Swans Interview September 2010 [PART 2]
By: Tim Robins
RFB: Speaking of there being another Swans album which you will presumably put out, having set up the Young God label, do you think that when there comes a time that you won’t be able to perform live, will those other roles in the industry- label manager, A&R etc- take over?
MG: Well, I’ve been producing other people’s music and putting it out intensely for about the last 12 or 15 years. So actually, I’m kind of sick of it. I want to perform my own music again, and I want to concentrate on my music. Running a record label is a thankless and unprofitable task at this point. To me, Young God is going to revert to be mainly about releasing my own music. However, there are a few artists on the label that I’ll keep working with as long as they want to stay on it. As far as looking for new bands or something, that’s over…it doesn’t make any sense at this point. Right now I want to keep recording and performing. It’s my life sport, it’s what I’m made to do.
RFB: Despite the fact that Swans' live shows were something you gained so much notoriety for in the early days, in the same ilk as the majority of the “No Wave” bands who many see as your progenitors, considering what you said about the live shows being so physically demanding, do you feel that as your musical career has continued- and especially on the new Swans record- you have focused on the studio element more?
MG: I don't look at them as the same thing. The studio is one thing and live is another. I do concentrate on the studio all the time, but still the Swans material, and even my stuff with Angels of Light, has always been very visceral. I love playing live. The whole experience of recording can be quite tedious, but playing live is what I'm made to do, it's why I'm on earth. It's the best thing I could possibly be doing at that moment. Of course, recording is so different to playing live, at least for me. I don't just try to capture how a band sounds live when in the studio. I try to treat it as a different instrument in itself that you can use to develop the music beyond how it is performed. The performances must be great, but it's only a starting process, a place from which to develop. When we perform live, the last thing I want to do is sound like the record.
RFB: In the statement on the Young God site, you spoke of the music of Angels of Light during The Provider as “lifting me up towards what, I can only assume, will be my only experience of heaven...[I] remember that sensation and question whether there is a God”. Linking this statement to the title of the new album (My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope To The Sky) are you at a stage of life where you feel comfortable exploring ideas of a higher power, or the point of your existence?
MG: That's what I've always been thinking about. This is pretty heavy stuff! As an artist, or as any human being, you have to be thinking about the big questions, otherwise why are you alive? You're not just an ant...well, maybe you and I are! But if you don't want to be a hunk of automated flesh then I think you have to be questioning that sort of thing. I experience music in that way. When it reaches a peak, and some kind of epiphany, which doesn't happen all of the time, but when it does, I don't know how to define it. It's not like I started reading the Bible! It's a different experience. If you take up meditation and you find that you completely lose a sense of self and become immersed in something, it's more like that. That's what I'm always reaching for. With the new record it was 8 months of constantly being consumed about how to develop things, being kept up at night with ideas running through my head, running the whole record through my head when I'm lying there. It is a whole organic process that takes me over for a long period of time, and that has its own kind of mystery.
RFB: Have your influences diversified at all for the new album? Were there current bands who have really influenced the new Swans stuff, or did you find yourself going back to the touchstones from the early 80s and hitting on those again?
The influence is Swans. We're not like other bands. There are a few key things that have influenced me along the way, and they're really diverse. One of those will be having seen Pink Floyd in the Ummagumma days, maybe in '69? That was amazing. Of course I was only 15 and on acid, so maybe it was a skewed perception of the experience, but I'll never forget it! Punk rock and bands like The Cramps and Suicide. That music had a very strong influence. I worked with members of The Cramps in Angels of Light, and that was very inspirational.
RFB: Moving into slightly different waters: can you tell us a bit about making the 1000 hand printed album covers for CD/DVD of I Am Not Insane to support costs of recording/promoting the new Swans album. You said it made you want to kill everyone...
MG: I did it with this idea that it would take 6 months or something to sell these out, so that I could do it in a leisurely way, but they sold out in 2 weeks. I had only made about 200 in advance, then I had to make another 800 of these things. It was an incredibly laborious process. In the end, it was about 2 or 3 months of 14 hour days, to fill all the orders and do all of the accounting and stuff, each order. It seemed like it would never end! In the meantime I was starting to record. Oh my God. But it was good because it raised most of the money for the recording. It was a lot of work but I'm glad I was able to do it.
RFB: Do all of these different artistic mediums work in tandem, then? Can one of your songs influence a story (Gira has published a collection of short stories entitled The Consumer) or piece of artwork, or can a story you have penned ever prompt you to write a song?
MG: Definitely. I find the artists who do the artwork for albums on my label, or I do it myself. Part of my work as an artist allows me to do that. I think one sort of informs the other, and it helps contribute to an aesthetic of a band, it's essential.
RFB: You said in an interview that you really liked the adaption of McCarthy's novel The Road (which is amazing!) Would you ever “do a Nick Cave” and think of making a film or sound tracking one, really linking your music to a visual image?
MG: Both the book and the film are absolutely amazing. I would love to do soundtracks but that hasn't happened for me, which is a shame. I would do it as long as I wasn't working for free.
For Part One of the interview click here
Artists in this article: Swans