SWANS The Seer 3 x LP

SWANS The Seer 3 x LP

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(Young God Records)
*** This is a new and unplayed item, direct from the CRUCIAL BLAST shop. ***

DESCRIPTION FROM CRUCIAL BLAST:
Finally back in print!
The vinyl edition of The Seer is a triple-Lp beast that is presented in a massive gatefold sleeve and includes a poster and a download card for the album.
While Swans' 2010 "comeback" album My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky was an instant favorite for me, and proved that the new version of the band was fully capable of evoking the same transcendent energy and power as their classic 80s/90s output, its the follow-up that captures the band at what may be a career high-point. The Seer has been described by leader Michael Gira as a culmination of the previous thirty years of music, intersecting each period of the bands sounds, from the slow-mo brutality of their early 80s records to the orchestrated power of Children Of God and the apocalyptic art-rock of The Great Annihilator, and you can hear traces and traits of all of that appearing throughout this massive two-disc set. The Seer also has an interesting lineup of guest players that are used throughout the album, including Ben Frost, Bruce Lamont from Yakuza, members of Low, Cerberus Shoal, Mercury Rev, Ministry, and Karen O. from Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Moving in menacing circular motion, "Mother of the World" opens The Seer with a cruel hypno-riff, a simple two-chord clang backed by the breath and staggered pulse of the rhythm section, offering one of their more mesmeric noise rock jams. As the organs seep in, though, they're joined by fragile tuneless singing that throws the sound even more off-kilter, the dark apocalyptic lyrics finally coming in halfway through the song as Gira casts bleak shadows across the gorgeous droning keyboards and acoustic strings that come to the fore across the latter half of the song.
The short piece "The Wolf" hangs Gira's gravelly croon over a buried acoustic strum and an ocean of roiling distortion, leading straight into the half-hour title track and centerpiece of the album. "The Seer" begins as a delirious din of dissonance and noise that gradually congeals into a haze of looping melody, out of which lumbers a slow, steady dirge-like percussive throb, the band coming together in an ecstatic trance-state of percussion and strings. As the menacing guitar riff slinks in, the song transforms into a more lush, orchestral version of the hypnotic pummel of early Swans, the sound massive and pregnant with ritualistic fervor and possible violence as Gira sings over and over "...I see it all, I see it all... while the band climbs towards chaos, and doom-laden heaviness.
A coda of sorts, "The Seer Returns" is a shambling blues-infected dirge that not only offers the album's first real dose of scuzzy rock from Swans on the album, but also features backing vocals from former Swans member Jarboe, and is followed by the terrifying improvisational noise of "93 Ave. B Blues", a slowly unfolding racket of twisted voices and skronky reeds, thunderous percussion rising in a wave of pounding power, resembling an intense free-jazz piece exploding into a nuclear blastwave. The side ends with the shorter piece "The Daughter Brings the Water", an eerie bit of drone-folk laced in hallucinatory images.
The second half of The Seer begins with the beautiful slide guitar twang of "Song for a Warrior", the catchiest song on the album. It's sung by Karen O. of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but it sounds like nothing else but a Swans song, her voice carried in the cadence of reverie, and when Gira finally joins her, its pretty moving stuff. The bells sing at the onset of "Avatar" while tribal drums pound furiously, and it builds into another stirring piece of percussion-heavy power that grows more majestic and urgent as it nears the end, becoming immensely heavy in it's final minutes as it rises in a sweeping crescendo. On "A Piece of the Sky", Swans are again joined by Jarboe as well as the members of Akron/Family, and over the course of the song's nineteen minutes move through fields of black fire and distant thunder, the orchestral din of droning strings and rumbling low-end feedback and haunting choral voices; this swirling sound quite threatening at first but then approaches ecstasy as swarms of guitar strings enter into a massive drone-state before the band drops in to the song proper, ending up with one of The Seer's most infectious melodies at the end.
But after all of this, the band closes the album with the seething "The Apostate", an epic, pummeling dirge that's as regal as anything you'd hear from Neurosis, infected with profanity and delirium and clusters of clanking piano before evolving into a killer prog workout that reminds me, weirdly enough, of something from Circle or even Goblin.
I wasn't expecting it, but The Seer has almost immediately ascended into the ranks of my all-time favorite Swans albums. This is definitely going to be counted as one of their best... © CRUCIAL BLAST
THIS IS A NEW, UNPLAYED ITEM. Please note that for LP vinyl orders, we usually remove the vinyl from the jacket prior to shipment in order to avoid seam splits or any other kind sleeve/jacket damage that might occur during transit. This may require that we open the shrinkwrap on the record in order to carefully remove the vinyl from the inside of the jacket (if the record was originally shrinkwrapped). Feel free to contact us with any questions regarding this policy.

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