For fans of: Transcendent avant-rock

Having led the towering rock outfit Swans through numerous manifestations over the decades since it's inception, including a brief phase as the folk ensemble The Angels of Light, change and transfiguration have been constants for Michael Gira. The cartography of this decades-spanning terrain was mapped for Exclaim in their "Michael Gira: From Swans Uncompromising Sound to Ethereal Angels of Light". Further reading can be found in the insight offered by friends, fellow musicians and peers in Nick Soulsby's recently published oral history of the band, "Swans: Sacrifice and Transcendence". Reforming in 2010 after a thirteen year hiatus, they took a genuine gamble on creating a wholly new music rather than trying to recapture past glories, The Guardian citing this as a essential component as to, "Why Swans are More Vital Now than Ever". Even more personal and confessional, The Quietus have produced a lengthy interview on the explicitly spiritual nature of their live incarnation, "This is My Sermon: Michael Gira of Swans Speaks".

2019 sees another of these metamorphosis as Gira took a second brief hiatus to reconfigure the outfit. "Leaving Meaning." finds him and the band (including The Necks, Anna von Hausswolff, and Ben Frost this time around), having taken a circuitous route back to their mid-to-late 1990s recordings. A hypnotic album of gradual shifts and harmonic richness, it stands in contrast to the bombast and unrelenting qualities most often associated with Swans. Paradoxically, there's a forcefulness and transcendental quality to these recordings that few other artists working in electro-acoustic rock, folk, psych and Americana could achieve. A perfect soundtrack to an age in which it feels like, little by little, day by day, we're "Leaving Meaning." behind? (JP)