What The Hell Is Going On? #66: Swans, Jai Paul and the dawn of ‘New Ideas’
By: Thomas Hannan
Hey mate.
Happy new year and all that. Mine was spent trying to make out Sonic Youth and Shellac on stage at the Hammersmith Apollo despite the fact I was so drunk I could barely see. I hope yours was as spectacular. I’ll try and review my night when a few more memories come back to me.
Speaking of spectacular, have you seen this piece we did on Swans? It’s our director Nicholas Abbott’s favourite piece of Rockfeedback TV, and he’s a man of taste, let me tell you. In it, Jen Long interviews band leader Michael Gira (pictured) about the difference between reforming and ‘reconstituting’ a band, as well as discussing topics such as his orgasms and what it feels like to sell vials of your own semen. And the live footage is as brutal as that conversation was bizarre.
Elsewhere on the site this week, we’ve decided to go ambitious. Whereas at this time of year we’d usually have some sort of list of bands we think are going to make it big in the next 365 days, we instead thought we’d go one better, and in a column called ‘New Ideas’, present to you a song from a new band we like every single day of the week. Our New Music Editor Mike Harounoff is charged with finding said acts, and he’s picked Zoo Kid as his first victim. Wish him luck in his noble quest.
‘Twas indeed said Michael who first introduced me to our current Artist of the Week Jai Paul, too, so I trust his taste. We’ve searched out every single piece of music the man has ever made available – all five minutes of it – and included it in our article, making the piece as comprehensive as you can be about someone who hasn’t played a gig or released any music.
After this long Christmas break, I think it’s high time we all hung out, and I can’t think of a better occasion at which to do so than the first Rockfeedback gig of the year. That happens to be this Friday, when Tennis, Lonely Galaxy and Elephant descend upon our London home of The Lexington in Angel for a night we’re running with our friends at White Heat. As usual, we’ll be the ones in jeans and t-shirts – come say hi.
Tom.x
Artists in this article: Swans