come Home, Angels of Light frontman Michael Gira may yet have demons to master and boundaries to set.

Gira broached straightforward indecency long ago, via his most infamous and acclaimed project, Swans. In the mid-80s, when even the most ruthlessly earnest punks were only beginning to come to terms with a "responsible" definition of anarchy, Gira and then-partner Jarboe were speaking, sometimes literally, of masochistic torture and humiliating, brutal sex, over drastically compressed drones and industrial propulsion. When the decade closed in an alternative rock flourish, Swans thrust forward by leaps and bounds: Love of Life, The Great Annihilator and especially Soundtracks for the Blind predicted Godspeed You Black Emperor! and all manner of dark-ambient music, though thematically, Swans still seemed to equate God with a dominatrix. Gira's post-Swans (read: post-Jarboe) folk collective, The Angels of Light, matches his previous band's penchant for mythic grandeur with more muted dynamics, if not sentiment. Everything Is Good Here/Please Come Home is their third release, and it is both disturbing and wonderful.

According to Gira, the album is a response to various personal, historical and political disasters. In some ways, that cryptic declaration takes the edge off the songs, as without pretense there's vast room for interpretation in his lyrics. Where "Palisades" might read as a particularly bitter response to suicide ("Reasons won't come/ And no one will regret that you're gone"), it could as easily lament claustrophobic personal terror: "Do you see how they ruined your mind?/ Do you see how they ruined your life?" Gira's smoke-stained baritone barely carries the words over acoustic guitar and delicate bell-tones, though later, he verges on overtaking a serene arrangement of church bells and a children's choir. The altogether peaceful "Kosinsky", with its deft, gently strummed electric guitar and bright fiddle motif, initially reads as a tender love song; Gira's description of hair like "translucent, liquid light" and "the rhythm of your breathing" seem poignant, though he again blurs boundaries by admitting he looks on his love with "the eyes of an animal."

The textural range of Everything Is Good Here lends an epic, almost timeless quality that goes a long way toward fleshing out Gira's often-mythological way with words. "All Souls' Rising" features impressions of pagan ritual, and self-purification via "the cull of foreign bone" and forcing "the blue smoke in... [to] fill the sac of skin." The relentless hammer of drums and murky stew of bass, organ and guitar-- not to mention Gira's own droning war cries-- conjure scenes of violent sacrifice and the chaotic laws of a still-dominant Earth.

Contrarily, the midtempo, Beatlesque "Sunset Park" reveals little in its single repeated line, "She brings some/ She'll bring one," but betrays a brilliant optimism in Gira's simple, dignified melody and wall of shimmering guitars. Later, on "Wedding", an extended, gently strummed introduction is offset by ominous brass tones and the dissonant children's choir, giving way to Gira's rugged moan. The choir caps each phrase with angelic harmonies, quite removed from the intentionally grotesque sound of Swans, or even scattered moments on this album. As a whole, Everything Is Good Here is at once breathtaking and, like many Gira releases, simply too much.

The overwhelming impression is one of acceptance and redemption, despite repeatedly bleak (or at best, mysterious) narration from Gira. The production helps, but digging deeper into its lyrics, it seems that, rather than prolong an inner struggle, The Angels of Light seek salvation. "What Will Come" openly requests that God "save us... from what will come," though it's difficult to reconcile Gira's leap of faith after an album's worth of explicitly self-empowering, judgmental narrative, clouded by contradiction. Nevertheless, music that resonates with as much emotional weight and vital abandon is rare, and though I'm less inclined to look for answers in the mix than revel in its chaos, Everything Is Good Here/Please Come Home is a commendable, heady experience.
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Angels of Light - We Are Him

The last Angels of Light album before Swans came back from the dead and rendered the project dormant. You can definitely hear My Father Will Guide Me... in its embryonic form here, with "Black River Song" establishing a propulsive, repetition-heavy feel right from the start. As with all AoL, there are loud and quiet songs, but songs like "Good Bye Mary Lou" and "Promise of Water" bring the project closer to full-on country music than anything else they've done (though the latter is decidedly a gothic, workman's song sort of country). Many tracks entirely lack Gira's signature baritone.

--- Quote from: Various musicians ---"We Are Him is the most assured and relaxed Angels of Light album since the debut, and deserves to be considered alongside Gira's highest peaks. The frightening rage of old Swans surfaces several times, albeit in more bucolic clothing; the contrast is bracing. Lyrically Gira's constantly in-pocket, addressing his subjects with renewed agility, but
also in a very relaxed voice; if De Sade had lived long enough to tell folk tales around a campfire, some of them might have sounded like this. The genuinely playful orchestration - banjos? horns? chimes? slide? check – is by turns charming and perverse, and has a band-of-brethren feel to it that's both ominous and exiting. The title track is like a pure shot of adrenaline. An intimate, unexpected masterpiece." - John Darnielle/The Mountain Goats

"the moment I played -we are him- my heart exploded with the feeling 'that voice!!!!!!' and it has done it to me everytime I have ever heard it. From my first cassette of filth to this newest work, michael gira's singing is my favorite gentle violence and lovers strangulation. Now is the best he has ever sounded and I cannot without sounding insanely thrilled express how much this means to me. -we are him- is touching, frightening, wonderfully different and whole." - Jamie Stewart / Xiu Xiu

"What‚s a young turk to do when Michael Gira, at 52, is at the height of his powers? Everything I‚ve loved about his previous work ˆ the apocalyptic soundscapes, the window-shattering drums, the glistening acoustic passages, the voice like God speaking out of the whirlwind - is distilled and reimagined in these songs, and infused with an organic warmth that only makes them the more urgent and harrowing. By turns frightening, funny, cathartic, wise, even strangely sweet, "We Are Him" is a sprawling masterpiece by an artist whose muse seems more fertile than ever."
- Jonathan Meiburg / Shearwater
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pinkpiche:
Thanks for The Dodos!

nippletwister:

--- Quote from: KvP on 05 Mar 2011, 02:36 ---Swans / Young God errata!
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What's the overlap on those Skin records with the World of Skin disc reissue?

SWOON! at My Gravitas:
I'm pretty sure the World of Skin reissue is made up entirely of tracks from those two albums

barista.babe:
I'm surprised this hasn't made it to the thread yet. I've been listening to the new Eisley LP "The Valley" non-stop for the past 2 weeks. I like it more than Combinations, but not more than Room Noises. The Fire Kite EP from last year was really just a tease, the LP as a whole is beautifully crafted. Hands down, my favorite track is "Kind." Listen and love it. Please note, this is NOT the Deluxe version that contains 2 live tracks.


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I'm going to eat a Reptar bar now.

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