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M.Gira / Angels of Light

Raw text interview for Sentireascoltare italian mag

July 07



> • When I saw the cover of We Are Him I smiled, because the Deryk
> Thomas artwork is unmistakable. In 1994 you wrote: "All that was left was a
> voice, the voice of Deryk Thomas, and it pounded in my head like a scream
> trying to escape, and it told me this: 'You will use my paintings to
> illustrate your silly and miserable songs, so that the listener might dream
> of finer things-of Turner, Poe, Bacon, and Blake - as he is subjected to the
> running sore of your entropic, suppurating music, a music like bad breath
> even when it's 'pretty''. It is a lot of time that your music it's not
> illustrated by an artwork made by Deryk Thomas. Has the Thomas voice
> resounded again in your head? And why now?


Oh it's no big deal. I was just talking to him on the phone and he mentioned
he had some new paintings. I looked at them and they were perfect for the
music, in that they don't relate at all to the music, they have nothing to
do with it, but that difference makes a nice friction, or like when you put
the positive and negative ends of two magnets against each other...
>
> • Musically speaking, this is, in my opinion, the richest work of the
> Angels of Light. It's full of details, sounds, words, guests. It seems that
> you've tried to move away from the latest albums with Akron / Family to
> centre your music again around you. What was wrong with the first recording
> session?

Thank you. I spent a year working on the album and it contains my DNA, or
the DNA of the person who really wrote and sang the album. His name is
Joseph. He lives just behind my head. He is an emissary of God, but he is
also up to no good sometimes. Anyway, I am thankful that he visits me. If he
didn't, I would be someone like Paris Hilton, or a successful lawyer, or
maybe - probably would have been the best outcome - a skilled carpenter...

There was nothing wrong with the first recordings for the album. Akron did
their job very well. They are like masons, or metal workers. In this case
they built a bed frame and placed a mattress on it. Everyone else had an
orgy on it. What you hear in the end is the visual pattern of the sex stains
on the raw mattress.




>
> • We Are Him has a very physical approach. Your voice fills the spaces
> even in the more quiet passages. How still important is that the music
> physically vibrate in the viscera as you have always tried to do with the
> Swans? You know… Black River Song, My Brother's Man and We Are Him are so
> tipically yours!

Well I disagree that Swans was always visceral. Swans sounded like many
things at different times. But yes, there are some heavier songs on this
record. The songs were written on acoustic guitar though, so I'm sure in
some way they are still weak and silly, even if they sound "powerful". I am
an utter sham, but I manage to fool even myself... I am thinking of making a
very "heavy" record for the next angels of light album, even heavier than
swans ever were. We'll see. I just might record instead with a hammer
dulcimer and voice. Who knows? It's Joseph's business, not mine....

>
> • Who is Mary Lou? A sarcastic comment to the Ricky Nelson song?

Oh no, I don't like sarcasm in music, I would never do that. Mary Lou is a
fictional composite of many past girl friends. I want them all to "rise up
through the blue" - to heaven - so they can look down upon me and continue
to torture me endlessly, forever and ever. My ideal woman: im am an insect,
and she holds me in her tweezers beneath a magnifying glass, guiding a
concentrated dot of the sun onto my soft underbelly...You can never leave
your past behind.
>
> • I've read an old interview with you, where you said that the
> artistic ways of Swans and Sonic Youth could have been similar, but while
> Thurston Moore was skilled in establishing relationships and friendships you
> instead were able only to make enemies. The great number of guests on the
> new album seems to contradict you. You've become a very respectable musical
> patron with the Young God. How do you live in this role so drastically
> different from the one you seems to had in the Swans?

Oh I'm a completely different person now in many ways. I suppose the
ruined/angry/vengeful child still lives in me, but I've covered him in honey
and stuck rose petals to his skin. Now, when he screams, a pure note of
shimmering joy comes out, instead of a sound like a pit bull being
strangled...also, I don't really care about myself anymore - "I" can go to
hell, as far as I'm concerned. I live outside myself. I feel like a saint. I
want to help other people learn how to lose themselves, disappear, which is
what we should all be aiming for.... Many of the artists on my label call me
"Uncle Mike" - ha ha!




