Recorded Live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (2024) and Den Haag, Netherlands (2023).
Originally released as part of the 2024 LIVE ROPE fundraising campaign, the release is now being made available digitally and on CD in perpetuity.
“With soul-lacerating commitment and relentless pursuit of our own truth through sound we Swans Schechter, Gira, Hahn, Mullins, Puleo, and Pravdica managed over the course of a year of rehearsing and improvisation and revision and reiteration and failure and resuscitation and endless touring to forge a set of music that was in the end inexplicable, especially to us. I'm not being mystical when I say that the sound we ultimately generated in our live performances became a living autonomous entity that played us like marionettes. I felt it, so I know it happened. So even though our physical and psychic dedication to the effort was crucial we can't in good faith take credit for the experience. We threw ourselves into the wind and the hand of God moved us forward. (I have no idea, for instance, how the 1st piece Rope/The Beggar eventually grew into a continuous 82-minute performance). I remain astonished that music that often began with me sitting alone in my office strumming a battered and barely workable acoustic guitar, over time and through countless hours of communal sweat and blood and exhaustion and no small measure of ecstasy eventually rose full-bodied from the quotidian mud of existence and screamed its name to heaven. My hope now, with the music captured as faithfully as possible in these recordings, is that you will experience something of the joy we experienced while making it. God bless you! “ - Michael Gira / Swans 2024
