Swans - Soundtracks For The Blind FIRST REACTION
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- čas přidán 24. 07. 2024
- Easily the longest reaction video I've done yet lol, I hope you enjoy :)
The Album: open.spotify.com/album/7yV8Wp...
My AOTY: www.albumoftheyear.org/user/s...
Timestamps:
0:00 Video Intro
0:51 Red Velvet Corridor
1:29 I Was A Prisoner In Your Skull
4:30 Helpless Child
10:21 Live Through Me
11:08 Yum-Yab Killers
13:14 The Beautiful Days
16:32 Volcano
21:04 Mellothumb
21:48 All Lined Up
23:09 Surrogate 2
24:40 How They Suffer
26:52 Animus
31:51 Red Velvet Wound
32:15 The Sound
37:57 Her Mouth Is Filled With Honey
38:56 Blood Section
39:26 Hypogirl
41:12 Minus Something
42:20 Empathy
45:18 I Love You This Much
46:52 YRP
49:37 Fan's Lament
50:05 Secret Friends
50:54 The Final Sacrifice
54:26 YRP 2
54:55 Surrogate Drone
55:28 Final Thoughts
All credit of the music heard in this video goes to Swans. - Hudba
This album is so schizophrenic. Borderline indescribable. Some parts are creepy as hell, some things are a little goofy, some things are genuinely sonically profound. There's nothing else like it as far as I'm aware.
Swans Are Dead I guess
Some context about 90's Swans and Jarboe:
- Jarboe is a fucking beast.
- She was Gira's ex wife (they entered a relationship after she came into the band as backing vocalist and keyboardist). She taught Michael how to sing and came up with a LOT. She's Swans most important member (Side by side with Michael ofc).
- Their relationship ended BECAUSE Michael wanted to end the Swans (and because of his alcoholism) and not the opposite "Jarboe split up Swans" as some haters like to spread that she was the culprit. She loved the band and continued to help them and was the one to create their brand online when the internet wasn't that big.
- Michael Gira's 'Drainland' and Jarboe's 'Sacrificial Cake' go hand to hand so that's a suggestion for a reaction if you would like.
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Some context about the album:
- First: the audio samples come from Jarboe's father, he was a FBI agent and would tape all their phones and record a lot. IWAPIYS is a tape from a deranged criminal talking to him "you're more fucked up than me"
* In the context of the album and themes I always thought about a survivor of a stroke with the vocals and recording. Food for thought :)
The little girl in The Beautiful Days is actually little Jarboe, in juxtaposition to the sex hotline worker in the audio immediately after it's really haunting. Her father actually taped, spied and recorded a lot of Jarboe's child and teenage life, relationships in some really creepy and possessive way...
- Volcano is about a popstar's life, with the abuse, drugs, sex and blood.
- Helpless Child, Animus, The Sound and Empathy follow the same narrative: Michael Gira's relationship with his allegedly schizophrenic mother.
- I don't have a fucking clue what the fuck is YRP's intro. There is no context or info and it haunts me tbh
- Some more quick connections that you can find in your next listen:
The Beautiful Days, Volcano, Minus Something, Her Mouth is Filled With Honey (another sample from Jarboe's father, when he found her tripping on LSD (honey))
Yum Yab Killers (infanticide - cannibalism - cult), All Lined Up (cult - war - infanticide), Hypogirl (deranged obsession), YRP (submission - cult - abuse)
Feel free to correct and add anything, this is pretty much all I know and my interpretation from obsessively listening to this album some time ago lmao
Suggestion for next Swans album: Children of God if you're interested in Jarboe and like Gira'e more vocal and rock side
Swans Are Dead if you like the long overwhelming masterpieces like The Sound
Another banger comment 🤝
Where did you found these? In some interviews?
Tinha que ser brasileiro, orgulho
Some corrections:
1. To my knowledge, Michael and Jarboe were never married. They were in a relationship for a while though
2. Jarboe didn't teach Michael to sing, in fact he "taught" her to sing like a rock singer. She was classically trained so she sounded a bit weird in the context
3. I'm pretty sure they broke up before Swans did. Ending Swans was Michael's decision because he wanted to move on from this project to something else
For some reason, track 7 Volcano fills me with dread. It's unbelievably unsettling to me. It's like the vocalist knows something I don't and is eyeing me down from the TV in the bar. Maybe it's the fact that it's by Swans. Maybe it's out-of-place nature within the album. But it gives me chills.