>
> • It seems that you're going to make an appearance on the new Xiu Xiu
> album and that among others, there will be future releases on Young God by
> two outstanding voices such as Larkin Grimm and Josephine Foster. What can
> you say me about? Have you listened the recent collaboration between
> Josephine Foster and the Cherry Blossoms? Fantastic.

Jamie from xiu xiu is a really talented young man. Also, he takes risks, so
I like him. I sing the utterly preposterous song "under pressure" with him.
I don't really care if I look ridiculous now. In fact I AM ridiculous, so no
matter... Larkin and I have been in correspondence for a few years, finally
the circumstances are right for her to release music on YGR. We'll be
recording her album in January. She's quite insane, but in a nice way! The
proposed album of Josephine for YGR didn't work out. I haven't heard the
music by her w/cherry blossoms that you mention...

>
> • You don't know it, but the fact that you have distributed new music
> by Lisa Germano with Young God has been the best gift you could do to
> myself. I have already asked to her when she heard for the first time about
> you, now I ask to you the contrary. How you ran for the first time into her
> music and what has attracted you?

I absolutely love Lisa. My Viking hippie friend Thor, who played in her band
for a while, first brought the album "Geek, The Girl" to my attention, and I
was immediately hypnotized by the spells she casts. She is quite magical...
Later, as YGR became a viable label, I of course approached her about
releasing her music, but it took many years until she finally agreed to
release something. In the Maybe World was the first release, then I was
overjoyed to be able to release the 2xCD reissue of Lullaby For Liquid Pig,
which is to me one of the most painful and sweet sonic places you could
escape into of all time...



>
> • Beyond the phenomenon of pre-war folk grown mainly around Devendra,
> Vetiver and CocoRosie, and considering examples similar to you, (from a band
> much loud like the early Swans you have progressively concentrate on the
> acoustic sound) examples like Steve Von Till and Daniel Higgs solo things,
> it seems there is a general return to the roots, to the American classical
> sound. Is the American music really all contained into the Harry Smith
> Anthology? To being reactionary seems now a way to be "avant" . What do you
> think about this?

I don't think much about it. I just like human music. I also like music that
is a physical struggle to make, that requires physical and mental
concentration to make a sound. In Swans, for instance, in the early days,
volume and amplification was very important, but to make the music was an
act of physical will - it was actually very disciplined. but after a while I
realized that the volume was not necessarily the only way to get something
into the center of your chest. I realized recently that when I play live
shows now with just my acoustic guitar and voice, that it's actually very
similar to the early days of Swans. It creates a similar place.... Oh, I
don't really care about "the american classical sound" you mention. I mean,
I enjoy that music, but I like anything that goes directly to the center of
your skull when you listen. I like tibetan ritual music and james brown
equally.

>
> • In an old song by the Swans, God Loves America, you were singing:
> "So God Forgive America
> The End Of History Is Now
> And God May Save The Victim
> But Only The Murderer Holds Real Power"
> The Swans were political polemic, sarcastic and irreverent. I think that
> lines were such prophetic. Now how do you place yourself with the current
> political situation in the U.S.A.?

The sentiment of that song is something I still feel, but I think those
lyrics are simply awful, trite, heavy-handed and obvious. And the singing?
Good god! How ham-fisted can you get??? I don't know who the hell I thought
I was, but I'm glad I'm not that person any more...as for politics, I don't
know, it's strange that I still retain this, but my father always taught me
that it's not good manners to criticize one's country when in a foreign
country, so since this is not an american interview I won't mention my
politics. I presume you can infer what my politics are anyway, and my
personal political opinions will change nothing at all, so it doesn't
matter...

>
> • I've seen an old videoclip, which was done for A Screw. I don't know
> who has directed it but according to me it represents perfectly what were
> the Swans before Children Of God. A physical sound, on the physique, with
> the physique. Corporeal. I remember also the Rotting Pig story from your
> collection of tales, where you describe a strange cosmic situation around a
> body and its sensorial perceptions. The body seems to be a fundamental
> subject for you. What is it exactly for you?

