SWANS - Thank you very much, my dear swan!

22. June 2016

Swans

SWANS - Thank you very much, my dear swan!

We don't talk to Michael Gira in an anonymous hotel room or a shabby backstage chamber of a club, but in the living room of guitarist Kristof Hahn, who since 1989 belongs to the illustrious circle of New York "Destructive Apostles" ("Der Tagesspiegel"). Gira looks like a living work of art: a tall, skinny cowboy hat wearer who smokes a chain, slurps black coffee, speaks good German ("as a teenager I worked in a sawmill in Solingen"), his counterpart is strictly fixed and has a lot to tell.

eclipsed: Michael, I hear "The Glowing Man" is your last album with the Swans. How do you know it's time for something new?

Michael Gira: Quite simply: When you're with the same five gentlemen 200 days a year - and that in the narrow tour bus and in the rehearsal room - at some point you know every molecule of them, and there are hardly any surprises left. So it's high time to throw in a Molotov cocktail and see what happens next.

eclipsed: Even though you call this line-up the best of the Swans so far?

Gira: So is it. Except I'd rather be in an uncomfortable place than a comfortable one. That's my nature. I'm not the type to hold on to something just because it's going well. And I'm surprised the group lasted so long anyway. After all, the Swans are a very intensive undertaking that requires a lot of strength. And I have to cut a little short at 62.

eclipsed: Because your performances are more than just concerts?

Gira: They are mental challenges based on complete concentration and devotion. We don't recite the songs the way they are on record, but try to take them to a higher level. And if that works, it transports both us and the listener to another place.

eclipsed: How come you're not deaf yet, given the volume at which Swans usually work?

Gira: I'm lucky. Wearing hearing protection is like wearing ten condoms during sex. It is this tornado of guitars and overtones that shows me why I am on earth. As soon as he builds himself up and becomes something bigger, he holds the answer to all the questions there are.

eclipsed: Sounds like spiritual enlightenment..

Gira: It's like seeing Pink Floyd in 1969, except I didn't realize it back then. I was at this festival in Belgium, on acid - a hippie lying in the dirt. (laughs) But there are parallels in the intensity and tension of this moment. Swans are also like an acid trip - with slow build-up and orgiastic climax.

Lesen Sie mehr im eclipsed Nr. 182 (Juli/August 2016).