This is so real. Other people made it look like it's just a goofy lil song. But for me, it's like the scariest thing I've ever heard from Swans.
No doubt, i think it’s their most horrifying song in a catalog full of very dark material. The feeling it gives me is indescribable, like I’m not where I should be.
Volcano always makes me picture a person at the brink of insanity watching an old replay from a popstar they're obsessed with or something from a humid corrupted VHS tape that has ruined audio that sounds muffled and noisy. Alone and in the dark at 2 A.m. with the TV being the only source of light. Or maybe that was me listening to this album on winter at 2 A.M. 😂
Its the industrial sound effects that sound like an electric razor. It gives you this visceral feeling like somethings behind you. There is also the really disturbing lyrics. Its just all kinda hidden though.
I listened to soundtracks for the blind for the first time a few days ago and to me it feels like the “there’s a star in her mind” is collie telling herself that this is all worth it and she’s achieved her dream so it makes me so uneasy when we hear the lines from the point of view of her abusers at the end and those positive lines of being a star fade out and it’s like she realizes she didn’t succeed but it’s too late and it fades out as if her life is over, metaphorically or literally. The most scared I’ve ever been listening to music
So happy you finally did this!
To answer your question about Volcano (and some of the other tracks), it helps to know the background behind this album. At this point, the band had been running for over a decade, and the number of members had decreased to just 4 or 5 people, including Michael Gira and Jarboe. Gira wanted to end the band definitively, and this album was meant to be a capstone for the entire Swans project. It was made with just about every source imaginable - they pulled together old demos, unused tracks from previous albums, live recordings from their 1995 tour, and even tracks off of albums from solo releases. Here's what Gira said in 2008 about the production process:
"This double CD album has everything in there - all the ideas from Swans’ 15 years of work. There’s some contemporary recordings of the band as it existed in ‘96/7, with Larry Mullins on drums/percussion, Jarboe singing and playing keyboards, Vudi playing electric guitar, and Joe Goldring playing bass and electric guitar, and me singing and playing electric and acoustic guitar, but there’s also a huge amount of sounds and recordings that I (and a few by Jarboe here too) collected over the years. These are reassembled, looped, mangled, and in many cases overdubbed upon to create new pieces of music. Being the "artist" in this case, it’s hard for me to talk about this one, because the memory is so laden (or burdened!) with the experience of making this thing. I guess what I’m trying to say here is I almost had a heart attack making it (slightly kidding here). It was just overwhelming. I really set my own trap, dug my own grave on this one. There was SO MUCH material to deal with, to sift through (whole trunks full of decomposing, moldy cassettes and discs with samples and sounds), and the task of making it into something coherent was at times debilitating. Really like climbing up a mountain of sand. I don’t remember why I set this goal for myself, to somehow incorporate such a ridiculously disparate amount of material. I think maybe it was so I could justify throwing all that crap into the local dump, which is what I did when I finished the album. But in the end, after centuries of picking at this huge iceberg of material with a toothpick, my trusty engineer Chris Griffin and I managed to sculpt something out of it. It actually breathes, seems to live, in most places I think. There’s a press release below written by Kurt at Atavistic (Swans label at the time), and some reviews too, which might give you a better idea of how this sounds. Anyway, in the end, I was elated with this music, both because I liked it and because finishing it meant I could finally lay Swans to rest after 15 years. In my case, I’m always happiest when I’m leaving."
Lots of the tracks on here are original and first-time releases, but others had been released previously through other avenues. Volcano was a Jarboe solo release on her album Beautiful People Ltd., and other tracks, like All Lined Up, were complete reworks of songs that Gira had released solo. The result is very tonally diverse and all over the place - personally, I love that variety, and Volcano is actually one of my favorite tracks from the album! I love the sonic density of the instrumentals, and Jarboe's haunting vocals about being a female rock star is both powerful and deeply disturbing.
A companion album released two years later, called Swans Are Dead, contains live recordings both from their final 1997 tour and their 1995 tour. It is, in my opinion, the best live album ever released. They took a lot of the longer cuts from Soundtracks and twisted them up into even more intense, extreme versions of themselves - you haven't lived until you've heard the live rendition of The Sound :D. Some of the new, original songs from Swans Are Dead like Feel Happiness and Blood Promise are transcendent masterpieces of post-rock, so if nothing else you should listen to those!
