Swans’ second live album Feel Good Now is available on vinyl for the first time since its original limited edition release in 1988, via Mute / Young God Records.

Feel Good Now is a collection of live recordings from their 1987 European tour, recorded by the band's sound engineer on a Sony Professional Walkman, with many of the tracks being from their album Children of God, which was released the same year.

This follows the re-release of their first live album Public Castration Is a Good Idea and their brand new album The Beggar, released in June 2023. Led by Michael Gira, Swans formed in 1982 and have produced a series of diverse albums both before their disbandment in 1997 and after their reformation in 2010. During this time Swans have made their mark as masters of their craft and are an influential band for countless experimental and post-rock acts.

TRACK LISTING

1. New Mind (Live)
2. Blood And Honey (Live)
3. Trust Me (Live)
4. Sex God Sex (Live)
5. Like A Drug (Sha La La La) (Live)
6. Beautiful Child (Live)
7. Blackmail (Live)
8. Children Of God (Live)
9. Beautiful Child Reprise (Live)
10. Blind Love (Live)
11. Thank You, Goodbye (Live)
12. Good Luck (Live)

Swans present their sixteenth studio album The Beggar.

The Beggar was written and produced by founding member Michael Gira and features contributions from recent and former Swans members, members of Angels Of Light, as well as guest Swan Ben Frost.

Following 2019’s leaving meaning, the album emerged from the 2020 lockdown with Micheal explaining, “after numerous pandemic-induced cancellations of tours for the previous Swans album leaving meaning, and an apparent bottomless pit of waiting, waiting, waiting, and the strange disorientation that came with this sudden but interminable forced isolation I decided it was time to write songs for a new Swans album and forget about everything else. They came relatively easily, always informed by the suspicion that these could be my last. When I finally was able to travel, songs in hand, to Berlin to work with my friends recording this record, the feeling was akin to the moment in The Wizard of Oz when the film changes from Black and White to Color. Now I’m feeling quite optimistic. My favourite color is pink. I hope you enjoy the album.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There are few bands more incendiary than Swans, and 'The Beggar' has been a hotly anticipated arrival in the shop for me especially. The atmospheric gloom and soaring heft of Gira & Co's previous LP's is as present as ever, but lightened with a (dare I say it?) more song-based structure to a few of the pieces. It's classic swans, but it's also a perfect sidestep for one of the most visceral bands in the game.

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl Tracklist:
1. Paradise Is Mine
2. The Beggar
3. Los Angeles: City Of Death
4. The Parasite
5. The Memorious
6. Michael Is Done
7. Why Can't I Have What I Want Any Time That I Want
8. Unforming
9. Ebbing
10. No More Of This

+ 'The Beggar Lover (Three)' Included In The Digital Download.

CD Tracklist
CD1
1. The Parasite
2. Paradise Is Mine
3. Los Angeles: City Of Death
4. Michael Is Done
5. Unforming
6. The Beggar
7. No More Of This
8. Ebbing
9. Why Can't I Have What I Want Any Time That I Want?
CD2
1. The Beggar Lover (Three)
2. The Memorious

Swans’ live album, ‘Public Castration Is A Good Idea’, originally released as a bootleg in 1986, is now available officially for the first time ever, via Mute and Young God Records.

Led by Michael Gira, Swans formed in 1982 and produced a series of diverse albums before their dispersion in 1997 and after their reformation in 2010. During this time Swans have made their mark as masters of their craft and have since become an influential band for countless experimental and post rock acts.

The record includes a number of live recordings from shows across multiple venues in the UK in support of the release of ‘Holy Money’ in 1986, featuring tracks from that album along with ‘Greed’. 

“... there's no denying the intrinsic entertainment value of having a copy of ‘Public Castration Is A Good Idea’ around the house. The title alone is enough to freak out your parents and roommates; imagine what'll happen if you actually play it for them.” - Pitchfork.

TRACK LISTING

Money Is Flesh
Fool
A Screw
Anything For You
Coward
A Hanging
Stupid Child
Another You

SWANS Soundtracks for the Blind - originally released in 1996, and the band’s last studio album prior to their 2010 reformation.

“This album has everything in there – all the ideas from Swans’ initial 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 Jarboe and I collected over the years. These are reassembled, looped, mangled, and in many cases overdubbed upon to create new pieces of music… 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. … When I decided to reform Swans in 2010 Soundtracks was what I referred to as a starting point”. 
- Michael Gira / Swans 2018.