I directed that video. It was made in a small room with one camera and some
crude editing gear. It took a week of work, 16 hours a day, and at the end,
because I was drinking endless beer and smoking and drinking coffee at the
same time, I had what I thought was a heart attack, and the ambulance came
and took me to the hospital. Turns out it was a "panic attack" - my first -
ha ha ha! Anyway, that video was the only good video swans ever did, I
think. Now, I hate the whole notion of rock videos. What a bunch of shit!
Oh, sorry, you asked about "the body" - I don't know, I don't think about
that very much. I also wish that I had never published any of my stories. A
person's worst tendencies, revealed in public - always a bad idea!
>
> • I know that you are not particularly satisfied with your Love Will
> Tear Us Apart version, in fact you chose the Jarboe version for Various
> Failures, but your way of singing has very much in common with that of
> Curtis. Recently at the Cannes film festival has been projected Control the
> bio film about his life. What do you think of him and if it is the case how
> much he has influenced you?


I liked joy division all right I guess, sure, but not really more than other
music I was listening to at the time. I thoroughly regret doing that cover
version. What a terrible, terrible mistake it all was. The singing is awful,
the production is wimpy, the original is a thousand times better. What a
waste! When I first thought of doing it, I wanted it to sound like a
christmas song, like "little Drummer Boy" - lots of children singing, a vast
phil spector-ish sound. Would have been nice. But instead it turned out
sounding like inept bubble gum music. Oh well...
>
> • Simon Reynolds in his recent book about post-punk include the Swans
> in the second industrial generation, together with Einsturzende Neubauten,
> Cabaret Voltaire, Test Dept, Coil and Foetus. I know that you hate to be
> labelled as industrial and I know that your first influences were mainly
> punk. Did you not like the industrial English groups led by the Throbbing
> Gristle? How and why did you decide to use tape loops and the drum machine
> for the Swans music?

Oh I loved Throbbing Gristle. I knew about Genesis and his escapades way
back when, through Coum Transmissions. Throbbing gristle was a huge
inspiration to me. Of course I didn't want to make music like them at all,
but the primitivism of it, the use of sounds - musical and non-musical - as
setting up a ritual environment - all very expressionistic. I also liked
their insistence on content, and the provocative subject matter, the way it
picked at the scabs of your consciousness. I also like their "pop" songs
though, like the song "United" etc... Anyway, the notion of "industrial"
music doesn't interest me though. It didn't then and it doesn't now...

>
> • You have played music with Glenn Branca. What has remained of that
> experience and what memories do you have?


I'm left with a sense of flying, of time travel, of levitation...
>
> • I have listened again to the World Of Skin music. Again with great
> pleasure. It was a great project. I love the contrast between the Jarboe
> voice and yours. You worked really as a couple, mainly in those Skin songs.
> Angels of Light is above all a project of yours, centred on your voice. Do
> you not think that working again with a female voice would be a great thing?

I actually can't listen to that music. Just my personal taste I suppose. At
the time, I presume my intentions were earnest - maybe too earnest - but now
it just seems pretentious and overwrought... Sad...

>
> • Many years have passed and both of you have well distinguished and
> recognizable musical projects, but you think that is still possible that you
> and Jarboe go back to make music together once more?

No, I'm not interested in doing that, thanks for asking...
>
> • In the last Swans album Soundtrack for the blind and the project of
> Body Lovers, you have approached to the modern classical music and film
> music, in particular the Ligeti sound. Do you think that is still possible
> for you to make music with this type of sounds?

I've lost interest in that way of making music. I'm interested in trying to
write good songs now, that simple. It's a huge challenge, the biggest
challenge of my life. That's enough...
>
> • Recently David Lynch used music by Ligeti, the same used by Kubrick
> in The Shining, for his last movie, Inland Empire. In Mulholland Drive there
> is a strange ghost evil character, called "The Cowboy". He has always made
> me think of you. Even the actor looks like you. Do you like Lynch and his
> imaginary?

