Children of God/World of Skin [Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered]

Swans | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 27, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
• Label: Young God Records
• ASIN: B0000996G7
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #26,560 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Children of God explores the life of the children who live beside the Baghmati River in Nepal - on the sacred grounds of a Hindu temple in Katmandu - an area forgotten and ignored by the world, but considered the holiest and most sacred to the Nepalese people. The children are undeterred by the daily cries and wailing from the daily funeral ceremonies; instead they rob the corpses for food and dive into the river to grab coins used as funeral offerings by the mourners. Some risk their lives by begging while others fall prey to drugs and disease. The film exposes the social conditions of the suppressed Nepalese people through the plight of their children, where reverence for the old and dead far outweighs the care for the young and living. Experiencing their innocence and their hardship through songs, Stories and heartbreaking living conditions, exposes the contradiction of the material world that rests upon perhaps the most spiritual culture on earth. Children of Nature will remind you of scenes from Slumdog Millionaire and is reminiscent of Charcoal People.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Baby there's blood on your hands, April 22, 2005

By 

Pieter "Toypom" (Johannesburg) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Children of God/World of Skin (Audio CD)

This compilation chronologically precedes Various Failures, containing music recorded in 1986 and 1987. Most of the first two World of Skin albums are here plus Children of God, the work on which the band's transition from brutal industrial noise to a softer & seductive but deeply subversive style found true expression. New Mind and Beautiful Child are the only harsh numbers harking back to their earlier work; elsewhere the mood is one of resignation or sorrow over mostly gentle instrumentation.

The music is infused with mood and tension through remarkable arrangements like the beautiful melodic Like A Drug (Sha La La La). The overall theme appears to be the futility of love as manifested in seemingly gentle but emotionally charged songs like Our Love Lies, You're Not Real Girl, Real Love and Blind Love. Fans of dark, eerie music will love this work as it explores a side of the melancholy worldview that to some degree inheres in or finds repeated expression in the work of artists like Nick Cave, Peter Murphy, Leonard Cohen, Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, Nico, Velvet Underground, John Cale etc., while it also partakes of the solemnity of sacred medieval music. In subtly insidious ways Children of God encapsulates this `gothic' mood `in extremis.'

Swans is an acquired taste but for those who understand or are attuned & who are not repelled but recognize the music's cathartic power and/or the serenity that sorrow brings or the elegance of melancholy, they're very special. If this 2-disc compilation appeals to you, you might also want to investigate some of their other masterpieces like The Burning World or Love of Life.

The second disc blends the two (World of) Skin albums Blood, Women, Roses, of 1987 and Shame, Humility, Revenge of 1988 in a way that finally individuates the personality of this collaboration between Michael Gira & Jarboe. The music for both albums was recorded in London from October to December 1986. As separate works, the first had Jarboe on lead vocal and the second Gira. The sequence of tracks on this CD integrates the two so that the voices of J and MG alternate most of the time.

The result is astonishing, an example of a confluence that becomes more than the sum of its parts, revealing a multidimensional aesthetic and previously obscured profundity in the work of WoS. Even more interesting is that, although some themes overlap, the tone and the texture are significantly different from those of the first disc. In other words, these little known songs preceded those of Children of God that were recorded in Cornwall during February & March 1987. The instruments used are piano, keyboards, cello, piano, strings, violins, viola, double bass, acoustic guitar, Indian oboe, drum programming and `sounds.'

Disc 2 opens with Jarboe's restrained 1000 Years which is followed by Gira's Everything at Once where electronic buzzing heralds his layered vocals & then contributes to a cohesive sound collage in which strumming guitars play a prominent role. One of the two covers on the Blood album, Cry Me A River, in its delicate treatment by Jarboe now has a stronger impact when succeeded by MG's Breathing Water with its extraordinary instrumentation & its theme that echo Swans albeit in a more humane, less harsh articulation. The simultaneously sinister & sorrowful My Buried Child on The Great Annihilator is the sequel to Blood on your Hands. Both of them are chant-like intonations, Blood being slow and mournful, a wail with a menacing undertone, while Child is an urgent, uptempo chant. But they are both lullabies ...

Nowhere else does Gira sound as human as on the absorbing Nothing Without You; subdued strains of moaning - as in John Berryman's line: "making a mild sound, softer than a moan" - are joined by MG's whispers and genuine tenderness, an emotion not usually associated with him. Not even on the third World of Skin album Ten Songs for Another World where his contributions mostly reflect the morbid and the malevolent.

