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This is my favorite of the last three so far. I especially like the ending to The National Anthem... i mean.. A Little God in my Hands. Catchy tune.
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May 8, 2014 04:42
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Astrochicken posted:This is my favorite of the last three so far. Ending a song with by twisting the knobs on a bunch of delay pedals is kind of standard fare for post-rock-ish-bands these days, but some how Swans make it sound so much bigger than other bands.
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May 8, 2014 12:03
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I wanna get drugs and listen to Just a Little Boy and peel my skin off
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May 8, 2014 16:26
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nomapple posted:Definitely take earplugs. Counterpoint: do not take earplugs and stand as close to the speakers as possible.
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May 8, 2014 18:52
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I wore earplugs when I saw them for the first half of the first song (which I believe was To Be Kind), but when it dropped, the sound just came through muddled and murky, so I took them out and enjoyed it a lot more. I was standing back by the sound board, so not too close to the speakers. Didn't really feel much pain/temp hearing loss afterward.
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May 8, 2014 19:00
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I hope, by earplugs, no one is talking about those foam ones that you use for industrial purposes, or for sleeping. Those sound like poo poo and is guaranteed to ruin a concert experience. A $20 pair of musicians earplugs (ribbed kind) are so much better. Even better are ones molded to fit your ears, which I have been happily using for 15 years now, though expensive. My experience is that a $20 upgrade to musicians earplugs is the best bang for your buck.
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May 8, 2014 21:01
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Go to any music shop and get a pair of Vater drummer headphones for $20, your hearing is priceless.
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May 8, 2014 21:33
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Yeah I'll admit after hearing the chorus of "wear earplugs" online about seeing them live, I didn't do enough research and bought up some lovely foam plugs. Maybe (hopefully) if I get to see them again I'll invest in some higher quality earplugs.
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May 8, 2014 22:33
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My dad gave me some he uses for shooting assault rifles at the range, but yeah they're foam. Probably ought to get the good kind if I can before the show. I do plan to stand really far back though. No real point to getting right up there, everyone's going to be in a trance anyway most likely.
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May 8, 2014 22:48
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This album rules, it puts you through a lot of lows and highs but the highs are higher than ever. Bless this mess. Also pulled the trigger on tickets and got some earplugs- see you at the Bowery. Pontificating Ass fucked around with this message at 06:51 on May 28, 2014 |
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May 9, 2014 00:28
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9.2 BNM 
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May 12, 2014 11:39
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It's available on Spotify now, too.
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May 12, 2014 12:21
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Gave it a first listen today. It's good, it feels more different to The Seer than I was expecting. I've seen a lot of people say that even on first listen they were more into it than The Seer, but for me I definitely like The Seer more at the moment. Still, 2 hours is a long listen and I need more time with it before I cast any serious judgement.
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May 12, 2014 21:22
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nomapple posted:Gave it a first listen today. It's good, it feels more different to The Seer than I was expecting. I've seen a lot of people say that even on first listen they were more into it than The Seer, but for me I definitely like The Seer more at the moment. Still, 2 hours is a long listen and I need more time with it before I cast any serious judgement. The Seer is a far better album but Bring The Sun is such a strong song.
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May 12, 2014 21:24
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Cymbal Monkey posted:The Seer is a far better album but Bring The Sun is such a strong song. This is pretty much exactly how I feel at the moment. Wouldn't be surprised if I end up listening to the whole thing a handful of times, and then cherry picking my favourite tracks and sticking to those in the future. I dig repetition in music, but I felt like some of these songs were dragged out far too long. Loving Bring the Sun and A Little God In My Hands though.
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May 12, 2014 22:58
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The Seer tracklisting is just brutal. The title song is just this giant chunk of concrete that you get forcibly shoved into and it's placed so early in the album. It's so immense, that the stress of listening to it affects the songs before it, it makes The Wolf so dreadful because you know when it's over you're about to be ransacked by what sounds like Satan's own bagpipe.
Automata 10 Pack fucked around with this message at 09:39 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 09:11
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Oh my heavens. I feel like I have been beaten up today - beaten up by sound. I felt my bones vibrating last night. I doubt anyone reading this is on the fence about seeing them, but if you are - go!