Sometimes I like him. I like the sexy bits best. I don't care much for his
random surrealism these days. Elephant Man, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and The
Straight Story are my favorites of his work, especially Eraserhead, though I
admire, for purely salacious reasons, the lesbian scene in Mullholland
Drive...
>
> • Once you have offered your right pinkie for $250.000. Did you
> receive many offers? Hope that you don't need to do it anymore! :)


You know, it would be a great benefit to my own and my family's future, so
I'd probably still do it... Who needs their right pinkie anyway?

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M.Gira / Angels of Light

Raw text interview for Rockerilla magazine (italy)

July 07

1. In the transition from Swans to Angles of Lights, what did change in
your poetry and music? Did your lyrics keep on having such a strong 'dark
and pessimistic side' they used to?

I hardly know how to answer that. "dark and pessimistic"???? - that's
certainly not me now, and never has been really. I've always wanted the
effect of my music, whatever means it used, to be joy and release and true
happiness. I struggle to be a decent person, like most people. I want to
live in the center of the sun, to burn alive, my molecules to dissipate into
the universe. The best hope for us all is to disappear, to erase ourselves,
and in doing so find the truth. Life is change. I don't resemble the person
I once was, inside or out, but the breath of god holds the "me" inside the
random, changing shape of my body. God is in me. I am god.

1. Tell me what do you think about the whole pre-war folk movement grew
up in the USA indie scene during the last decade. Do you feel, somehow,
involve in such a musical stream?

It's good that young people are trying to make music that has genuine
feeling and simple power again. I could very easily live without the flowers
and body lice however. Still, the holy ghost is emerging again, spreading
light in the grey dusk of the concrete and steel forest, sending clear blood
through the optic wires and invisible radio waves, thrusting a sharp silver
knife into the center of the collective skull. The children will rise, and
eat the sky.



2. What kind of music do you listen to nowadays? Old stuff? New one?

I listen to Neal Young, Nina Simone, Fela Kuti, Tibetan Ritual Music, and
Throbbing Gristle exclusively.


3. Let's focus on the song 'Promise of Water'. I'd rather say that those
lyrics are pretty cryptic...a sort of prophecy is hidden in them. Is that
correct?

This song is a product of, and also "about" mind control. It's the result
of realizing that now very little exists outside the hallucinated world of
the media. The physical world is disappearing, and as it does so it is
eating itself, writhing in the last throes of violence and destruction,
erupting in an orgy of slaughter and bestiality, pollution and utter
corruption. It is a cleansing. We are creating heaven on earth.


4. 'Sunflower's here to stay' seems to show pretty well the light/hopeful
side of your art. The music is rather 'sunny' as well. Would you tell me
something about this one song?

It is an homage to the bearded He/She Devil that is leading the children
towards paradise. He wears the raw and bloody skin of freshly killed
animals. He drinks wine until his belly bloats. He belches lightning. He
brings us a new, cruel and beautiful world. It's up to us to follow him, and
follow him we must! It is a happy place he leads us towards... We must go
there, and go there soon...

5. How's working with the whole Akron/Family as backing band?

They are young men. They are strong. Their hands are agile, but dirty. They
dig in the dirt, they unearth the past. The hold the skulls of their
ancestors up to the sky and they wail and shout songs of praise for the past
and the future. Their music shatters the false dome of the sky, opening up a
fissure there so God can look down upon us once again. Their instruments
grow from their bellies, one with their bodies. If you place your ear
against their chest, you will hear the songs of the Buddha, but though they
are ignorant of this fact, you will also hear the vengeful scream of Shiva.
They are vessels. They are puppets of God, a simple rock band after all.


6. What about the arrangements of your songs? How do you work to fit them
perfectly to your compositions?

I am an idiot. I write a song, then I sit there dumbfounded and quivering.
This quivering attracts flies. My friends are beneficent flies, in a way.
They take the song and devour it, chew at it, excrete upon it. I protest, in
pain, since the song is actually my body. I am being eaten alive by my
friends and collaborators. Together, we make beautiful music.



7. Body, work, sex, childhood, parents and God. Those are some of the
sources of your original poetry. How did they match together, all through
years, into a whole one peculiar vision of life and music?

