Michael Gira is best known as one half of The Swans along with Jarboe. Now he is running his label, Young God Records, which is sheparding a number of upcoming acts. Giras latest album is The Angels of Light Sing Other People.
Get The Angels of Light Sing Other People
Daniel Robert Epstein: How long have you been working on the new album?
Michael Gira: About a month or something. It just came out in April.
DRE: Hows it doing?
MG: Very well. This band that played on the album, Akron/Family, are doing really well. We just did a tour together and they opened first as themselves and then they played as my backing band.
DRE: How was that?
MG: It was amazing. I dont want to be crass music biz person, but I think theyre our next Devendra Banhart. Theyre getting a lot of great response.
DRE: Where do you find them?
MG: In their case it was pretty banal. They just sent me a series of demos but I was so incredibly busy for the last two years with Devendra that I didnt really listen to the stuff on my desk. When things cooled down with Devendra, I listened to them and freaked out. Fortunately they hadnt been signed yet. They came over to my house, met my dog and they passed the smell test. They all got along with my dog and the wife. Then I saw them live and they were fantastic so I started to work with them.
DRE: They must be very excited to be working with you.
MG: Theyre great. Were pretty close, because we toured together for so long. Thats what I like in a label, actually, I dont really want to be a regular music biz entity.
DRE: Does Young Gods have an office?
MG: Yeah its in my house.
DRE: Do other people work at the office with you?
MG: No, I have someone who does accounting, because thats way beyond me and I have someone to do publicity. Then for everything else I fill in.
DRE: Do you get a lot of demos?
MG: Oh yeah but not even hundreds a month, but Ive taken the mailing address off the website, which has helped immensely. Now I have people send a description of their music first, so I can pretty much glean from that if theyre worth listening to.
DRE: Can these bands articulate that kind of stuff well?
MG: No not always, but I can just tell from the tone. Im not really interested in just working with someone who wants to have an exciting career in the music industry. Its more about someone having a real intense personal connection to what they do and being first and foremost a genuine artist and person. Also music has to be interesting and original. I just weed it out that way.
DRE: Is Angels of Lights still just you?
MG: Angels of Light is my moniker and I get different people in for each record. In this case it was Akron/Family and a few other people played different instruments but most of the work was with them.
DRE: I read a pretty funny review that said, your lyrics havent gotten any cheerier but the music has.
MG: Yeah I have to endure that kind of comment. I dont know if cheery is even something you even need to bring up. Its not supposed to be Christina Aguilera or something.
DRE: Do you feel that youve lightened at all as youve gotten older?
MG: I dont know. Lifes very difficult for most of us. I have moments where I think its wonderful, and at other times its just grueling and hard. But I dont think Im so much different than most people in that way. The songs I wrote on this record are tributes to people and most of them friends. So in that sense, theyre generous and not fluff.
DRE: I didnt mean it that way.
MG: I guess Im a little sensitive to that question, although I know you meant it well. I was just listening recently to Nina Simone and if you hear her version of Strange Fruit, its about the most harrowing thing you can imagine. Its not really light but its really incredibly uplifting. Or if you hear Bob Dylans Idiot Wind its a great song but its not fluff. But I guess things need to have some context. It just seems weird that music has become so incredibly vacant, not that it was ever like reading Shakespeare. Ive been around for a long time so I remember the 60s, when stuff would come out, and lets just take it at random, Jim Morrison wasnt light. That kind of stuff was ubiquitous. In fact it was on commercial radio in those days. So there was a space for this kind of music in the olden days for a brief period, from the mid-60s until the early 70s before it kind of got corporatized.
DRE: Do you think radios just gone dead?
MG: I dont even bother with it. Theres college radio but I dont even listen to that. I dont really think in that way anymore, we have our own label so we release music to a growing audience of people that seek out music that they cant find elsewhere. So I kind of just leave it like that. Im not really concerned with being big in the media or anything like that anymore. I just dont care. I want to make my music and Im really happy that I have an audience after 20years of doing it.