Sorry about the wall of text, but I hope that gives you some context :)
Great comment! Very informative. I especially love the shout-out to Swans Are Dead. I love that thing
banger comment tysm
I’m glad someone dumped the lore! If I could pin a comment, this would be it. Lots of very important details in here.
boosting Swans Are Dead. When snowy described what he expected Soundtracks to sound like, couldn't help but laugh at the fact that that's exactly what SAD is
Wow damn, hearing the context makes it all the more impressive lol. Genuinely has to be one of the most creative minds in music
This album is supposed to be the soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist so when I listen to the album I try to come up with my own narrative based on the sounds and topics in the songs:)
yrp is the sftb version of a song called your property that swans released before during their no wave era.
also swans has a live album called swans are dead. it has most of the highlights from sftb and has better production then a lot of studio albums. you would not be able to tell it is a live album if it wasn't for the applauses at the start and the end of the songs. i would recommend it.
Definitely the most bizarre album I’ve ever heard
So Jarboe is probably the most important member of Swans after Michael Gira who founded the band in 1982 and is the band leader up until today. She joined them in 1986 and is the reason why Swans developed their sound into the post-rock teritory, because she introduced her female vocals and keyboards. Before her, their music was just heavy and abrasive, but after she joined, Michael began to write songs on acoustic guitar, started to sing and more or less shared lead vocal duties with her on subsequent albums. So the biggest difference between the "first" Swans and the Swans you listened to so far is that before they broke up, they also had a female singer for most of their existence.
To me, the album feels like a real soundtrack to a horror movie, where one character wanders through the desert or through abandonned playgrounds, while others are living in a big city and visit the underground clubs. I view every song as a different scene.
I think the album tries to portray the hard life people are facing. And also how hard it is for blind people to keep on and enjoy their lives - blind people in the literal as well as the metaphorical sense. So f.e. Volcano is about a woman who trades off her vulnerability, virginity, and kind spirit for becoming famous. She thinks that'll make her happy, but she just leads a totally sad and monotonous life. She's "blind" in that sense and doesn't see what she's doing to herself. The monotonous hip hop beats are quite fitting to that.
The weirder songs also all deal with blindness or sad people, like the sad-sounding sexworker who complains about their job and how their life is without any happiness. It's especially sad because right before that voice recording, you can hear another voice recording of a little girl singing "funny days beautiful days". I always viewed that as a memory. The sex worker remembers their carefree childhood and easy past and now they're sad and lonely and are struggling to accept what their life has turned into.
Then there's Jarboe's mother, who drifts more and more into dementia, and Gira's father, who turns blind. And then there are the songs sung by Michael Gira from the perspective of a helpless child who suffers under its abusive mother who drank and smoked during pregnancy.
And then there are the crime songs, where some horror story murders and violence are mentioned. And no one does anything against it, the people just continue with that. They're oblivious to the violence, they're "blind".
So this is why there are so many different sounds on that album, because there are so many different people with different problems but all of them are sad. So that theme puts all of those different songs into one single unit. Also, the lo-fi sound of the album ties it together as well, everything sounds a bit muffled and distant, like you can't really grasp it. It's like an old cassette mixtape full of weird shuffled songs about despair or something.
used to be my favorite Swans record and is still absolutely incredible. so glad to have it on vinyl as well. such a dark, emotional, vast album. makes me question everything about it every time i go back. a simply unbelievable experience. loved your reaction and critique as well. keep it up man!
oh hey @mike_drop!!
What is your favourite now?
volcano is such a good track. Jarboe is so underrated
nice. we need more sftb reactions on youtube
Based tago mago profile pic
also since you seemed to really like this, the dance of the moon and sun by natural snow buildings is another album i would recommend, its absolutely gorgeous
its another long one, at 2 and a half hours, but its a very good entry point into natural snow buildings. my favorite album from them is 7 and a half hours long which is why its harder to recommend but in my opinion its even more gorgeous and ascending than dance of the moon and sun, which is already one of the most beautiful albums ive ever heard
I wholeheartedly agree, NSB is one of the best bands ever and if you are into swans they’re a perfect place to go. So many beautiful albums that are absolutely colossal in size but well worth it to get lost in.
Shadow Kingdom is a better introduction
@@hivedrops8326 id have to relisten to agree or disagree but generally i also think that album is realllly good for beginners
Natural snow buildings spotted in the wild, I’d say for a swans fan the winter ray would be better to introduce the band but that’s just me (of course as a true fan I’ve heard everything they’ve officially put out but whatevr)
YES, I’m really happy that your checking this album out.