The source of my writing (not "poetry"!!!) has always been love. Love flows
through me. It is beyond my control. I have nothing to say personally.
Someone else is speaking through me. At the best moments, "I" completely
cease to exist. The snap of sound, the cracking of the air as I disappear,
is the sound of the music I make.

8. Tell me something about your favorite writers ever. The ones you got
inspired from the most.

I am never really "inspired" by writers, in the sense that they might make
me want to do something similar to what they do. I don't place much belief
in the "truth" of fiction, either... My favorite "writers" would have to be
Walt Disney (from the '50's, not now), Robert Crumb - especially the Weirdo
comics, any competent advertising copy writer, and I also admire the work of
the great american author Cormac McCarthy.


9. I'd like to know more about the opener of Angles of Light brand new
cd: "Black River Song". Does repetition have a great deal in your way of
performing music?

There's always change in repetition, no matter what, no matter how tiny the
change. LaMonte Young's famous Dream House has a room with a constant drone
( a combination of several notes, I think) that is unvarying. However, as
you shift your body around the space, the tone and ambience changes
completely. It's quite revelatory, very beautiful. But that has nothing to
do with my song, Black River Song. The groove of that song is inspired by
Muddy Waters' song Mannish Boy. I saw the film The Last Waltz recently, and
his performance is amazing, even though he's quite old. He is an animal, a
priest, a Shaman, a Voodoo God, a Baptist preacher, the living God, and he
makes all the other performers in the movie look like weak and flimsy
children.


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Angels of Light / M. Gira

Raw interview text for Ritual Magazine (Italy)

july 07


In terms of immediacy, 'We Are Him' sounds more direct and also more
"catchy" than the previous AOL albums, especially for the vocal harmonies.
Was it intentional?

No, nothing is intentional in my music. It is all random. I have no control
over it. I may think I do have control, but that's an illusion I choose to
embrace to save myself the embarrassment of admitting to myself that I'm
worthless. My music is not made by me! I have little to do with it. An
unseen force takes over, and this force sculpts not only the sound, but also
the thoughts inside my head. I am helpless - a shivering infant. A strange
being takes me into his arms, kisses the top of my head, and breathes
consciousness into my otherwise empty mind. Again, I have no control over
it. I'm like a zombie, animated by the consciousness of an invisible shaman.
He lives in a shack in my back yard. He eats dog food, worms, and
dandelions. What a strange guy!

Nowadays you play with Akron Family as your backing band: so, I wonder if
and how much they influenced your approach to the songwriting…

My songs are always written on acoustic guitar, finished before I work with
other people. I sing them to my wall. I know they're good when they cease to
bounce back at me, when the wall swallows them. Akron/family are members of
a obscure sect that live in the mountains in Pennsylvania. They sent me
unsettling letters, followed me, and whispered just out of earshot things I
didn't want to hear. Eventually I did hear them though, and these weird
thoughts entered my mind, against my will. Now, they have taken over my
life completely, so much so that I don't know where they begin and I end.
You could even say this new record is an akron/family record - they have
that much power over me. I am begging for someone to please peel them away
from my skin, but I love these boys too much - I want to be with them
forever. They give me meaning, the only meaning I have ever known, and a
small measure of truth - the tiny amount they allow me to experience, that
is. Otherwise they keep the truth to themselves, the secrets of the
universe.


However, the new songs go immediately straight to the heart of your fans,
because they play in the usual AOL mood (and also with the usually wonderful
work made by Cristoph Hahn's guitar), but even with something that reminds
me as well of Swans' 'Love Of Life' / 'White Light' era. Could you see it as
a possible connection?

Oh, Christoph Hahn, my hero! I once saw him do 100 push ups right before a
concert, smoking a cigarette while he did it, his shirt off and sweat
pooling together in the small of his back. Furtively, I took a hypodermic
needle and unbeknownst to him as he exercised, I sucked up the sweet nectar
his body excreted right into my syringe - then, I injected this clear liquid
into my veins. What a rush! What colors!!!!!! My resulting performance,
minutes later, was the best of my life. I virtually levitated, like a
Tibetan monk leaping over the mountains. Christoph is the descendant of
ancient, ancient Germanic tribes. He plays guitar like a Negro, but he is
Aryan deep in his blood. He lives in Berlin, where he is a professor of
philosophy, his specialty being the study of the peculiar ontology of micro
cephalic peoples, especially those unfortunates that were swept up in the
Diaspora of Cretins across the Russian Steppes. So, yes! There is definitely
a connection between this record and white light etc - thanks so much for
noticing!