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May 15, 2014 12:54
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What kind of setlist is it on this tour? Seeing them in a couple of weeks.
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May 15, 2014 15:57
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Snagged this from setlist.fm: (Unknown – "Frankie M") A Little God In My Hands Oxygen (Unknown – "Sunlight, please don't go") The Apostate Bring the Sun Miguel, can you give some more details about the show? I'm thinking of doing a road trip out west in September and possibly catching them in Portland
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May 15, 2014 16:32
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El Miguel posted:Oh my heavens. I feel like I have been beaten up today - beaten up by sound. I felt my bones vibrating last night. Seconded, the show last night was unreal. They took 'Oxygen' and made it into something else entirely. I am still processing all of it, will try to make a more coherent post later. No doubt though, absolutely see them on this tour.
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May 15, 2014 18:05
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Wraith of J.O.I. posted:Snagged this from setlist.fm: What would you like to know? It was spellbinding. I didn't move at all (I drank one beer! and then held the empty bottle all through the set). I really have a hard time articulating it. I remember hearing someone describe Fugazi, once, as the kind of band that could play on a stage lit by one single solitary light-bulb, and still kill it. That's what this was like: no gimmickry at all. It was transcendent (ugh. pretentious. but it really was). Hello other DMV goon.
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May 15, 2014 20:19
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Aye
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May 16, 2014 00:29
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Gonna have to eat my words on my initial lukewarm reaction to this album. It's growing on me like crazy. Weirdly infectious for a 2hr beast.
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May 16, 2014 13:04
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Uhhh so I'm listening to To Be Kind having never heard anything by Swans before because I've been hearing it's been getting great reviews, and holy loving god, Bring the Sun is such a big song. Like, Godspeed You Black Emperor big but even bigger than that. Just completely massive and nigh-overwhelming  But I also kind of love it. It's scary and mysterious and new and exciting. I'm assuming they were a big influence for bands like Godspeed since they've been around since the 80s? Is all their music like this or does it vary from album to album? I'm definitely interested in checking out the rest of their discography now. I don't see this as an album I'm going to listen to frequently or one from which I'm going to be listening to single tracks by themselves, but every once in a while when I feel like digesting an entire album as a whole and being transported to another world, I have a feeling this is gonna be perfect for that. One of my good friends saw them last year at Bonnaroo, and when he got home, he couldn't stop raving about that show for a while. I probably should have checked them out sooner to see what he was talking about.
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May 20, 2014 22:46
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Rageaholic Monkey posted:Uhhh so I'm listening to To Be Kind having never heard anything by Swans before because I've been hearing it's been getting great reviews, and holy loving god, Bring the Sun is such a big song. Like, Godspeed You Black Emperor big but even bigger than that. Just completely massive and nigh-overwhelming It wasn't until mid-'90s that Swans really started indulging in the kind of widescreen post-rock that GYBE seems to have perfected (check out stuff like "The Sound" from Soundtracks for the Blind and "Feel Happiness" from Swans Are Dead), but yeah, the influence is undeniable. Swans' sound has changed an incredible amount over the years. One can think of their career as being (roughly) divided into three phases: early, minimal, cruel-as-gently caress no-wave (Filth [1983], Cop [1984], Greed [1986], Holy Money [1986]), more conventionally melodious gothic-rock (Children of God [1987], The Burning World [1989], White Light from the Mouth of Infinity [1991], Love of Life [1992], and The Great Annihilator [1995]), and heavy, maximalist blues-rock (My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky [2010], The Seer [2012], and To Be Kind [2013]). 1996's "Soundtracks for the Blind" is kind of an anomaly here; it's comprised largely of a whole bunch of disparate demos, outtakes, and experiments that Michael Gira had laying around and decided to sequence into a proper album. If you're looking for more stuff in the vein of To Be Kind, your best bet is to start with the rest of the stuff they've released since reforming in 2010: the studio albums "My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky" and "The Seer," and the live albums "We Rose from Your Bed with the Sun in Our Head" and "Not Here/Not Now." If you want more Godspeed-esque post-rock stuff, grab "Soundtracks for the Blind" and "Swans Are Dead." You would probably also find working your way back through their aforementioned late-'80s/early-'90s gothic rock stuff pretty rewarding; none of the songs on those records are quite as expansive as Godspeed or modern Swans, but there's still a lot of gorgeous arrangements going on there. Frankly, I would recommend listening to every Swans album and deciding for yourself what you like. You might surprise yourself. I know this isn't a very helpful answer with a discography as expansive as theirs, but everything they've released has something to offer. Even "The Burning World," by far their worst album, isn't really bad music so much as a failure to capture the elements that make Swans such a unique group.
