Swans at Warsaw Stodoła on 16-03-13

Must admit that I enjoyed this gig a lot more than I'd expected, both the concert itself and the special kind of anthropology that occurs at a Swans concert (e.g. many people quite wisely having cotton wool in their ears; people avoiding being in the immediate path of the main speakers; some people finding something sublime in the music while others look bemused etc.).

First up, Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xui) walked on stage in a suit and tie; stiffly opened up his guitar case; got his guitar plugged in; got a background tape of birds singing going; and finally sat down to play and sing (many times as a faint whisper):

At the time, I found all of this a bit bizarre, but. later on, after seeing Swans, I could see some coherence to the whole evening as Jamie Stewart's mellowness offered a nicely balanced contrast to the constant (albeit sometimes beautiful) thud of the Swans set.

In all, Jamie seemed to utter four words in between songs:  "Excuse me" while tuning his guitar, and 'Thank you" at the end of the set.  Nothing wrong with behaving enigmatically, I guess.

How about Swans, well I was just in the mood for the grinding mixture of sometimes discordant and other times hypnotic sounds that they gave out.  Glad to say that they did (or seemed to do) 'The Seer'.  Not being able to drink much these days, I was happy to be whipped into a trance-like state through the often repetitive but equally beautiful sounds served up. 

To protect my ears, I stood on the borderline between the concert hall and central bar area at the Stodoła, which, having not brought any cotton wool, was a real wise move.  Moreover, when the band came on stage, doing their final tune-up, I (like a few others) took the opportunity to go down one of the channels to near the main speakers to get a few shots with my small mobile:

While these are only poor quality shots from a small mobile, I think they do at least convey something of the excitement and tension that was there before the great band got going.  Glad to see that somebody has put a kind of montage of sounds from the Swans' Warsaw show on Youtube below:

Also managed to get a couple of mobile shots of the band during one of their quieter moments below:

Of course, I didn't hang around long enough for louder moments to arise, and soon retreated further back.

Yeah, overall, I can think of much worse things to do on a Saturday night, and, at times, I found myself getting genuinely hypnotised by the music.  Dare I suggest that Swans have a 'rugged Gregorian Chant' kind of quality?  Well, they do for me, and that's what matters, I guess.