The 'We Are Him' peculiarities that I'd mostly admire are the energy itself
of the melodies and the great production of the arrangments: I guess that
the helping hands of Bill Rieflin and Eszter Baliant gave an important
addition to the structure of the songs. What can you tell me about these two
collaborators?

Thanks so much, I'm very happy to hear you enjoy the music! It was a huge
endeavor, making this record. It reminded me of my days as a construction
worker, carrying 90 pound sacks of cement up a ladder all day in the hot
sun. Day in, day out. Like going to the factory to make plastic bags too,
really. It was relentless. Bill Rieflin, my dear old friend, came to the
rescue though. He arrived with his usual bag of tricks - a razor blade, a
bible, a pair of scissors, and an ample supply of shaving cream. None of
these instruments worked however, so instead he played bass guitar, drums,
organ, synthesizer, that kind of thing. As usual, I just said to him, "do
what you want bill. I'm going to the bar to drink. Gimme a call when you're
finished." and that's what happened. First, the song was a piece of shit,
suppurating in the hot sun of mediocrity, then Bill arrived - my savior -
and suddenly it had life, like an old dry mackerel in the sand, instantly
transformed into a dragonfly, darting up at your face, taking a bite out of
your ear as it leapt up to heaven... What a MENSCH Bill is! ...with Eszter
it was the same way, but different. She is an extremely beautiful woman, so
when she arrives in the studio, everyone gets nervous and self conscious.
Not only is she beautiful, but she is also a musical genius, and her SOUL is
as generous as the Mother Mary. This helps to bring calm to the studio, just
a second later. And her fiddle playing is beyond description - it's like
1000 bluebirds singing in the forest, all at once, all singing the exact
same note. It really lifts you up to heaven, for god's sake... Anyway, as I
say, my songs and music are deeply beneath contempt, but with friends such
as these, I am able to propagate the scam that I actually have something to
say, and even get away with it...

Why did you prefer such an extreme instrumental line up change for the
Angels of Light live? And how do you think it positively affected the music?

The studio and live performances have nothing to do with each other, or very
little. I now prefer, even though I've made my most elaborately orchestrated
record in years, to play solo live, with just my acoustic guitar and voice.
But my voice is huge, like a dank wet blanket smothering the huddled crowd.
It's one of my favorite things to do, to suck the life out of a room, draw
it deep into my lungs, then exhale it again in a song that sprays from my
mouth like a fire hose of cheap perfume.


There are a lot of huge collaborators in the album, among them I'd like to
rmember Larkin Grimm, one of the most exciting experience of the american
avant-folk. I notice that, nowadays, there's an increasing interest for the
so called free-folk, and for the "roots music" with acid and psychedelic
attitudes in general, especially because of labels as Eclipse, Time-Lag,
Important Records and others. So, how did Young God get involved in this
music? Could you see Angels Of Light as precursor of that kind of mood?

Larkin is a magic woman. She lives in the mountains in north Georgia. She
collects bones, smooth stones, and she casts spells. She worships the moon.
She is very beautiful, and her voice is like the passionate cry of a beast
heard echoing across the mountains just after a tremendous thunder storm,
when the air is alive with electricity. I don't consider her folk though -
she is pre folk, even pre- music. She is the sound of the eternal mother and
the wrath of all women. She goes barefoot everywhere, and her feet are
leathery and filthy. She wears jewels, glitter, and glistening insects in
her hair. She's great! We're doing a record together soon for YGR. I don't
know anything about the labels you mention. I live in the woods.

Which are the bands that you wish you had signed under Young God?

They're all dead!

Finally I read 'The Consumer', a piece that you wrote during different times
of your life. Could we expect any new writings from Micheal Gira in the
forthcoming years? And what kind of approach you'd choose for an ipotetic
new book?

