Michael Gira & Kristof Hahn (SWANS)

In the organizer's words:

Michael Gira & Kristof Hahn

Duo Performance

EXCLUSIVE APRIL 2025 TOUR

► Location: Westkreuz / Heilandskirche, Leipzig
► Date: Wednesday, 23.04.2025
► Admission: 19:00 hrs

Michael Gira founded the groundbreaking NYC band Swans in 1982. Quickly notorious for their punishing, brutal and repetitive sonic assaults, extreme volume levels and the self-loathing, abject screams and growls of Gira's sloganeering, Swans gradually morphed over the course of 15 years, eventually venturing into raw mechanical proto-industrial rock, to sprawling shifts in texture and perspective), to mellow, acoustic songs, and finally to their ultimate statement, "Soundtracks For The Blind" (1997), which somehow incorporated all of these elements at once, in well over two hours of music on one album. At this point, after 15 years of relentless touring and productivity, Gira gave up his career and disbanded Swans. Since 1999, Gira has released his music under the name Angels Of Light. He writes the songs for Angels Of Light on acoustic guitar and orchestrates them with a rotating cast of musicians, utilizing a variety of instruments including strings, horns, electric guitars, electronics and choral vocals. The songs are often eccentric and extreme, in keeping with Gira's penchant for soundtrack music.

Kristof Hahn is an experimental, avant-garde rock'n'roll guitarist. He lives and works in Berlin. Hahn's music ranges from abstract cinematic soundscapes to elegant rock'n'roll noir songs. Hahn is best known as the lap steel guitarist for the New York experimental rock band Swans. He joined the band in 1989 for the Burning World Tour and played on the following album "White Light from the Mouth of Infinity" (1990). He left the band in 1992, joined SWANS bandleader Michael Gira's follow-up project Angels of Light in 1998 and was a permanent member of the SWANS relaunch from 2010 to 2017. Hahn is also the founder of the Berlin bands Les Hommes Sauvages and Sultans of Gedankebrain and has collaborated with a variety of artists from different fields, including Alex Chilton, Tav Falco, Thomas Wydler and Pere Ubu. His approach to lap steel guitar is less rooted in tradition and more drone-oriented. He creates expansive soundscapes that sometimes erupt in thunderstorms of sound and sometimes dissolve into ethereal melodies.

Together, the two exceptional musicians will be gracing a few special venues with their duo performances and will undoubtedly make for breathtaking evenings.