PLEASE MAKE A VIDEO FOR THEIR LIVE ALBUM "SWANS ARE DEAD" It's my favorite album from Swans and I've been looking to see someone's live reaction to it because it has some of Swans best songs ever!(ps awesome video I enjoyed watching it all :D!)
YES PLEASE DO. NOT ALONE IS MY FAVORITE SWANS SONG
@@pumpkin_the_snek Not Alone is insane. Probably the most mind-rattling bone shuttering swirl of music. If I wasn’t so emotionally attached to Blood Promise and Feel Happiness it would probably be my favorite Swans song.
@@GlorryGaming thats valid as hell. but just the intensity of 5:30 alone is enough to stand out to me. it might be the most intense thing they ever did. It feels like your crashing into the sun at top speed. when those synths or what not come in, oh my god. that song is mandatory full volume
Swans Are Dead is so amazing, it’s not even just an incredible live album is an incredible album period. Top 5 in their discography
This is the album that made me like swans. It’s a masterpiece in ambient music.
respect for reacting to this. You're awesome
Dude you need to listen to The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads , that album is so good
And so the winter time comes calling, through the skies I'm crawling, from cloud 9 i've fallen 🗣📢
YESSSSS ive been waiting for this
Volcano is about a naive, starsighted pop star who gets controlled and sexually taken advantage of by her producers and what have you. It’s very disturbing when paired with the sound of the song.
46:52 now you gotta hear COP, just to hear how different of a song Your Property was originally
it's really one of the best post-rock albums of all time and without a doubt a top 3 swans record. it's a soundtrack that's better than almost any soundtrack without being a soundtrack if you put this album in one sentence. for an album i'd recommend if you're looking for overall beauty, ascension, and build-up, i'd recommend checking out the band Boris and their album Flood. the live version especially hits different. while they are a drone, stoner metal, and even sludge metal band, Flood is their overall masterpiece and tells a story perfectly with just their instruments and uses little to no vocals.
Btw this album (or more specifically, some of the first 12 tracks) feels like several different stories, and in the second half of the album you're offered to see an other side or even continuation of these stories. Like in Red Velvet Corridor - Red Velvet Wound, Helpless Child - The Sound, Yum-Yab Killers - Hypogirl, All Lined Up - YRP
Really great reaction as usual! I just wanted to say that if you plan on listening to The Beggar, I would recommend listening to leaving meaning before you do. I’m not gonna spoil anything but I’ll just say that The Beggar borrows heavily from the themes of the past 4 albums
^this right here!!
I feel like the trilogy, leaving meaning, and The Beggar are all connected. Like you said, themes from those albums show up, but even lyrics and musical passages from some songs. Kind of like how the trilogy’s title tracks built from the previous.
would absolutely LOVE to see your thoughts on the beggar. u seem to have a real love for the more beautiful moments in swans' music, which that album is absolutely rammed with, the main standouts being ebbing and michael is done. gorgeous, yet still the haunting experience that we all expect
Always a good day when someone experiences new Swans music! Thanks for capturing what it's like to hear something like Soundtracks for the first time; that album is seriously in a league of its own. "The Sound" is legit one of the most mind-melting songs I've ever heard and I can't get enough of it. As usual tho, please keep up the great vids; your style of content is some of the most chill and engaging out there!
(Also- I'm still gonna keep asking for a Sunbather vid lol)
Been hyped for this review and it was awesome! Great work!
Soundtrack for the blind let’s goo
I can’t believe I missed this! Great video.
White Light and The Great Annihilator are also really good
top 5 album for me, absolutely amazing
This album makes me imagine that I found it, unlabeled in a dusty old basement. Almost like a video of crime/paranormal apparitions/past live dead but documented. Idk. Thanks for the reaction.
YESS!!! my favorite album of all time 🎉🎉
Your reaction is right on - yeah, it's that good. Saw them live on this tour and literally cried.
THe long awaited Reaction
Oh my Gawd YEEESS
Also me: when Volcano Kicks in ..Why am I watching this alone at night...
and it gets worse from here Rip
this is like Lost Highway from David Lynch in particular..but I'd say it gives huge vibes of being in a David Lynch movie and hell nah
46:25 definitely
Btw Great reaction as always man
My favorite Swans album!
DUDE!!!! Thank you for doing a reaction to Soundtracks, literally the greatest album ever made in my opinion. No album has pulled as many emotions out of me like Soundtracks and I don’t think any album ever will
Also Helpless Child might be the greatest song ever recorded
This really is a one of a kind album. Feels like anxiety and dementia. The only thing I can compare it to is The Caretaker's works.