I hate that book. I wish I had never written it. In fact, I wish the person
that wrote it never existed. What a horrible, creepy, selfish, malignant
prick I was. Thank god I am no longer me. I have no plans to write more
fiction. It would have to be completely different - positive, uplifting,
hopeful, naïve, joyous, wise. To do it, I would need to completely wipe my
mind clean. Who knows, it might happen...

By the way, what difference could you notice between the approach to the
lyrics of the new album and the previous ones? Did you change somehow your
attitute or you basically keep it the same?

As I say, I have no control over these issues. I think, objectively, the
words have changed, yes. There are many different words used on the record,
to describe many different things. I do wish however that words did not
exist. They seem to cloak reality in falsity.


I wonder how's your nowadays feelings about Swans' stuff: do you ever play
any Swans' songs in the future? I don't mean it in a nostalgic way, but
songs played with a different touch and by your nowadays taste (the 'Burning
World' tracks, for example)…

Oh, I play a few Swans songs live sometimes. A strange feeling. It feels
completely phony and false, but I do it anyway.

Do you think there'll be future for the Body Lovers and Body Haters
projects?

Absolutely not.

In your long career you realized so many records to mention, but I wonder if
there's anything you'd like to erase or even you wish you had done in a
different manner…

Like everyone, I'd like to erase everything and start over completely, a
newborn baby.

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Angels of Light / M.Gira

Raw text interview for Flux Magazine july 07
>
> Why is the album called "We Are Him?"

Lately I've been thinking it's a good idea to just give up, let go,
disappear, not to have an identity. I wrote the song thinking about
something like the Nuremburg rallies, except not with Hitler at the podium,
but instead maybe an old fat naked clown covered in chocolate and flies,
gesticulating madly, pink foam bubbling out of his ears. The crowd was
comprised of people of all ages, all in a mad fervor, naked except for the
soiled diapers they wore, reaching into their poop sacks and smearing each
others faces and bodies with the contents, stomping their feet in a communal
tantrum, aping the words and gestures of their leader. They're chanting "We
Are Him."

>
> Do you see it as a return in some ways to the sound you had with Swans
> around "Love of Life" as there seem to be reasonable parallels?

Oh God no! I can't even remember those days. I've worked really hard on
forgetting all about Swans. I have nothing to do with it. It was someone
else. I killed that worthless piece of shit of a human being a long time
ago. The records still exist I guess, but they're artifacts, leavings, like
unsightly growths that were surgically removed from my body, left to dry and
shrivel in the sun, then scattered in the wind. In a way, Angels of Light is
a religious undertaking - I'm doing penance for all my years of selfishness
and sin.

>
> For example the backing vocals are often reminiscent of Jarboe and the album
> cover is in a similar style.... the title track especially would fit well on
> "Love of Life."

The cover is by the same artist, the magical British painter Deryk Thomas,
who to me is the rightful heir to Hieronymus Bosch, Francis Bacon, and Walt
Disney. But that's about it as far as similarities to Swans go, I'm afraid -
the fact that Deryk did the art. I completely and adamantly disagree that
any song on this record would fit on a Swans album. Then, when I wrote those
songs, I was a fairly intelligent ape. Now, in fairness, I think I could
accurately be described as a fairly (more) intelligent, but infinitely more
handsome, chimp. So, I write songs accordingly... All my Angels records
have had what I call "chick" vocals on 'em. I think it's important that a
male singer with a gravelly, less than mellifluous voice, associate himself
with beautiful women, and cloak himself in their voices. I guess it's the
old Serge Gainsbourg syndrome. Ya know, if you look and sound like a human
toad, surround yourself with glamorous women - in this case I was blessed
with the seductive charms of Ms. Larkin Grimm and Ms. Siobhan Duffy. You
might also be hearing akron/family as "female" vocals tho', since they often
sing like castrati...

>
> Do you feel Angels of Light could be fairly described as a folk band?

