Soundtracks For The Blind is the 10th studio album from Swans. Released in 1996, it is the last project from Michael Gira & co. before the group's 1997 dissolution (it reformed in 2010, check To Be Kind). Recorded between 1981 and 1996 (Gira: "This album has everything in there - all the ideas from Swans' initial 15 years of work"), the gist of the expansive project is formed by collected sounds & recordings of Gira and Jarboe (the only constant member other than Gira up until 1997). The Swans leader sifted through a huge amount of material, consisting of everything from moldy cassettes and discs full of samples to FBI surveillance tapes and interview clips of Gira's father, which, he reassembles, loops, mangles, and overdubs to draw out the experimental, multi-layered electronic sketches. Gira compares the arduous creation process to "climbing up a mountain of sand," but the painstaking work paid off, as more than 20 years after, Soundtracks For The Blind stands as complex, inaccessible (in a good way), and inventive as ever. The LP is perhaps not the best introduction to Swans as it is essentially Gira's solo work but nevertheless considered the band's magnum opus. Check out "All Line Up," "Volcano," "Yum-Yab Killers," "Red Velvet Corridor," "Helpless Child," "Blood Section" and "I Was a Prisoner In Your Skull."

• black 4xLP vinyl pressing
• housed in deluxe gatefold sleeve
  
• includes full color printed insert + large foldout poster
• remastered audio
• includes digital download for full original album plus German language companion album 'Die Tur Ist Zu'
• original release year: 1996
• music label: Young God Records 2022

reviewed by rei kwondo 09/18