White Light from the Mouth of Infinity next for some post-punk action? It's my favorite album from them.
So glad you reacted to this one! Would highly suggest Kayo Dot - Choirs Of The Eye and Liturgy - either HAQQ or 93696
This album is too powerful. Peak music right here
consistent as always🙏🙏 your reaction to volcano was gold lol
My body is ready
Hey Snowy, got an album recommendation that I think you’d really like, if you haven’t heard it already.
The self titled album by Horse Jumper of Love, I’m not too good with genres but I think it’s a mix of slow-core and shoegaze? Big Duster vibes, with just a hint of Slint. I absolutely love it, and I think you might too! (A reaction would be pretty epic, but obviously no pressure 😊)
Since you really dig Swans I really suggest listening to Godspoken. They have one record out called "My Spirit Is An Animal" and its some of the wildest and best Swans worship I've heard. Super out there and atmospheric as hell
The most haunting moment of the album was driving home to Phoenix when The Beautiful Days came on. Was somewhere between Quartsite and home (~200 mi. of open desert until Buckeye) and the fox, mixed with the halfway point of the song made me feel like that the desert was watching me. Perfect ambiance
This vid dropped while I was at a swans concert no way
This album is such an incredible experience and unlike anything else i've heard
I am shocked you haven't done any tortoise. TNT is one of the best post rock albums ever made, and really stands out on its own.
Hey man, your reactions videos are great. I'd love to see your take on Stereolab's Dots and Loops one day. Peace!
now The Great Annihilator :D
1. The Sound 10/10
2. Animus 10/10
3. The Final Sacrifice 10/10
4. Helpless child 10/10
5. I was prisoner 10/10
6. Volcano 10/10
7. How they suffer 10/10
8. I Love you 10/10
9. The beautiful days 10/10
My favorite.
Recently I locked myself in my small dark closet and tried to listen to this. Let me tell you. Never has a piece of music made me visually hallucinate. During Helpless Child and The Sound, I was pressed up against my door, and suddenly I would see flashes of light illuminating the room around me. The dim light from my bedroom was very slightly shedding light into the closet. It was like that light 100x, but in sync with the music.
I could not finish the album and I stopped after The Sound. My closet was getting too hot, there was no comfortable place to sit or lie down, and the music was too disturbing (plus, The Sound is still a perfect closer for the album).
It was a miserable experience... 10/10, will try again when I find a bigger pitch black room in my house.
👏🏻👏🏻
Yeah everyone remembers where they were hearing the sound for the first time… and the second… and the third…
Request: Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live Forever
the volcano effect
I’ve never saved a vid so quickly lol
Have you listened to any Can? Also quite schizophrenic and fantastically amazing
Today is the day - Sadness Will prevail
If you want more stuff that sounds like this album you should listen to michael gira's side project the body lovers/the body haters
Volcano is a song from jarboe's solo album "beautiful people ltd", idk why they decided to use it here tbh but I like it, and the song isn't what jarboe usually sounds like either
Current93 - I Have A Special Plan For This World is also similar to this album, especially the tape recording part of I Was A Prisoner In Your Skull
@@cryingmakesmehorny4632 Current 93 is a very very special band. Highly worth exploring in depth.
Yep, as someone said before - if you want earlier Swans album (from 90's era) but sounding more like their post 2010 stuff, go - and I mean, like FOR REAL - check SWANS ARE DEAD. It's a live album and I personally hate live albums, but this one has actualy almost studio quality to it and shows that SWANS before break-up, were much closer to their post reunion stuff. It's louder, it's harsh and very brutal at some moments, you have these loong, repetitive sections that the band is known for etc. As much as I hate live albums, SWANS ARE DEAD is standing proudly on my shelf next to their studio discography. Worth mentioning is a fact that there are songs you won't find on official albums and if you will, they sound completely different. Then - you propably know that - but if you want REALLY FUCKING HEAVY AND BRUTAL SWANS, you must listen to their first era (5 albums and EP - Filth, Cop, Young God, Greed, Holy Money and the culmination of that which is another live album called Public Castration Is A Good Idea ... ;)). Especially that last album is really difficult to get through and I mean like - it's a really, fucking brutal and heavy shit. By that time I don't think there was a heavier band than Swans, even when you compare it to metal.
