Jeff Hemmings – Music: Swans

It’s the last tour with this configuration of the group, which has been seven years standing now”, says Swans frontman Michael Gira. “After this tour, which goes through to December of next year I’m going to revert to my old ways, which is gathering people on a case-by-case basis for each record and tour. And, I’ll be touring a lot less, and it wont be a set band as it is now. So, it’s not the final Swans band, but it it is the final Swans tour with this particular gathering of humans.”

Swans are not for the faint-hearted. Notorious for the extremely loud gigs, they perversely make music that is trance-like and meditative. We’re not talking hardcore thrash or death metal here, but music that is transcending and quite beautiful at times.

Swans are not for the faint-hearted

“There’s a corollary to a minimalist composer whose work I love by the name of Charlemagne Palestine. He did a piece called ‘Strumming Music’ and that’s him sitting between two grand pianos, playing one with his left hand, one with right hand, and he’s playing arpeggios and gradually he develops those arpeggios furiously, and eventually halfway through – the piece is about 60 minutes long – you realise that these chords of harmonics are taking over; there’s just this choir of angels, these resonates taking over, and they’re more prevalent than the actual notes that are being played. There’s a similarity that happens with us with our guitars.”

Emerging from the New York no wave scene back in the early ‘80s, Swans called it a day back in 1997 before reforming in 2010, from whence they have released a string of epic, dark and bleak albums culminating in this year’s ‘The Glowing Man’, the final Swans release under this configuration.

Concorde 2, Sat 8 Oct. SOLD OUT