The powerful sequence of tracks 10 to 12: Turned to Stone, Cold Bed & 24 Hours first suffers his world-weary groan, then the mix of droning wordless vocal, violins & resonating viola embellished by piano & keyboard patterns takes over, eventually subsiding for Jarboe's lengthy introduction to MG's voice which then rises strong, hard & almost shouting on the Swans-like 24 Hours. This is majestic music indeed. The tinkling sounds of Red Rose contrast sharply with Jarboe's multitracked alto/contralto and the dissonant atonal eruptions, whilst One Small Sacrifice calls to mind the first disc's Our Love Lies, that final word-sound on spiritual exhaustion.

Jarboe's Still a Child starts with chilling beats and echoes that are soon transformed into chiming that accentuates her bluesy `Lady Day' delivery. The WoS excursion concludes with MG's The Center of your Heart where her choral backing vocals form ghostly cadences with his soft and gentle speaking voice. There is a different tone & texture to World of Skin, unlike anything that either of them has done before or since. The sound shares a mournful spirituality with Children of God but the expression of it resonates to a tone that is all its own. How lovely to compare the two tonalities, so seemingly close yet so remote.

Jarboe's 2004 compilation album contains rare World of Skin material like Everything for Maria (dedicated to Maria Callas), Mystery of Faith, a version of Nick Drake's Black Eyed Dog, Still A Child and Dream Dream plus studio & live versions of The Man I Love. They are solemn; only Jarboe can put a chill into George & Ira. Many hidden treasures grace this work A Mystery of Faith: Unreleased Pieces: Swans + World of Skin.

Michael Gira has explored many styles, from the obliquely brutal metallic mayhem of early Swans through tuneful folk, dark rock, drones & ambient excursions to complex orchestral compositions. His post-Swans project Angels of Light reflects the same talent contained in these discs but is more accessible and digestible as the extremes associated with Swans are not the music's driving force. I highly recommend albums like New Mother, How I Loved You and We Are Him.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The utter dark, January 22, 2004

By 

FormerZygote "Opinion" (Right Here, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Children of God/World of Skin (Audio CD)

Swans have done so much for music, effecting music itself on an unconcious level. You can hear the eager strife of so many bands to capture what came naturally to Gira and Jarboe. It would truely depend on how well one knows music to give a decent description, but far more then knowledge it takes an open mind to love any band even close to Swans.

This album is a cold, soothing, beautiful and dark album and truely amongst thier greatests. While Swans began with Michael Gira without Jarboe and as something so aggressive and heavy with anger thier devouring and honest message had always been wakeing. In this album you can see how the patience and the maturity found the message and the evolution began to flow much faster and with not only the mind but the heart and the soul.

Swans would later go on to warm thier sound even more so with "Various Failures"(the inbetween albums are near impossible to find for now) but still you can hear the solidity and fluidity that never left them for a moment.

Swans music for this album was a mixture of heavily pounding beats at slow to mid tempo violins, viola's acoustic and electric guitars and synthsizers and various obscurities inbetween. Thier music will incant a mixture for the listener of gothic and american-folk music... early Industrial drum and synth patterns(remniscant of Coil, Clock DVA and Einsturzende Neubaten) and the ethereal and gorgeous ambiance of Dead Can Dance.

If you should happen to like anythng by Swans do yourself the explicit favor of purchasing "Various Failures"(my favorite), "The Great Annihilator" and this brilliant album as well.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My first time hearing Swans, July 22, 2004

By 

Erica Anderson (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Children of God/World of Skin (Audio CD)

I remember reading an interview in a book on women in rock a several years ago I had bought in my college days. Swans' other half Jarboe was in the book. Since then I had been meaning to check out Swans' music but I just didn't know where to begin. The other day I was at my local library. I found a copy of "Children of God/World of Skin" so I thought this was the perfect time tto listen to their music. I immediately loved what I heard on both cds. I was easily reminded of some of my favorite darkwave bands like Black Tape For a Blue Girl, Lycia, and Clan of Xymox. The music is dark and dissonant. Michael Gira's dark, haunting vocals reminds me of both Sam Rosenthal (of Black Tape fame) and Voltaire (maybe a smidgeon). Jarboe has an equally stunning voice. I especially love it when she starts to wail like a banshee. There is a cold, empty, mechanical feel to the music but at the same time there is something comforting that I get from it that I can't put my finger on. Some of the music is melodic and some can be very experimental and very minimalistic. It's a nice antithesis to the commercial junk that radio plays into the ground.