DRE: What kind of venues do you play?
MG: Bigger clubs. I certainly dont play stadiums.
DRE: Did you ever play stadiums?
MG: A couple of times The Swans played huge festivals.
DRE: You turned 50 last year, did you think youd be doing this stuff for as long as you have?
MG: No, I sure didnt but also its what I do. I dont make rock and roll music. Im not going to run around with my shirt off. I think what I do is relatively dignified. I hope so anyway. So I dont really feel that bad about doing it at my age. I think if I were still trying to be a rock dude, Id be pretty embarrassed.
DRE: But were you trying to be a rock dude in the very beginning?
MG: I dont know if I was trying to be a rock dude, per se, but the performances were pretty extreme.
DRE: Jarboe told me that when you two were playing together you were a perfectionist, which is pretty easy to understand. Has that changed at all?
MG: With this new record I was a lot looser than I usually am.
DRE: How was that?
MG: Great experience. I let a lot of stuff go that I normally wouldnt, including out of tune vocals. I just said, "Lets just do it" and I let it go. I just didnt want to get into being the obsessive-compulsive person that Id been in the studio for the last fifty decades [laughs].
DRE: Why not?
MG: One gets sick of themselves.
DRE: So you had no anxiety attacks or stress attacks or anything like that?
MG: Really, not this time. In the past, I remember one time this guy who has this old studio in Brooklyn where I used to work, and I spent five 18 hour days mixing one song. I never left the studio, I slept on a couch the whole time.
DRE: Howd that song come out?
MG: Horrible. I did that with my last record, Everything Is Good Here/Please Come Home, to an insane degree. Im just tired of it. I dont want to be that way anymore.
DRE: Does it stop getting better at a certain point, when youre working on it for that many hours?
MG: You lose perspective. For this record, most of the songs were performed live by me first with just acoustic guitar and voice. Then I started building it up with the rest of the musicians. I just did the song and rehearsed a lot before I went in. So basically the whole record was done on tape then I could just sit back, listen, talk to people and start building it up.
DRE: Have you changed the way that youre on stage at all?
MG: I dont know, people say the live performances are very intense. I think theyre kind of joyous. I guess maybe theyre a combination of the two.
DRE: Thats kind of what you do.?
MG: Yeah. The live version of Angels of Light with Akron/Family playing worked out really well because they do all these amazing vocal harmonies which adds a real lushness and a sort of organic natural quality to the sound. It really helps me sing, also I get the drummer on the tour because there are no drums on this record.
DRE: So you used the drummer because he is part of the band?
MG: Right it was better than having him just sit there the whole time. Were going to go in next week and record a shared Akron/Family and Angels of Light album.
DRE: Youre really getting into these guys.
MG: Im a huge fan. I watched them every night of the tour for six weeks from beginning to end and I never got bored. To me it was like watching a nascent Led Zeppelin or something. Their record is kind of cerebral and deliberate because a lot of it was recorded at home.
DRE: Does stuff youre doing go by the wayside when youre dealing with Akron?
MG: To be perfectly frank, I have currently an immovable case of writers block at the moment. Im not really that worried about it though because its happened from time to time. But running the label now takes up about 80 percent of my time and I pick up the guitar and write when I can. Thats fine with me. Ive released over 20 albums or something, and at my place in life I think its fine for me to take on this role. The whole label is sort of like a huge art project.
DRE: Did the writers block come about because of something specific?
MG: I dont know, I guess its because Im pretty self-critical and as soon as I try to write something I realize Ive already said it before so I just stop. But thats common. I dont know what my subjects going to be on my next record.
DRE: When you say subject you mean the entire album will be one subject?
MG: Not always. You get stuff that opens up the gates and you follow a path. Its not like you start out with a concept album or anything. This last record happens to be about other people and a great many of them ended up being about friends.
