WHERE DOES A BODY END? – A documentary on the band SWANS: Kickstarter Trailer
Michael Gira writes on their Facebook Page:
“Marco Porsia has been following Swans around on tour and in studio for the past 6 years, filming and documenting everything. He’s been given access to the extensive Swans video and image archives (dating back to 1983) and he’s now compiling everything and making a documentary feature about Swans. He’s also filmed numerous interviews with various people of interest about the band. He’s launched a Kickstarter page to help usher him on his way to completing the film. He’s a good soul and doing good work. If you’ve seen the companion DVDs that have accompanied the recent releases you’ve experienced the high quality of the sound and images… Much Love! MG”
The savage and tender extremes of Swans told with unprecedented access to archive material and interviews spanning the past 35 years.
Link to the Kickstarter page HERE
Swans (/swɒnz/) are an American experimental rock[5] band originally active from 1982 to 1997, led by singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Michael Gira. The band was one of the few groups to emerge from the early 1980s New York no wave scene and stay intact into the next decade. Formed by Gira in 1982, Swans employed a shifting lineup of musicians until their dissolution in 1997. Besides Gira, the only other constant members were keyboardist/vocalist/songwriter Jarboe from 1984 to 1997, and semi-constant guitarist Norman Westberg. The band became known for its experimental instrumentation and repetitive song structures. In 2010, Gira reformed Swans without Jarboe
After dissolving Swans, Gira formed Angels of Light, continued his work with Young God Records and Jarboe continued her solo work.
In January, 2010, Swans’ reformation was heralded with a new song posted on the Young God Records’ MySpace, and officially confirmed by a post on the Young God Records Facebook and MySpace accounts.[19] Gira decided to bring back Swans during an Angels of Light show five years prior. In the middle of performing the song The Provider onstage utilizing “large chords that were very sustained and swaying, in this sort of slave-ship rhythm,” he felt “a nascent urge right then to re-form or reinvigorate Swans because I remembered how elevating and intense that experience was”.[20] To help raise money for the upcoming new Swans album, Gira released a new solo album, I Am Not Insane, via his Young God Records website.[21] LAS Magazine posted an article entitled “Kickstart My Art” on alternative financing in “a cash-strapped music industry, unable to rely on record label financing, [that] is positioning its own quid pro quo: fan dollars to fund projects in exchange for exclusive material and a sense of involvement” that cites Swans selling out of the 1,000 signed and numbered copies of I Am Not Insane as an example of reverse financing where proceeds from one project are rolled over to finance the next.[22]
Swans then went on a series of U.S. and European tour dates,[23] and headlined the Supersonic Festival in Birmingham, England in October 2010. The first post-reformation Swans album, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, was released on September 23, 2010, and the band simultaneously embarked on an eighteen-month world tour.[20] The band were chosen by Portishead to perform at the All Tomorrow’s Parties I’ll Be Your Mirror festivals that Portishead curated in July 2011 at London’s Alexandra Palace, and, in September 2011, in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
In 2012 Swans released the live album We Rose from Your Bed with the Sun in Our Head, featuring material culled from their 2010–2011 tour, in support of production and recording costs for their forthcoming record, The Seer.[24] Initially released as a limited handmade edition of 1000 copies, We Rose… was re-released in May 2012 as a deluxe digipak.[25]
On July 15, 2013, Gira announced a new, handmade live album in the vein of I Am Not Insane and We Rose…, titled Not Here / Not Now. The album announced for sale on October 14, with the proceeds helping to fund the recording of the new Swans studio album with John Congleton, announced in 2014 as To Be Kind.[26][27]
In 2014 the band announced that it signed with Mute Records for the world outside North America and that the band would be touring. That same year, in November, the band curated a three-day program at Le Guess Who? in Utrecht, The Netherlands, including Wire, Silver Apples, Ben Frost, Prurient and Words To The Blind, a project by Savages together with Japanese band Bo Ningen.[28]
In 2014 both The Seer as well as To Be Kind were ranked on Pitchfork Media‘s “Top 100 Albums of the Decade So Far 2010-2014.” The Seer was ranked 17 and To Be Kind was ranked 85.[29]
The band announced on July 22, 2015 that they will be recording their fourteenth studio album in September 2015, following a fundraiser album entitled The Gate,[30] as with the three previous post-reunion studio albums.[31] The upcoming studio album is expected to be the final album released under the current lineup of Swans.[30]
On April 5, 2016, Swans announced their fourteenth studio album The Glowing Man and shared a two-minute excerpt of the twenty-nine minute title track. The album was released on June 17, 2016 on Young God Records and Mute Records
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