Photograph courtesy of Fionn Reilly
Swans have today announced that they will be playing their biggest ever UK show at London’s Roundhouse on May 21 2015. It comes in the wake of the exhaustive European tour that will be occupying the band for the final four months of 2014. To mark the news, NOWNESS have a short film of the band, featuring an interview with their leader Michael Gira, who performs a solo acoustic version of ‘Oxygen’ from this year’s To Be Kind, our favourite album of the year so far, alongside footage of the band playing live. Watch that below. An accompanying interview with Gira also reveals plans for the next Swans project, which sounds characteristically lo-fi and lacking in imagination: ‘a monumental live set-up involving ten hammered dulcimer players playing through Fender Twin amps, a choir, ten horns and symphonic percussion’. Says Gira: “I want to make it into a total, wipeout sonic event, performed in classical music venues. The problem is the volume; they’re not able to allow the amount of decibels that we… excrete."
Further to this, Mute, who Swans signed to for the release of To Be Kind, will be reissuing the band’s 1983 debut Filth on October 27, as the first in a series of remastered re-releases from their catalogue, available on CD, download and vinyl, the latter coming with two reproduction live posters. Head to the label’s website to pre-order and see their upcoming dates in full.