DRE: Friends that are still around?
MG: Sure, some that arent but other ones that are.
DRE: Are they musicians or people we know?
MG: I cant really talk about that.
DRE: What do you do when you get writers block?
MG: I just wait. The writing process doesnt come as easy as it did 15 even ten years ago. I usually just wait and something happens then I start writing. Im not trying to be mystical or anything. Its just something beyond my control. It starts happening and opens up my writing process.
DRE: Is it not as frustrating as it used to be?
MG: I dont worry about it too much because Ive written 400 songs or something.
DRE: I know you mentioned this at the beginning but you sound a lot jollier than I thought you were going to be.
MG: Oh really, you thought Id be an imposing autocrat.
DRE: I thought youd be nice but I didnt know what or expect besides that. What do people expect when you meet them, say fans after a show when you go chat with them?
MG: Well some of them quiver and stutter. Otherwise they thank me for the work and thats what I like. I used to be pretty standoffish with people that like the music but usually I enjoy meeting them, in most cases. There was another weird guy in Holland that I just had to tell him to get out of the place. He was just obsessed and weird but generally people are just nice.
DRE: That pretty much is always whats happened to you since the beginning, because of the kind of music youre doing.
MG: Its not a huge audience, but the people that like it seem to really get something from it.
DRE: Do they get what youre purposely putting out there?
MG: I dont know about that, and I dont really have a purpose. Im not a teacher or a preacher or a philosopher or anything. I just write songs. I dont have a master plan. What people get from the music is their business. They seem to get a genuine emotional or some kind of artistic experience from it which is great.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Get The Angels of Light Sing Other People
Daniel Robert Epstein: How long have you been working on the new album?
Michael Gira: About a month or something. It just came out in April.
DRE: Hows it doing?
MG: Very well. This band that played on the album, Akron/Family, are doing really well. We just did a tour together and they opened first as themselves and then they played as my backing band.
DRE: How was that?
MG: It was amazing. I dont want to be crass music biz person, but I think theyre our next Devendra Banhart. Theyre getting a lot of great response.
DRE: Where do you find them?
MG: In their case it was pretty banal. They just sent me a series of demos but I was so incredibly busy for the last two years with Devendra that I didnt really listen to the stuff on my desk. When things cooled down with Devendra, I listened to them and freaked out. Fortunately they hadnt been signed yet. They came over to my house, met my dog and they passed the smell test. They all got along with my dog and the wife. Then I saw them live and they were fantastic so I started to work with them.
DRE: They must be very excited to be working with you.
MG: Theyre great. Were pretty close, because we toured together for so long. Thats what I like in a label, actually, I dont really want to be a regular music biz entity.
DRE: Does Young Gods have an office?
MG: Yeah its in my house.
DRE: Do other people work at the office with you?
MG: No, I have someone who does accounting, because thats way beyond me and I have someone to do publicity. Then for everything else I fill in.
DRE: Do you get a lot of demos?
MG: Oh yeah but not even hundreds a month, but Ive taken the mailing address off the website, which has helped immensely. Now I have people send a description of their music first, so I can pretty much glean from that if theyre worth listening to.
DRE: Can these bands articulate that kind of stuff well?
MG: No not always, but I can just tell from the tone. Im not really interested in just working with someone who wants to have an exciting career in the music industry. Its more about someone having a real intense personal connection to what they do and being first and foremost a genuine artist and person. Also music has to be interesting and original. I just weed it out that way.
DRE: Is Angels of Lights still just you?
MG: Angels of Light is my moniker and I get different people in for each record. In this case it was Akron/Family and a few other people played different instruments but most of the work was with them.
DRE: I read a pretty funny review that said, your lyrics havent gotten any cheerier but the music has.
MG: Yeah I have to endure that kind of comment. I dont know if cheery is even something you even need to bring up. Its not supposed to be Christina Aguilera or something.
