[Cover photo credit to Mac Janas]

Swans has announced that they will release Newly Sentient Being, an audio and video collection that captures the band’s final “Big Sound” performance, recorded on Nov. 28, 2025, in Berlin. It will arrive on Oct. 2, 2026, via Young God Records.

This performance marks a goodbye to this particular version of Swans: Michael Gira, Kristof Hahn, Dana Schechter, Larry Mullins, Phil Puleo, Christopher Pravdica, and Norman Westberg, the album will be available as a 4LP+DVD set with poster, a 2CD+DVD with fold out booklet, a limited edition box set exclusive to the Young God Records webstore, and digitally.

Newly Sentient Being features recordings of Swans’ final concert of an era that ran from 2010-2025 and is the culmination of 15 years of sonic expressionism. Recorded in Berlin, it features two and a half hours of music, including new material never before recorded, and a DVD of the performance directed by Marco Porsia and Peter Harton.

Michael Gira shares:

“In 2010 I made the decision to reconvene my band, Swans, which I had, years earlier, killed out of frustration, disappointment and exhaustion. Now, I saw a light, a way forward for the music, and I decided to pursue it. Neither I, nor my collaborators in sound had any idea how things would eventually unfold, but it felt necessary and right, so we followed the music where it led. Turns out there was and is an audience for our music, which is often less than accessible in the popular sense of the term, but proved to be nevertheless compelling to a growing cadre of folks seeking the kind of unique experience we have offered.

I believe we reached some pretty tremendous highs along the way, where the music became a raging, sentient autonomous beast that played us (and the audience/listener), rather than the reverse. That was the goal all along, to lose ourselves in the swirl. It took a lot out of us, physically and psychically to reach the highest plateaus, but once there, there was nothing on earth like it, and I’m glad we did it. Now this phase is finished. There’s nowhere else to take it, but we seem to have ended on a particularly high note with our final tour of this (now passing) Swans era, and I believe these current recordings convey the sensations and experience of the unique world we forged. For the next phase, I’m moving Swans into something with a decidedly more humble, and intimate musical palette, but here now I offer my praise to the righteous group of humans, the musicians that made our final foray into the sonic ether a reality: Norman Westberg, Dana Schechter, Phil Puleo, Larry Mullins, Kristof Hahn, Christopher Pravdica, and I was in there flailing somewhere too.”