Experimental rock pioneers Swans to play Sunshine Theater

The experimental rock band Swans, who pioneered “no wave” music in New York City in the early 1980s, will perform at Albuquerque’s Sunshine Theater on Friday, Sept. 12.

Swans’ setlist will feature mostly recent songs, whose subtle, ambient textures may surprise fans of the band’s early, noise-based work.

“I always had a great love for the work of Brian Eno, which was much different than (early) Swans,” said Swans founder and front man, Michael Gira. “And one of my favorite bands was Kraftwerk. And I loved the (ambient-influenced) album ‘Low’ by David Bowie. I listened to that record 100 times.”

Such influences have become increasingly pronounced on Swans’ sound, with Gira characterizing the band’s evolution as a “journey.”

“If you’re not moving forward, you’re standing still. Or worse, you’re dying,” he said. “So, I think it’s important to keep moving. With each record we make, and each phase of the group, I try to learn something from it, and take a kernel from the previous work a nd push that into the next thing. Hence, the music keeps growing.

“I never would have imagined, in the early days, that I would write songs on acoustic guitar, which is what I do now,” he added.

When Gira moved to New York City in 1979, he discovered a combustible mix of creative energy, grittiness and danger.

“I remember being quite excited and elated. It was a place with lots of art, lots of music. But also, the city was basically collapsed at that point,” Gira said. “There were abandoned buildings everywhere. Where I lived, there were burned-out cars on the street, gunfire at night. Machine gun fire, in fact. Other parts of the city, I guess, were probably perfectly safe, but where I lived in the East Village, it was definitely not.

“I figured out how to survive,” Gira continued. “I got various construction jobs and made enough money to live, and I started making music.”

Although Swans performed at legendary punk and experimental music venues such as CBGB and The Kitchen, Gira said he was too busy working to socialize and didn’t consider himself part of the art and music scene.

“I was very separate from all that,” he said. “I just focused on Swans. And I worked very hard. I worked five, six days a week in construction, and then rehearsed at night. I don’t know where I found the energy to do that, because I did intense physical labor. But we worked all the time.”

Construction sounds made their way onto at least one Swans track from their 1986 album “Greed.”

“I used a nail gun from the construction site I was working on, on this one song, ‘Time is Money (Bastard),’” Gira said. “We didn’t have samplers in those days, but you could capture a sound on delay. So, I recorded shooting the nail gun at a wall in the hallway, and then used that to make a drum pattern.”

Rolling Stone magazine called Swans’ first album “primal art rock at its most vitriolic.”

“I was pretty hard-headed and vitriolic in those days,” Gira acknowledged.

Gira and his early collaborators felt driven to create sonic textures that were even more aggressive and uncompromising than those heard in punk music of that era.

“We were furiously interested in making music that ripped the insides out of reality, which is, I think, what we achieved at a certain point,” he said.

Swans’ music has changed in many ways over the years. For one thing, their songs have gotten longer. Most of the tracks on their debut album, “Filth” (1983) were between three and five minutes, whereas over half the songs on their latest album, “Birthing” (2025) are close to 20 minutes, or longer.

“The music mutates and grows,” Gira said. “It starts out from something which might be a three-minute song with me alone at home on the acoustic guitar and eventually metamorphizes into something that’s 30 minutes long.”

“I play with my thumb, strumming down with my thumb, which makes a very rich sound, and I hear resonances and overtones in the sounds. And I imagine orchestrating those,” Gira explained. “Then, I bring it to the band and get them to fill in those spaces and those imaginary notes through our collaboration. The band are important to the process, especially since 2010.”

The resulting songs have an immersive, almost trancelike quality, which Gira likens to the work of Fela Kuti and James Brown.

“I try to make an immersive and transforming experience, both for myself and the people with whom I’m playing and for the audience,” Gira said. “Because it gives me joy to do so, no other reason.”

Gira, who once lived in New Mexico, said he is looking forward to performing in Albuquerque this week.

“I like New Mexico very much,” he said. “I like the culture a lot.”