| What Is This? | |
| Type: | demo |
| Artist: | Swans |
| Cover: | Swans - What Is This.jpeg |
| Alt: | Illustration of a pair of pliers. |
| Studio: | Marcata Studio (tracks 1–8) Gira's home studio (tracks 9 & 10) |
| Label: | Young God |
| Producer: | Michael Gira |
| Prev Title: | Deliquescence |
| Prev Year: | 2017 |
| Next Title: | Leaving Meaning |
| Next Year: | 2019 |
What Is This? is a 2019 limited-edition fundraiser album by American experimental rock band Swans.[1] [2] [3] The album was released in March 2019 on band leader Michael Gira's Young God Records. Limited to 2,500 copies, the album served as a fundraiser for the fifteenth Swans album, Leaving Meaning, which was released in October 2019.
The album includes demos that were worked on with a full band for the following Swans record, Leaving Meaning. Songs include reworkings of previous Swans and Gira songs, such as "Amnesia", "Annaline" and "The Knot" (itself a reworking of "No Words / No Thoughts"). Unlike Swans' previous fundraiser albums (with the exception of Gira's I Am Not Insane), What Is This? exclusively contains acoustic demo tracks.
Songs not recorded or left off the release include "You Will Pay" (also known as "You Must Pay"[4]), a rearranged version of 1989's "God Damn the Sun", an untitled "organ thing" and an untitled "long song".[5]
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