“Now that this last phase of Swans is over, I'm not quite sure it actually happened. It's already fading, like most things. I think we achieved something there though, and it was good after shows to go out and meet people and get a sense of how the music has affected them, either that night or through the years. I'm always touched when I hear the music has had a salutary effect on someone, since it's had the same effect on me - which is why I do it. So, even if the details are increasingly hazy, I feel we've left something positive behind, and perhaps contributed something worthwhile.

Now, as is natural, I'm looking towards what comes next. I'm currently writing new material for the next phase of Swans, some of which I'll perform on my upcoming solo tours. Sitting there alone on stage with a dead piece of wood and some wires and just my voice is a challenge I set for myself a number of years ago, trying to fully inhabit the same thread that's run through the music all along, with the simplest of means. I think I've gotten pretty good at it over time. I play the guitar my own way. I've never really learned how to play it conventionally and I don't care to do so. I could just as easily be hitting two rocks together. It provides a context for the voice and words, and just as in the music of Swans, when all the elements (known and unknowable) combine, it can lead to something beyond itself, which is always the place I'd like to go: somewhere else. I hope to see you there."
- Michael Gira / Swans 2018.

TRACK LISTING

VINYL:
A1 Red Velvet Corridor
A2 Helpless Child
B1 I Was A Prisoner In Your Skull
B2 Live Through Me
B3 Yum-Yab Killers
B4 The Beautiful Days
C1 Volcano
C2 Mellothumb
C3 All Lined Up
C4 Surrogate 2
D1 How They Suffer
D2 Animus
E1 Red Velvet Wound
E2 The Sound
E3 Her Mouth Is Filled With Honey
F1 Blood Section
F2 Hypogirl
F3 Minus Something
F4 Empathy
G1 I Love You This Much
G2 YRP
G3 Fan's Lament
H1 Secret Friends
H2 The Final Sacrifice
H3 YRP 2
H4 Surrogate Drone

Originally released in October 1987 on the Mute subsidiary Product Inc and reissued first in 1997, Children of God is a brand new remaster of the album and will be packaged with a bonus live album, Feel Good Now.

TRACK LISTING

Original Album:
1 New Mind
2 In My Garden
3 Our Love Lies
4 Sex, God, Sex
5 Blood And Honey
6 Like A Drug (Sha La La La)
7 You’re Not Real, Girl
8 Beautiful Child
9 Blackmail
10 Trust
11 Real Love
12 Blind Love
13 Children Of God

Feel Good Now:
1 Intro
2 Blind Love
3 Like A Drug (Sha La La La)
4 Blood And Honey
5 New Mind
6 Sex, God, Sex
7 Beautiful Child
8 Blackmail
9 Trust Me
10 Children Of God
11 Beautiful Child Reprise Backstab
12 Thank You, Goodbye

'Leaving meaning.' is the band’s fifteenth studio album, the follow up to 2016’s 'The Glowing Man'. Written and produced by Michael Gira, the album features contributions from recent and former Swans, members of Angels of Light as well as Anna and Maria von Hausswolff, Ben Frost, The Necks, Baby Dee and Jennifer Gira.

Michael Gira explains, “leaving meaning. is the first Swans album to be released since I dissolved the lineup of musicians that constituted Swans from 2010 – 2017. Swans is now comprised of a revolving cast of musicians, selected for both their musical and personal character, chosen according to what I intuit best suits the atmosphere in which I’d like to see the songs I’ve written presented. In collaboration with me, the musicians, through their personality, skill and taste, contribute greatly to the arrangement of the material. They’re all people whose work I admire and whose company I personally enjoy.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Michael Gira is a man who clearly can't quit (nor should he). Having given up on the band a number of times, in the midst smashing out some truly amazing albums, he always returns. This iteration of the band includes all the sounds we'd expect from Gira but bolstered by the perfectly selected cast of collaborators and co-conspirators.

TRACK LISTING

LP
A1 Annaline
A2 The Hanging Man
A3 Amnesia
B1 Leaving Meaning
B2 Sunfucker
C1 Hums
C2 Cathedrals Of Heaven
C3 The Nub
D1 It's Coming It's Real
D2 What Is This?
D3 My Phantom Limb

CD
CD1
1 Hums
2 Annaline
3 The Hanging Man
4 Amnesia
5 Leaving Meaning
6 Sunfucker
CD2
1 Cathedrals Of Heaven
2 The Nub
3 It's Coming It's Real
4 Some New Things
5 What Is This?
6 My Phantom Limb

Swans present a remastered reissue of their ninth studio album, ‘The Great Annihilator’, on Mute.

‘The Great Annihilator’, originally released in 1995 and described at the time as “…a majestic symphony of haunting melodies and shifting moods” (SF Bay Guardian), will be released as a 2CD set, on double vinyl - the album’s first release on vinyl for decades - and as a digital download album. (Michael Gira’s ‘Drainland’ is also available as a standalone digital download album.)

The 2CD and double vinyl (in the form of a download code) formats will also feature ‘Drainland’, Michael Gira’s debut solo album recorded at the same time as ‘The Great Annihilator’.

The album was entirely remastered by Doug Henderson but only after Bill Rieflin (‘Honorary Swan Forever’) recently tracked down DATs and cassettes containing unmastered mixes from the sessions. Michael Gira describes the discovery as “a revelation of great sonic effect.” Talking about the recording, Gira said “I lived in a tent in a mosquito infested studio right next to Cabrini Green in Chicago for what (?) something like 3 months, rarely leaving. Band members and Jarboe and Bill Rieflin etc came and went, and somehow we crafted this thing into what it became.”

‘The Great Annihilator’ line up features Michael Gira, Jarboe, Bill Rieflin, Algis Kizys, Norman Westberg, Clinton Steele and Ted Parsons

After 2014’s epic To Be Kind, SWANS return with a new album, The Glowing Man, announced as the last album release of Swans’ current incarnation.
The Glowing Man was recorded at Sonic Ranch, near El Paso, Texas, with John Congleton as recording engineer. Further recordings were made in Dallas, Seattle and Berlin.

Swans, led by Michael Gira, formed in 1982 and, after disbanding in 1997, returned with the critically acclaimed albums My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky (2010), 2012’s The Seer and 2014’s To Be Kind.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Another monolithic collection from gloom-merchants Swans. Equal parts brooding and pensive, but with a rarely embraced melodic sensibility. Further evidence of their unrivalled talents.

TRACK LISTING

2CD
Disc 1
1. Cloud Of Forgetting
2. Cloud Of Unknowing
3. The World Looks Red / The World Looks Black
4. People Like Us

Disc 2
5. Frankie M
6. When Will I Return
7. The Glowing Man
8. Finally Peace

2CD / DVD
Disc 1
1. Cloud Of Forgetting
2. Cloud Of Unknowing
3. The World Looks Red / The World Looks Black
4. People Like Us

Disc 2
5. Frankie M
6. When Will I Return
7. The Glowing Man
8. Finally Peace
DVD – Swans Live 2015

TRIPLE VINYL (With Poster)
Side 1
1 Cloud Of Forgetting
2 Cloud Of Unknowing

Side 2
3 Cloud Of Unknowing Pt2

Side 3
4 The World Looks Red / The World Looks Black
5 People Like Us

Side 4
6 Frankie M

Side 5
7 When Will I Return
8 The Glowing Man Pt1

Side 6
9 The Glowing Man Pt2
10 Finally Peace

Led by Michael Gira, Swans formed in 1982 and, after disbanding in 1997, returned with the critically acclaimed albums ‘My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky’ (2010), ‘The Seer’ (2012) and 2014’s ‘To Be Kind’.

Swans’ classic album ‘Love Of Life’ (1992) is now re-mastered and reissued as a deluxe vinyl edition with an exclusive poster and digital download code.

The digital download code for ‘Love Of Life’ also includes 18 bonus tracks.

Swans’ debut album re-mastered and reissued on vinyl, including two reproduction live posters.

The first in a series of re-mastered catalogue reissues.

‘Filth’ was originally released in 1983. The album was recently described by Clash magazine as “a brutally exhaustive work swimming in a thematic pool of audacious abjection,” and by The Village Voice as “no wave with five years of practice, too messy for mysticism and too funny for suicide.”

A NOTE FROM MICHAEL GIRA:
"Hello There, we (Swans) have recently completed our new album. It is called To Be Kind. It will be available as a triple vinyl album, a double CD, and a 2XCD Deluxe Edition that will include a live DVD.

The album was produced by me, and it was recorded by the venerable John Congleton at Sonic Ranch, outside El Paso Texas, and further recordings and mixing were accomplished at John’s studio in Dallas, Texas. We commenced rehearsals as Sonic Ranch in early October 2013, began recording soon thereafter, then completed the process of mixing with John in Dallas by mid December 2013.

A good portion of the material for this album was developed live during the Swans tours of 2012/13. Much of the music was otherwise conjured in the studio environment.