Sheesh, I don't know. You mean like Cat Stevens and James Taylor? Or Pete
Seeger? I don't think so. I always viewed Swans as a "folk" band tho',
especially in the early days, since I was singing "the people's" music, just
from a different perspective. Angels of Light, on the other hand, I guess
the name sounds folk. The music doesn't sound anything like folk and the
words don't relate at all to folk, but sure, let's call it folk. I live in
the mountains near Woodstock. I shoot the trout in my stream, and I scream
drunk at the stars at night, so yeah, I'm a "folk-rocker" after all these
years!
>
> One lyric that jumped out was, "When you open your mouth you're too stupid
> to scream" from 'Promise of Water' Was that inspired by a particular person
> or incident?

Well we're all just too stupid to scream, considering the predicament we've
allowed ourselves to slip into. That song is about being infected. Thoughts,
images, desires, ideas injected directly into your head and blood, where
George Bush is equal to Paris Hilton is equal to an internet stalker with a
hard-on beneath a towel caught on camera naked in the kitchen of his
intended victim is equal to some stupid rock band in their video is equal
to a poor African kid with flies in his eyes is equal to an American boy
getting his legs blown off in Iraq as 100s of thousand Iraqis themselves are
displaced or murdered or erupt in an orgy of willing slaughter and public
gore and revenge is equal to a slick car commercial with ironic contemporary
music is equal to myspace.com or The New York Times. I'm just taking it all
in, it's a phantasmagoria of wonder and possibility, more real than any
thoughts or reality I might come up with on my own. We're in a new age, for
sure. The only reality is pain, or possibly orgasm. Everything else is on
the news. But it's also a sort of heaven - at least our ancestors might have
thought so.

>
> This song seems almost prophetic of this summer in Britain, as much of the
> country is flooding!

I'm sorry to hear of your troubles. Count your blessings though. At least
you have a government with a sense of social responsibility, sure at least
to do their (flawed) human best to bring people to safety and clean up the
mess. In our case, over two years later, New Orleans is still a disaster
zone, just muck and mold. A short time ago bloated corpses floated down its
streets while dogs howled, quickly revisiting their bestial ways, rooting
for nourishment in the ripe intestines of the proud citizens of one of the
greatest and most historically rich cities in America... A disgrace! But I'm
as complicit in this crime as the next person...

>
> "The Visitor" hints at a belief in reincarnation - do you think you've lived
> before?

Good Gawd no, I'm not even sure I'm alive now.


>
> Is "The Visitor" about the death of a friend?

No, it's about the death of "me" (thank God! I think!) or the "me" I might
imagine myself to be, if I were to find myself in a song written by "me" ...
It's also a fairly jejune but earnest wish to die in my lovers arms...
>
> "The "Star Chaser" is a very moving song - is it a remembrance of all those
> you've known who have died?

Thanks! It's an homage to a person that once lived inside me. He's left a
hole in my chest, and I miss him.... But for heaven's sakes - no offense -
where does all the Death stuff come from? Anyway, no matter, this song is a
longing for the past, which at the time was not there, and now is even less
so, and only a few artifacts remain to hint at what never was.
>

> Is there a theme of mutation in the song "Sunflower's Here to Stay?"

First I saw my beloved Genesis P-Orridge leading a troupe of He/She
child-creatures through a maze of Mylar, metallic glitter snowflakes
clouding the air, then I saw my beloved Devendra Banhart leading a horde of
hairy feral children towards a phallic rock formation in the woods, then I
saw a half-goat / half-pig beast leading human rats to a chasm filled with
flames. He chugged wine and belched lighting, and his erection was truly
frightening. The human rats turned on him and were about to swarm him and
eat him when I woke up. Thank God! I wanted the music to sound like The
Beatles or The Turtles or or the early happy era of Pink Floyd, but of
course it didn't turn out that way.


>
> We seem to be living in times of rapid change. Where do you think the human
> race is heading?

Oh my God. I can't believe I was just asked that question. Please consult
someone with wisdom for an answer. I'm as naïve as the day I was born, thank
you.
>
> Have you heard of the black hole generator, the large hadron collider at
> CERN, that is going to be activated in November?
> Could it finally mean armageddon?

I sure hope so!!!!! Armageddon is good. It means we're all going to heaven -
at least I think I am.