Their first full length "Filth" along with their landmark "Cop" release blew my mind when I first heard them. This is a truly primitive, angry, pummeling and desperate sound assaulting your ears. Mandatory.
Re-mastered in 2015 and now on vinyl for the first time in decades
‘Filth’ was released in 1983, the album was recently described by Clash magazine as “a brutally exhaustive work swimming in a thematic pool of audacious abjection” and by The Village Voice as “no wave with five years of practice, too messy for mysticism and too funny for suicide.” The vinyl edition of ‘Filth’ will come with two reproduction live posters and is the first in a series of remastered catalogue reissues.
“This is all slabs of sound, rhythm and screaming/testifying. What more do you need? In a way, it was a reaction against Punk (and just about any other music you can think of), and the conservative notion that 3 chords were somehow necessary. I used to deny it vehemently at the time, but No Wave (I “hated” that scene too, for some reason I can’t remember now) played a big role as the germ from which this music grew, along with The Stooges and Throbbing Gristle, of course. I wanted Swans to be “heavier” though – I wanted the music to obliterate - why, I don’t remember! I think it just felt good. Live, we used two basses (playing utterly unmusical chords that were stabbed and left to sustain or sometimes hit in staccato or opposing rhythms), drums, a “percussionist” that slammed down on a metal table with a metal strap, crude cassette loops of various sounds/noises (usually some kind of undefined ROAR), and Norman Westberg’s glorious sustained and screaming guitar chords. It was pretty elating to play live – for us. If 100 people showed up (which would have been a huge audience at the time, 20 was more the average), 80 were guaranteed to leave by the second song. Somehow that tension, contempt or indifference from the audience, was nourishing, so we kept going.“ - Michael Gira / Swans