The Swans are: Michael Gira, Norman Westberg, Christoph Hahn, Phil Puleo, Thor Harris, Christopher Pravdica.

Special Guests for this record include: Little Annie (Annie sang a duet with me on the song Some Things We Do, the strings for which were ecstatically arranged and played by Julia Kent); St. Vincent (Annie Clark sang numerous, multi-tracked vocals throughout the record); Cold Specks (Al contributed numerous multi-tracked vocals to the song “Bring the Sun”); Bill Rieflin (honorary Swan Bill played instruments ranging from additional drums, to synthesizers, to piano, to electric guitar and so on. He has been a frequent contributor to Swans and Angels of Light and is currently playing with King Crimson)." - I love you! Michael Gira.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: The Swans go from strength to strength. Their third album since reforming in 2010, 'To Be Kind' finds them even surpassing the near perfect 'The Seer' with a beautifully orchestrated maelstrom of swaggering sonic delight. You won't hear a better experimental rock album all year!

TRACK LISTING

Screen Shot
Just A Little Boy (For Chester Burnett)
A Little God In My Hands
Bring The Sun/Toussaint L'Ouverture
Some Things We Do
She Loves Us
Kirsten Supine
Oxygen
Nathalie Neal
To Be Kind

DVD (Available With The 2CD And DVD Edition LCDSTUMM364):
Swans Live 2013 Primavera:
To Be Kind
Just A Little Boy
Coward
She Loves Us
Oxygen
The Seer / Toussaint L'Ouverture

"The Seer took 30 years to make. It’s the culmination of every previous Swans album as well as any other music I’ve ever made, been involved in, or imagined. But it’s unfinished, like the songs themselves. It’s one frame in a reel. The frames blur, blend and will eventually fade.

The songs began on an acoustic guitar, then were fleshed out with (invaluable) help from my friends, then were further tortured and seduced in rehearsals, live, and in the studio, and now they await further cannibalism and force-feeding as we prepare to perform some of them live, at which point they’ll mutate further, endlessly, or perhaps be discarded for a while.

Despite what you might have heard or presumed, my quest is to spread light and joy through the world. My friends in Swans are all stellar men. Without them I’m a kitten, an infant. Our goal is the same: ecstasy!" - Michael Gira.

“For the last two years, one of the world’s most bellicose bands has paid respect to its legacy largely by leaving it alone and tried to expand it by testing its old limits … this is exactly the kind of forward-pointing roadmark Swans deserve.” —Pitchfork

“The Swans are currently the greatest rock band on the planet....” —The Quietus

“[Gira] is looking for beauty, pure and simple, unfettered by meaning or standard songwriting notions of emotional resonance.” —The Wire

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: The mighty Swans return with 'The Seer'. From ribcage crushing noise to gentle acoustic passages, this has all the hallmarks of the classic Swans "sound"; intense, powerful and pure.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lunacy
2. Mother Of The World
3. The Wolf
4. The Seer
5. The Seer Returns
6. 93 Ave. B Blues
7. The Daughter Brings The Water
8. Song For A Warrior
9. Avatar
10. A Piece Of The Sky
11. The Apostate …

After years of pursuing Angels of Light and recording and producing a diverse roster of artists for his Young God label, Michael Gira has reconvened his legendary group Swans. As he says: 'This is not a reunion. It's not some dumb-ass nostalgia act. It is not repeating the past. After five Angels of Light albums, I need a way to move forward, in a new direction, and it just so happens that revivifying the idea of Swans allows me to do that'.

This highly anticipated album is as powerful and diverse as anything Gira's ever done, in Swans or otherwise. It opens with the epic, soul-crushing "No Words / No Thoughts", but quickly veers to more pastoral terrain, and on to ever-ascending monotonal grooves. A filmic-folk idyll featuring Devendra Banhart on lead vocal abruptly shifts to cataclysm, and is followed by more airplane-taking-off ascensions, art songs and lethal sonic pummelling. In short, this is the new Swans album, a significant advance from where they left off and as challenging and emotionally demanding as ever.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: An album that encompasses all that is the Swans; from the brutal pummelling of your rib cage to the gentle caressing of your senses, this is the Swans on majestic top form. The swans are back, long live the Swans!

TRACK LISTING

1. No Worlds / No Thoughts
2. Reeling The Liars In
3. Jim
4. My Birth
5. You Fucking People Make Me Sick
6. Inside Madeline
7. Eden Prison
8. Little Mouth