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May 20, 2014 23:18
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This is an excellent post and I agree with all of it. My recommendation is actually to work through their discography backwards, and slowly. Really digest every album, listen four or five times at least, which I know is a ten hour time synch for three albums, but it's worth it, there's so much there that you'll miss your first time through. Swans, in my experience, get more challanging as you move backwards, broadly (The Great Annihilator being the biggest exception I can think of, being almost acceptable to put on in polite company). I love Swans but I've never managed to get into Holy Money and before.
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May 20, 2014 23:29
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That is definitely helpful, thank you!  Now I have a direction to go in, I just need a good amount of time to devote to digesting it all (as you said, Cymbal Monkey).
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May 20, 2014 23:40
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Rageaholic Monkey posted:That is definitely helpful, thank you! Be sure to post trip reports!
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May 20, 2014 23:44
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Cymbal Monkey posted:Be sure to post trip reports! And Oxygen: 
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May 20, 2014 23:49
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Rageaholic Monkey posted:And Oxygen: Oxygen definitely has a lot of early Swans in it, but with the impeccable production they show in their post-reformation albums.
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May 20, 2014 23:52
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too many monkeys on this page
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May 20, 2014 23:53
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Cymbal Monkey posted:This is an excellent post and I agree with all of it. My recommendation is actually to work through their discography backwards, and slowly. Really digest every album, listen four or five times at least, which I know is a ten hour time synch for three albums, but it's worth it, there's so much there that you'll miss your first time through. Swans, in my experience, get more challanging as you move backwards, broadly (The Great Annihilator being the biggest exception I can think of, being almost acceptable to put on in polite company). I love Swans but I've never managed to get into Holy Money and before. Listening to Swans' discography in reverse sounds like the ultimate recipe for a several-week long depression to me. Like a recommendation I'd make as a sick joke on someone. So yeah, Rageaholic, I'll be wantin' a trip report asap.
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May 21, 2014 00:00
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Oxygen has grown on me a ton. Wasn't too into it as a preview track, but it's weirdly infectious and a track from the album I revisit quite a lot. Also The Great Annihilator is the album that got me into Swans, but working backwards sounds like a good idea if you already like what you hear.
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May 21, 2014 00:02
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Just listened to Bring The Sun, sceptically, for the GYBE comparison and aye...very similar to Gamelan / Mladic. Need to listen to To Be Kind more (despite that loving album cover).
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May 21, 2014 00:12
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ICHIBAHN posted:Just listened to Bring The Sun, sceptically, for the GYBE comparison and aye...very similar to Gamelan / Mladic. Need to listen to To Be Kind more (despite that loving album cover). F#A#∞ is ripped straight from Soundtracks for the Blind. Probably best to start there if Godspeed is what you're after.
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May 21, 2014 00:15
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We need to talk more about the loving horse in Bring the Sun. There's a loving horse in Bring the Sun!
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May 21, 2014 00:20
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And even the horse thinks "Oh poo poo, this song is getting too intense for me!" And runs out of the track.
Automata 10 Pack fucked around with this message at 00:56 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 00:27
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They recorded that horse specifically for the track, there's a good recent interview on p4K with Gira.
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May 21, 2014 00:29
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Cymbal Monkey posted:F#A#∞ is ripped straight from Soundtracks for the Blind. Probably best to start there if Godspeed is what you're after. Have been a big fan of both bands for years and I've never heard this comparison (though when I say huge Swans fan I mean huge fan of the cruel-grimey Annihilator stuff). Will check. Thanks.
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May 21, 2014 00:32
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That horse part owns. Poor guy sounded so trapped. Gave me beautiful anxiety on his behalf It's strange and oddly fitting that half the discussion in this thread is between monkeys and scary skulls.
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May 21, 2014 00:35
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