Yeaaaah! Soundtracks is v strange. Skirts the edges of all that's most intimately depraved about human behavior. Feels like it carries so much emotional weight, not only from the band's lives as people, but from the human species. You mentioned how abrupt some of the tonal transitions in the album are, and I couldn't help but feel like that's an intentional element of the album's themes. The music does a bait switch as early as A Prisoner in Your Skull, with the build that dissolves to the phone tap about how fucked up you are. I can see how Volcano seems out of left field at first, but it follows a song juxtaposing innocent childhood joy with down-pitched testimony of a sex worker and a song about a cult that eats babies (for more of what Michael Gira thinks about celebrities, see: The Great Annihilator). All Lined Up shows the psychopathy behind someone that would eagerly violate others in the worst ways imaginable... like the sexual exploitation of women in poverty, or young women seeking fame.
I love the Her Mouth Is Filled With Honey/Blood Section transition. Totally abrupt and directly contrasting in tone, but executed with so much sustained momentum that it feels like we were already here when we arrive. I like to think of it like HMIFWH is Dad's perspective on what Jarboe was doing in that room, and BS is Jarboe's perspective on that experience. Love that you said this at 15:21, about Minus Something's companion song! I always hear I Love You This Much's second half as a being on a carnival ride while drunk. Makes me feel motion sick like no other piece of music can. Instrumentals on ILYTM, YRP, and YRP 2 make me think of abusive relationships and the tension that exists between them in daily life. YRP 2 sounds to me outright like a sonic painting of domestic abuse.
Both YRP and I Crawled, which is on Soundtracks' live album Swans Are Dead, are remade versions of early 80s Swans songs, which are their own beasts. In my opinion, Jarboe's interpolation of the lyrics bring so much horror out of them each. I know Michael has said that I Crawled was written after he read a book about 20th-century fascism's exploitation of family values with the national leader being a proxy for a strong father figure. I Crawled is, of course, the song that would evolve into The Seer, Bring the Sun/Toussaint L'Ouverture, and The Glowing Man. I think the anti-fascist themes of that song really enrich each metamorphosis after, in lyrics (I see it all/I see it all/I see it all/I love you too much/I love you too much)/[Liberté!/Égalité!/Fraternité!]/{No/No/No/No/Yes/No/Joseph is standing behind my back/Joseph is digging his hands in my chest/Joseph is moving his tongue in my neck/Joseph is me and you are a liar!} and their devastating, unrelenting instrumentals. I tend to extend that anti-authoritarianism to Your Property, YRP, and YRP 2 too. The double entendre of domestic abuse and political abuse of power in YRP makes it a harrowing followup to The Final Sacrifice, like he desperately turned to religion, and their violence and abuses of power remained. And then Surrogate Drone made me laugh out loud the first time I heard it--literally just a long, flat drone, followed by the tape machine clicking off. That's the entire album's emotional lens on human life. A numb drone of dissociative atmospherics, followed by its unceremonious end.
Every song on this album grew on me with time. Helpless Child might be Swans' best song (the version on Swans Are Dead might even be better?), but I think my favorite anymore has to be Yum-Yab Killers. It's so cartoonishly evil that I can't help but jam so damn hard whenever it's on! Also that they used a live recording instead of covering it in the studio just gives it a macabre everything. The maniacal repetition of "Now blow your brains out," and then the drum's marching beat ends and the audience is like "WWOOOOOOO." This album lives and breathes cognitive dissonance. Mentioned it several times already, but Swans Are Dead I come back to way more often than Soundtracks. What you described as your expectations for Soundtracks, is pretty much exactly what you get from Swans Are Dead. Some of the best songs on Soundtracks, more fully realized in sheer vibes, with songs not found on any studio albums, songs adapted from Jarboe's solo projects running parallel to Swans at the time (her and Michael's albums literally have "SWANS RELATED PROJECT:" before the name on their covers), and a few songs from The Great Annihilator adapted to the live setting. One, I won't say which, is the other serious contender for best Swans song ever. Might be controversial advice, but I think SAD flows a lot cleaner if you start with the second disc, from their 1995 tour, and then go to the first disc, from their 1997 tour. Sonic heights.
The Great Annihilator and The Beggar are also essential Swans records. All after that are great and deserving, but I wouldn't call priorities! Thanks for sharing your reaction. This one is a challenge to sit through and a challenge to wrap your head around. I'm curious what you'll think of it in six months. Be well snowy!
Evil ass album
Dude dude dude now you need to do the album FILTH if your brave enough and if you dare don't let its run time of 36.46 deceive you your in for autio CNC....
Please react to filth next
if you liked the cultish stuff, then you should definitely check out Children of God
FILTH