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okay suchman, the problem lies not in their 'finding of god' so much as it is that this discovery is so ideologically opposed to what endeared swans to me in the first place. to quote sir db:
"gira was unique in the way he did that. he wasn't revelling in it so much as exposing it. he wasn't trying to overcome it or enjoy it of some sense of macho hedonism. he was reducing it to this base level where it just became a monotonous grind. it wasn't about becoming an animal or destroying yourself, it was about how humanity was embedded in its own systems of brutality, how everyone was entangled in it - how desire could so easily become abuse, how desperation and money and addiction reduced us to these base drives. the important thing about this early stuff was how it depicts a world in which everyone is complicit, there's no position of innocence. every perspective facilitates the abuse. even the passive observer is guilty. obviously, this kind of truth CANNOT be tolerated in our contemporary hyper positive consumer culture."
he nails it. gira was aligned with industrial music from the perspective of his sentiments in that he wasn't bemoaning the state of mankind, but rather objectively conjuring it. he didn't critique, he didn't offer a means of solution, but just spewed it out and left it to fester. there was a definite shift however around the time subsequent to children of god (with this new 'love-life' approach certainly permeating that record's intense spiritualism ughhhh) where gira seemed to allow some light into his worldview, albeit still tempering it with a liberal dose of his signature brutality. the new stuff, however, simply doesn't feel honest in that gira's worldview has undoubtedly changed. on the new record, take something like 'some things we do' or 'screenshot' where he is merely rattling off phrases which could have been picked out of a swans lyrics hat for fuck's sake. therein lies the caricature (forgive me for the skewed thought, I'm real fucking tired).
skuj you raise merzbow, who fits pretty perfectly into what I'm saying. from the outset the purpose of akita's music has been to evoke an almost synaesthetic response, to create decidedly psychedelic visions by way of pure sensory overload. of course, to compare the material documented on lowest arts & music and say oersted is to find a distinctly advanced approach to sound, employing more deftly a wider range of sounds, greater use of dynamics etc. and yet the fundamental outcome remains the same: to overload the listener using a barrage of sounds to do so. this is the BASIC IDEOLOGICAL PREMISE of the merzbow project, and irrespective of the sources he is using to conjure said sounds, whether that be a computer or an array of shit, the fundamental intent remains intact. akita has clung steadfastly to his vision and has used a variety of means with which to achieve it. conversely, while gira and swans are using a markedly similar palette to that which they used on soundtracks for the blind, the purpose of the music is no longer to overwhelm but rather to achieve transcendence, to rise above the murk in which their music was previously grounded, if not inextricably immersed in. it was this latter approach which drew me to them; a 15 year old kid jaded by the sad state of rock music, seeing music that didn't so much obscure the light as it did totally invert it, rendering the whole world black. to then shift so dramatically unfortunately, to me, means that it is not befitting of the swans name, but instead feels more like a more powerful version of the angels of light. thus, I can't help but be of the belief that the swans name was reverted to because of its reputation, and hence has drawn in the dudebros who apathetically profess love for a band whose music I (and I genuinely mean this but hate writing it) cannot resonate with it on a basic level. that is, they don't 'get' it (big call). for example I have a friend with whom I saw swans, and he said "I can't deal with this, why can't they play the nice bits at the end of their songs as opposed to the noisy shit?", ironical considering that THIS IS SWANS, CUNT. it goes far beyond mere descriptors of it being 'dark' and 'heavy', and yet I feel that their current output can for better or worse be reduced to said adjectives, even when much of the time it is indeed much more than that, because of michael gira's almost comical approach to lyrics and vocalisation now. like they've toured with chelsea wolfe and devendra banhart for fuck's sake, are they not the very epitome of a feigned approach to 'dark' music, pure musical theatre? that this mythos around new swans has been constructed seems really absurd to me considering that they are certainly at this point aligned with those kind of acts.
also don't bring fucking needle drop man into this. pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeee. he's the problem right there, seriously. that dude kick-started my manhating.
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