Swans: The Ecstatic

How has it been to revisit Swans after so many years – are you picking up where you left off or is this a reinvention of sorts?
It’s definitely a reinvention; it’s not a nostalgia act. This is not a bunch of old people getting together and playing their old songs – it’s a new way to work. It’s turning out to be really inspirational.

Early on in the band's career, there seemed to be a sense of danger and confrontation with stories of people being sick from the noise. Do you still feel compelled to confront and challenge the audience to the same degree?
I’m not sure I ever wanted to confront an audience, I don’t know about challenging either – I wanted to make a total experience. As much as for selfish reasons, I was hoping people would get something out of it as well. The idea of it being at all aggressive seems kind of silly to me and the word danger I find a little preposterous as well. Dangerous is being a soldier in Afghanistan or suffering from the bombardments of the drone in Pakistan, that’s danger. I’m just making music. But I do strive to make something that’s completely overwhelming, other times it’s delicate of course. I’m moving towards an extreme experience.

Do you have to work hard to maintain the intensity of the music and live performances?
It’s very physically difficult to do what we do, it takes a lot of concentration and time to develop it. I’m speaking about the record, but also we’re in the midst of live rehearsals right now, which takes focus. We have to continually try to make the song invigorated and alive. The set we’re doing right now has four songs from the record and four older songs. Three of the songs are about 20 minutes long (laughs), it’s not that they’re some prog rock thing where there’s twenty changes in it; it slowly, gradually, morphs within itself. We're making a sound which I find incredibly satisfying and physically ecstatic.

Is playing with Swans a cathartic experience for you?
I don’t know about catharsis – if you could picture someone’s body atomising – that’s what I want - just that idea of disappearing within the music. The best moments are when something becomes better than you’d anticipated. Even when the song’s just awful and you’re ready to shitcan the whole thing, then you try some desperate move and it becomes something else even better than you could have envisioned. That’s the way I like working. But the songs are never fixed, they constantly change – they’re changing now live, they’re morphing into something completely different.

Angels of Light’s We Are Him is one of my favourite records of the last few years. Is that a project you imagine you’ll return to in the future?
It’s not something I’m against, but we’re touring Swans for probably around 18 months and I’m still trying to keep my record company together, at least in a limited way. And I have the exigencies of family life, etc, so that’s a lot right there. If I have time, sure, I would like to do Angels at some point, but right now my main focus in life is Swans.

Young God has released some fantastic music over the years. Other than the new Swans album, what else has the label got coming up?
We just released James Blackshaw’s album, called All is Falling, which I find to be quite beautiful. The next thing is an album by the supremely talented Wooden Wand – James Toth is the songwriter for that. All I can say is he’s a really high level American songwriter with a great sense of purpose and place, he has lyrics that describe everyday events in a very expansive way but with a good sense of black humour involved too. The orchestration in the songs is just compelling and beautiful, I think he’s right up there with the greats like Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and the more recent Vic Chesnutt.