Angels Of Light How I Loved You CD

Angels Of Light includes: Michael R. Gira (vocals, acoustic & electric guitars); Christoph Hahn (electric guitar, lap steel guitar); Birgit-Cassis Staudt (accordion, melodica, piano, keyboards, background vocals).
Principally recorded at Excello, Brooklyn, New York; Spa Studios, New York, New York.
Personnel: Michael Gira (vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar); Bliss Blood (vocals, ukulele, musical saw, background vocals); Siobhan Duffy (vocals, background vocals); Christopher Hahn (electric guitar, lap steel guitar); Kid Congo Powers (electric guitar); Thor Harris (dulcimer, hammer dulcimer, piano, background vocals); Birgit Staudt (accordion, melodica, piano, background vocals); Larry Mullins (Farfisa, vibraphone, glockenspiel, drums, castanets, tambourine, timpani, sleigh bell).
Audio Mixer: Doug Henderson.
Recording information: Excello, Brooklyn, NY; Mini-Moose, Brooklyn, NY; Moose; Spa, New York, NY.
Editor: Doug Henderson.
Arguably Michael Gira's finest work outside of his pioneering noise band, Swans, HOW I LOVED YOU is an atypically low-key, at times downright beautiful album blending acoustic guitar, piano, accordion, banjo, and quirky orchestrated passages underneath Gira's conversational vocals. One of the centerpiece tracks is called "Song For Nico," and comparisons to classic Nico albums like THE MARBLE INDEX and DESERTSHORE are not far off the mark. Serge Gainsbourg circa HISTOIRE DE MELODY NELSON is another musical touchstone: while Gira's album is nowhere near as musically lavish, a similarly uneasy mood of queasy eroticism, dread, and languor runs through tracks like "Jennifer's Sorry," "New City in the Future," and the 12-minute epic closer, "Two Women." Fans of the more aggressive aspects of Swans might be somewhat disappointed with the album's generally placid mood, though the sometimes disturbing lyrics connect HOW I LOVED YOU to Gira's more transgressive works.
Michael Gira, songwriter, vocalist, and producer, has been a constant on the independent music scene for over 20 years. His music has evolved restlessly and relentlessly over the course of many projects from Swans to Skin to the Body Lovers/Body Haters to spoken word recordings and now to the Angels of Light. Through it all, his vision has been one of extremes, from violence to tenderness, often in the same breath. He has taken the broken, the sick, and the unmentionable and, through a singular vision of the universe as a collection of inseparable entities, often transformed these horrific shadows into works of great beauty and force -- even if that beauty is covered under an excess and aggression so pure they are sometimes frightening. Angels of Light's How I Loved You moves far from that terrain and into a zone of languid reverie, bittersweet longing, and crystalline excess. The mood resembles previous Angels of Light recordings only in that the tone of the songs is largely acoustic with a palette of oblique electronic washes and blurred sonic architectures applied for cavernous, orchestral atmosphere. Its elegance is seductive, and that seduction is necessary because the resplendent beauty Gira creates is adorned with confusion, and a melancholy celebration of all that is ambivalent in the human heart while in the grips of the purest desire: the one that wishes to possess the object of one's affection at any cost. The band is comprised of Gira on vocals, guitars, and effects; Christoph Hahn on lap and electric guitars; Lawrence Mullins on percussion; Dana Shecter on bass and piano; Birgit-Cassis Staudt on accordion, piano, and Casio; and Thor Harris on dulcimer and piano. They are joined by Bliss Blood on vocals and Kid Congo Powers on electric guitar. Gira's collaborators are so in the truest sense of the word, helping to shape a sound with no center other than the vision of the love song itself. The disc opens with "Evangeline," a song that echoes the traditional folk song in title only. This paean -- painted with a sUncut (8/01, p.87) - 3 1/2 stars out of 5 - "...A shimmering, widescreen sound..."
Alternative Press (6/01, p.76) - 4 out of 5 - "...Moody, layered, acoustic based tunes topped with Michael Gira's heartfelt vocals....Very moving...'
Magnet (6-7/01, p.78) - "...Some of the most thoughtful and though-provoking songwriting around..."
CMJ (4/23/01, p.4) - "...A collection of love songs that's both beautiful and fret-filled..."
Mojo (Publisher) (6/01, p.96) - "...An uplifting, even redemptive experience..."
NME (Magazine) (9/15/01, p.39) - 7 out of 10 - "...It's goth...beautiful arranged and in very huge spaces of time....basically, Gira and his angels are Godspeed You Black Clothing..."