Michael Gira

Angels of Light are an experimental group that was formed circa 1998 by singer/guitarist Michael Gira after he disbanded Swans, the group he had... founded in 1982. The band has marked a distinctly different style for Gira since he left Swans, most noticeably being musically more melodic and less brutal than his previous efforts. Before the band was formed, Gira intended to call his post-Swans acoustic/song-based project The Pleasure Seekers. This name was discarded because there had been a group with the same name in the 1960s. The first two live performances of what would become the Angels of Light were billed as "Michael Gira with guests". Angels of Light include many New York City collaborators, including Dana Schechter of Bee and Flower, Kid Congo Powers of The Cramps, Larry Mullins aka Toby Dammit, Bliss Blood of The Moonlighters, Thor Harris of Shearwater, and most recently the Brooklyn band Akron/Family as well as Berlin-based Swans guitarist Christoph Hahn and freak-folk musician Devendra Banhart. All Angels of Light albums have been released on Michael Gira's label Young God Records.
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Pigface is an industrial rock supergroup formed in 1990 by Martin Atkins and William Rieflin. Pigface was formed from Ministry's The Mind is a... Terrible Thing to Taste tour, which produced the In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up live album and video. For the tour, Al Jourgensen brought Atkins, Nivek Ogre and Chris Connelly. Also on the tour was Rieflin, regular Ministry drummer at the time. While Atkins enjoyed the dynamic of playing with a second drummer, he felt that the lineup was capable of doing much more than being, what he has frequently called, "a Ministry cover band." Once the tour was over, Atkins and Rieflin decided to continue working together and recruited several of their tourmates from The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste tour. Pigface was born with the intention of keeping a revolving-door style collaboration with many experimentally-minded musicians, many of whom, especially early on, had recorded for the influential industrial music record label Wax Trax!. Trent Reznor was also an early partner, before Nine Inch Nails became a household name.
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The World of Skin was a project springing out of the American group Swans, and was a collaboration between the core Swans members Michael Gira and... Jarboe. The project was initially called Skin, with the first two albums being released under that name, the last one being released under the name the World of Skin. The musical style was similar to The Burning World and the other later Swans releases, although it shed most of its rock influences to play a mostly acoustic goth-folk style with electronics. In the UK, the first two albums were released by Product Inc., an imprint of Mute Records, while the last was released on Gira's own Young God label. The Swans album Greed began a trend toward greater use of melody, and this trend continued with the later Children of God. The work performed as Skin was initially in marked contrast with the less overtly melodic but contemporaneous Swans work, but later Swans work integrated the two aspects. Blood, Women, Roses was the project's first release and featured vocals entirely by Jarboe, who had previously mainly been performing backing vocals.
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Uni Records was a record label owned by MCA Inc. The brand, which long featured a distinct UNi logo, was established in 1966 by MCA executive Ned Tanen and developed by music industry veteran Russ Regan. Notable artists on Uni included Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Foundations, Hugh Masekela, Brian... Hyland, Desmond Dekker, Bill Cosby, Elton John, Neil Diamond, Dave and Ansil Collins, Fever Tree, Olivia Newton-John and The Factory . In 1967, Uni took over management of MCA's newly acquired Kapp Records. In 1971 Uni was merged with Kapp and the co-owned American Decca Records, to form MCA Records. The Decca, Kapp, and Uni labels continued to be used for new releases for a short time, but in late 1972, new releases by their former artists began appearing on the MCA Records label; before long their back catalogs had been transferred to MCA as well. That year, Regan left MCA to revive 20th Century Records for 20th Century Fox In 1988, Uni was briefly revived by MCA Records as a niche hipster label, à la Sire Records, with a roster that included Transvision Vamp, Eric B.
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MCA Records was an American-based record company owned by MCA Inc., which later gave way to the larger MCA Music Entertainment Group , of which MCA Records was still part. MCA Records was absorbed by Geffen Records in 2003. MCA's country division, MCA Nashville Records, is a still active imprint of... Universal Music Group Nashville. MCA entered the recorded music business in 1962 with the purchase of the New York-based US Decca Records , including Coral Records and Brunswick Records. As American Decca owned Universal Pictures, MCA assumed full ownership of Universal and made it into the top film studio in town, producing hit after hit. In 1966, MCA formed Uni Records and in 1967 purchased Kapp Records which was placed under Uni Records management. The U.S. and U.K. Decca companies were forced to sever their ties because of World War II. MCA's U.S. based Decca Records had the rights to the Decca name in North and South America and parts of Asia including Japan. U.K. Decca owned the rights to the Decca name in the rest of the world. After the war, British Decca formed a new U.S. subsidiary, London Records. During this time U.S.
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Atavistic Records is an American rock and jazz record label based in Chicago, Illinois, known particularly for its No Wave and free jazz recordings. It has released albums by Glenn Branca, Nels Cline, Lydia Lunch, Peter Brötzmann, various Ken Vandermark projects, Pinetop Seven, Swans, Elliott... Sharp, Larry Ochs, Mars, Davey Williams, Brian Harnetty, and Poem Rocket, among others. The label was founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1985 by Kurt Kellison, initially as a video label producing live VHS recordings by bands such as Live Skull and The Flaming Lips. The label was relocated when Kellison moved to Chicago in 1988. Atavistic's Unheard Music Series imprint focuses on the reissuing of out-of-print free improvisation/ avant-garde jazz recordings.
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