clear the room

Swans - 'Feel Happiness' & 'Hypogirl', live in Berlin, 1997

The truth is, I missed out on the Swans until about five years after they had disbanded; I had limited exposure to the them during their existence as a recording and performing unit. The first time hearing them was in a friend's apartment sometime in early 1987, a few months before the release of their Children Of God LP. Someone had loaned him a copy of the Young God EP, and one afternoon he played it for us. It was painfully slow. And percussive. I understood it as a work of art, A minimalistic yet bombastic sound assault. For all purposes, I told my friend, one could play this at the end of a party to get rid of unwanted guests. I never saw the record at his house after that, so I never gave it a serious listen. I moved away a few months later to go to college and Children Of God was released while I was there. Cash was limited and I couldn't justify dropping three days' worth of meals on a record I might not like. In 1989, I obtained a used copy of Holy Money. It had it's interesting moments, but hadn't really moved me. I ended up selling it, along with most of my vinyl to pay the rent. Fast forward 14 years to my late 30's: On a quest for something musically interesting, I buy Children Of God / World Of Skin on CD at the Virgin Megastore in Las Vegas, of all places. And while listening to it on a plane flying to Chicago, I wondered to myself why the desire to not go hungry kept me from buying this years back. I was floored by the combined beauty and intensity of the music, the unnerving hopelessness and futility, and just a shimmer of redemption held within their songs.
Continued searching for other titles over the years has net me most of discs, all of which have been unique listening experiences.Their final studio release, Soundtracks of The Blind is probably the most unsettling of their later period titles, pulling the listener into a thick liquid mesh of sonic landscapes and disturbing found tape recordings. It's an epic work, and like all of their recordings, somewhat of an endurance test. The live documentation, Swans Are Dead gives fans one disc of live recordings from their 1995 tour and one disc from their final tour in 1997; and as a live collection, it is very successful in capturing the power of their live shows if played at proper volume. As someone who never experienced a live performance of Swans, it certainly works in making me wish I had.
Unfortunately, M. Gira and Co. has not see fit to re-release the two 'bunny' albums (referred to as such for their Deryk Thomas cover art), White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity and Love Of Life. And I don't know if this is due to problems with record companies they were originally released on, or if it is the choice of the band to withhold these discs. It's too bad, as we're in the midst of a flood of "Deluxe Edition" releases, and those two albums are each deserving of such recognition. It's frustrating to a music enthusiast to continually see these two discs seeking 'collector' prices online. And that situation is even more so aggravating when one sees what the original limited "Bunny Box" ( a very nice boxed package which contained both albums and a cd single) sells for.

Postscript: Upon research, I did find that "White Light..." is available on both iTunes and eMusic. As are most of their other releases. You get the music but not the packaging.