DRE: Do you feel that youve lightened at all as youve gotten older?
MG: I dont know. Lifes very difficult for most of us. I have moments where I think its wonderful, and at other times its just grueling and hard. But I dont think Im so much different than most people in that way. The songs I wrote on this record are tributes to people and most of them friends. So in that sense, theyre generous and not fluff.
DRE: I didnt mean it that way.
MG: I guess Im a little sensitive to that question, although I know you meant it well. I was just listening recently to Nina Simone and if you hear her version of Strange Fruit, its about the most harrowing thing you can imagine. Its not really light but its really incredibly uplifting. Or if you hear Bob Dylans Idiot Wind its a great song but its not fluff. But I guess things need to have some context. It just seems weird that music has become so incredibly vacant, not that it was ever like reading Shakespeare. Ive been around for a long time so I remember the 60s, when stuff would come out, and lets just take it at random, Jim Morrison wasnt light. That kind of stuff was ubiquitous. In fact it was on commercial radio in those days. So there was a space for this kind of music in the olden days for a brief period, from the mid-60s until the early 70s before it kind of got corporatized.
DRE: Do you think radios just gone dead?
MG: I dont even bother with it. Theres college radio but I dont even listen to that. I dont really think in that way anymore, we have our own label so we release music to a growing audience of people that seek out music that they cant find elsewhere. So I kind of just leave it like that. Im not really concerned with being big in the media or anything like that anymore. I just dont care. I want to make my music and Im really happy that I have an audience after 20years of doing it.
DRE: What kind of venues do you play?
MG: Bigger clubs. I certainly dont play stadiums.
DRE: Did you ever play stadiums?
MG: A couple of times The Swans played huge festivals.
DRE: You turned 50 last year, did you think youd be doing this stuff for as long as you have?
MG: No, I sure didnt but also its what I do. I dont make rock and roll music. Im not going to run around with my shirt off. I think what I do is relatively dignified. I hope so anyway. So I dont really feel that bad about doing it at my age. I think if I were still trying to be a rock dude, Id be pretty embarrassed.
DRE: But were you trying to be a rock dude in the very beginning?
MG: I dont know if I was trying to be a rock dude, per se, but the performances were pretty extreme.
DRE: Jarboe told me that when you two were playing together you were a perfectionist, which is pretty easy to understand. Has that changed at all?
MG: With this new record I was a lot looser than I usually am.
DRE: How was that?
MG: Great experience. I let a lot of stuff go that I normally wouldnt, including out of tune vocals. I just said, "Lets just do it" and I let it go. I just didnt want to get into being the obsessive-compulsive person that Id been in the studio for the last fifty decades [laughs].
DRE: Why not?
MG: One gets sick of themselves.
DRE: So you had no anxiety attacks or stress attacks or anything like that?
MG: Really, not this time. In the past, I remember one time this guy who has this old studio in Brooklyn where I used to work, and I spent five 18 hour days mixing one song. I never left the studio, I slept on a couch the whole time.
DRE: Howd that song come out?
MG: Horrible. I did that with my last record, Everything Is Good Here/Please Come Home, to an insane degree. Im just tired of it. I dont want to be that way anymore.
DRE: Does it stop getting better at a certain point, when youre working on it for that many hours?
MG: You lose perspective. For this record, most of the songs were performed live by me first with just acoustic guitar and voice. Then I started building it up with the rest of the musicians. I just did the song and rehearsed a lot before I went in. So basically the whole record was done on tape then I could just sit back, listen, talk to people and start building it up.
DRE: Have you changed the way that youre on stage at all?
MG: I dont know, people say the live performances are very intense. I think theyre kind of joyous. I guess maybe theyre a combination of the two.
DRE: Thats kind of what you do.?
MG: Yeah. The live version of Angels of Light with Akron/Family playing worked out really well because they do all these amazing vocal harmonies which adds a real lushness and a sort of organic natural quality to the sound. It really helps me sing, also I get the drummer on the tour because there are no drums on this record.
