Michael Gira Discusses Swans’ Final Album

Photo by Samantha Marble

Last July, Swans announced that they were working on The Gate, a live album that’ll serve as a fundraiser for the band’s next studio LP–the final album to be recorded with their current lineup. Michael Gira recently shared some details of that last album in an interview with Mojo (via Consequence of Sound). Although its title hasn’t yet been announced, the record is currently being mixed, with a slated May release date. 

“It sounds like the musical equivalent of Ben-Hur … coupled with Kurosawa’s Ran,” Gira told Mojo. He added, “It is epic. One piece has 240 separate tracks. But there are also a lot of delicate moments. There’s a lot of orchestration — strings, horns, female singers. But no bagpipes this time. The longest pieces is 28 minutes, and there are a couple that are 22, 23.”

Producer/engineer John Congleton started recording the album at Sonic Ranch in Texas, before Gira took the album to Dallas and, finally, the northwest, where recording was completed with Bill Rieflin at Soundgarden’s studio in Seattle. Gira wrote one of its songs for his wife, Jennifer, who sings the track.

Gira concluded, “The album is valedictory just because the music itself is valedictory,” he explained. “Every album is kind of always the last one. It’s always the most important thing you could ever do.”

Song titles include “The World Looks Red,” “The World Looks Black,” “Cloud of Forgetting,” “The Glowing Man,” and “Finally Peace.”

Swans’ last album was To Be Kind.

Watch a Pitchfork.tv documentary about Swans:

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