Blind
Swans
"Blind" from Swans' Children of God moves with the patient terror of something enormous that will not be hurried. Michael Gira's production uses dynamics as architecture: passages of near-silence followed by walls of guitar and percussion that arrive not with surprise but with the inevitability of geological event. The emotional landscape is religious in the specific register of ecstasy and annihilation — the kind of faith that costs everything and promises nothing except intensity of experience. Jarboe's contributions (vocals, keyboards) provide counterweight to Gira's driven intensity, feminine and spectral against his blunt force. Lyrically the blindness is surrender, voluntary and complete. This is music for people who understand that the most important experiences are not comfortable, that transformation requires a kind of giving-up that the merely intense will not attempt.
slow
1980s
massive, patient, annihilating
United States
Post-rock, Experimental rock. Post-industrial art rock. Terror, Ecstasy. Cycles between patient near-silence and walls of apocalyptic sound that arrive with geological inevitability, ending in total surrender.. energy 8. slow. danceability 1. valence 2. vocals: blunt, driven, incantatory, spectral, authoritative. production: extreme dynamics, walls of guitar, dense percussion, keyboards. texture: massive, patient, annihilating. acousticness 2. era: 1980s. United States. Complete, uninterrupted surrender to transformative intensity, alone in a dark room.