DRE: So you used the drummer because he is part of the band?
MG: Right it was better than having him just sit there the whole time. Were going to go in next week and record a shared Akron/Family and Angels of Light album.
DRE: Youre really getting into these guys.
MG: Im a huge fan. I watched them every night of the tour for six weeks from beginning to end and I never got bored. To me it was like watching a nascent Led Zeppelin or something. Their record is kind of cerebral and deliberate because a lot of it was recorded at home.
DRE: Does stuff youre doing go by the wayside when youre dealing with Akron?
MG: To be perfectly frank, I have currently an immovable case of writers block at the moment. Im not really that worried about it though because its happened from time to time. But running the label now takes up about 80 percent of my time and I pick up the guitar and write when I can. Thats fine with me. Ive released over 20 albums or something, and at my place in life I think its fine for me to take on this role. The whole label is sort of like a huge art project.
DRE: Did the writers block come about because of something specific?
MG: I dont know, I guess its because Im pretty self-critical and as soon as I try to write something I realize Ive already said it before so I just stop. But thats common. I dont know what my subjects going to be on my next record.
DRE: When you say subject you mean the entire album will be one subject?
MG: Not always. You get stuff that opens up the gates and you follow a path. Its not like you start out with a concept album or anything. This last record happens to be about other people and a great many of them ended up being about friends.
DRE: Friends that are still around?
MG: Sure, some that arent but other ones that are.
DRE: Are they musicians or people we know?
MG: I cant really talk about that.
DRE: What do you do when you get writers block?
MG: I just wait. The writing process doesnt come as easy as it did 15 even ten years ago. I usually just wait and something happens then I start writing. Im not trying to be mystical or anything. Its just something beyond my control. It starts happening and opens up my writing process.
DRE: Is it not as frustrating as it used to be?
MG: I dont worry about it too much because Ive written 400 songs or something.
DRE: I know you mentioned this at the beginning but you sound a lot jollier than I thought you were going to be.
MG: Oh really, you thought Id be an imposing autocrat.
DRE: I thought youd be nice but I didnt know what or expect besides that. What do people expect when you meet them, say fans after a show when you go chat with them?
MG: Well some of them quiver and stutter. Otherwise they thank me for the work and thats what I like. I used to be pretty standoffish with people that like the music but usually I enjoy meeting them, in most cases. There was another weird guy in Holland that I just had to tell him to get out of the place. He was just obsessed and weird but generally people are just nice.
DRE: That pretty much is always whats happened to you since the beginning, because of the kind of music youre doing.
MG: Its not a huge audience, but the people that like it seem to really get something from it.
DRE: Do they get what youre purposely putting out there?
MG: I dont know about that, and I dont really have a purpose. Im not a teacher or a preacher or a philosopher or anything. I just write songs. I dont have a master plan. What people get from the music is their business. They seem to get a genuine emotional or some kind of artistic experience from it which is great.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
Both Michael and Jarboe are very personable and approachable despite a worshipful fan base of geeks like me. Everything I've ordered off the Youg God site has arrived to me signed in silvery marker in an envelope clearly stuffed and mailed by them. They are totally self-produced and independent, undertaking a rather demanding task.
What's interesting to observe with these people's work is the difference in sound from one recording to the next. You'll get an album like Filth and compare it to something like the Burning World, and you'll swear this can't be the same band. Towards the end of Swans, with the Great Anhihlilator and Soundtracks For the Blind, the styles from the earlier years and later fused together in a style of art music both challenging and dangerous. A more mellowed out style was certainly welcome.
Angels is a project entirely different from anything Swans ever did. You can find similarities to stuff on White Light and Love of Life, but it's far more blues rock oriented... in many places even country-sounding. The performances are everything you'd want from a Swans show without going deaf for a week from blugeoning bass and brutal noise samples...