Swans Detail Live Album The Gate, Michael Gira Will Paint a Portrait of You to Raise Money for New LP

In July, Swans announced that they were working on The Gate, a live album that’ll serve as a fundraiser for the band’s next studio LP—the final album to be recorded with their current lineup. (Their 2016 tour will also be this current incarnation’s final trek.)

Today, Swans have detailed The Gate, which is now available to order in a variety of options. Only 2500 copies of the record will be available; it comes in a CD sleeve designed by Michael Gira and created by Nicole Boitos, with Gira drawing personalized artwork on each copy. Check out the tracklist below, which features four new, unrecorded songs and four demos that will appear in a fleshed-out form on the upcoming studio album.

There are several reward tiers for contributing to the project. The lowest tier secures a copy of The Gate, while subsequent tiers include CD and vinyl preorders for the upcoming Swans studio album, the chance to be listed as an “executive producer” for the studio album, a print designed by Gira (seen below), a guest list spot for an upcoming Swans show, and a portrait of the buyer drawn by Gira himself. (“Best efforts will be made at obtaining a likeness but not guaranteed! Style will be expressive and whimsical and drawing will be peppered with praises for your virtues and presumptive status amongst the Gods…”)

Swans’ last album, To Be Kind, was also funded with a live album. That time, one of the rewards for donating was a song written for you by Gira.

The studio album will also come with a live concert DVD directed by Marco Porsia. Watch a trailer for The Gate and the DVD:

Gira also wrote an extended note about The Gate, the upcoming studio record, and the future of Swans. Here’s an excerpt: 

For some reason, God has been kind to us. We had no idea it would work out so well when we first got together, so long ago now it seems. And crucially, that rapport still exists, and it’s a magic I love and crave, and we still love making the sounds we do together, even when it’s a struggle and even if we sometimes find ourselves walking through an airport and realizing we’re asleep while walking and nor do we realize what city or country we’re in at the moment. But my intuition tells me that at this point in our fruitful congress, we are approaching an end. Though there’s still much to be said and new landscapes to explore on the new album and final (but yes, anticipated to be endless) tour, it’s time that we… what’s the word here… dissolve. By this I mean that each of us will continue on our own glorious diamond-strewn path – well, my 5 friends will, anyway – and I intend to keep the name and ongoing project of Swans active in a different form, drawing sporadically on the myriad list of musical cohorts I’m met along the way over the last 30 plus years (including I hope, at times, if they’ll consent, my 5 friends mentioned above) , but the creature, the beast, the monster, the liberating vortex of light and sound that is the 6 of us working in close quarters together over extended periods of time, will cease to exist.

Most likely, Swans albums will not appear so fast and furious. And who knows how future albums will sound? One part of me wants more sound in the future, more orchestration, complete sonic overload, and another side wants to pare things down and try at last to write the extended sort of narratives I’ve always thought lurked somewhere inside me but I never quite found. But I do know that Swans shows and tours will be decidedly less frequent and more sporadic after this last extended push we’re planning after the upcoming new record… Or I maybe I’ll just give up music and try to write fiction. In any event, we’ll see! But at this point, in this important present moment I’m subsumed in the process of making what I view as this pinnacle statement in sound with this essential Swans version, with my friends Norman, Kristof, Thor, Phil, and Christopher, and I sincerely hope that with your generous help we can achieve what I hope to be the best, most fully realized, most sonically diverse and nuanced, most urgently performed and best produced album yet associated with the name I picked at random from a list on a scrap of paper at a kitchen table in New York City’s East Village a century ago. 

Read the full note here.

The Gate:

Disc 1:

01 Frankie M
02 A Little God in My Hands
03 Apos/Cloud of Unforming

Disc 2:

01 Just a Little Boy
02 Cloud of Forgetting
03 Bring the Sun/Black-Eyed Man
04 When Will I Return (demo)
05 New Rhythm Thing (demo)
06 People Like Us (demo)
07 Red Rhythm Thing (demo)
08 Finally, Peace (demo) 

Watch a Pitchfork.tv documentary about Swans: