Sleeve notes
Swans
Soundtracks for the Blind · 1996
Swans formed in New York in 1982 out of the city's no wave scene, led from the start by Michael Gira and initially built around a sound of punishing repetition and volume — a wall of distorted guitar and pounding, mechanical drums that pushed physical extremity as far as a rock band could take it. Over the following decade the band's sound expanded considerably, incorporating found sound, drone, and increasingly the vocals of Jarboe, who joined as a full collaborator and co-writer, moving the band toward something more expansive and unsettling rather than simply loud.
Gira disbanded Swans in 1997 and spent the following decade recording primarily as Angels of Light, a quieter, largely acoustic project that continued his songwriting in a folk-adjacent register far removed from Swans' earlier extremity, before reviving the Swans name in 2010 with a new lineup and picking back up the band's exploration of volume, repetition, and duration on an even larger scale. Across both names, Gira's insistence on pursuing whatever direction the material demanded — however alienating or exhausting to make — has remained the connective thread.
