Swans - Filth

LINES IN WAX 500th POST EXTRAVAGANZA!

Who in their right mind would have thought I could write 500 album reviews? Actually who in their right mind would write 500 album reviews? Well the answer is little old me. As Lines In Wax passes it's 4th birthday, we also reach this milestone in posting. As with the 100th and 250th post, I would like to quickly thank everyone for their continued support and readership. Without your disapproving eyes, I'd be writing for myself and a few Google bots, which is an even sadder existence than the one I'm leading now. In celebration of the 500 milestone, I have decided to "review" one of my absolute all time favourite records. Here's to another 500 posts!

Swans are my favourite band in the entire universe (outside of grindcore). They have a long and meandering career spanning 4 decades, numerous genres, 13 studio albums and an obscene amount of other releases. The most savage of the bunch has to be Filth, the band's debut album from 1983; a clanking, grinding beast dominated by the unusual presence of not only two bassists but two drummers. The guitar is an afterthought. Some people argue that the Cop album is heavier, and whilst that is true in the fact that Cop is more akin to 'metal' than anything that appears on Filth, I firmly believe that the scraping, mechanical abortion of Filth far surpasses any form of heaviness that any metal music could possibly hope to convey. Being 32 years old this year, Filth was incredibly ahead of its time, and far more influential than we could possibly ever hope to measure.

Opening with the lurching "Stay Here", what Filth is all about becomes apparent very quickly. It is like some horrible machine has come to life. "Power For Power" is one of my favourite songs in the entire universe; the drums are absolutely devastating. This song says a lot to me, not only on an inter-personal level with the games people play with each other, but about Western culture and capitalist/consumerist culture in general. "Thank You" is almost danceable, before "Weakling" laid the template for every Godflesh song recorded before 1990. It sounds like the world slowly dying....

I own an original pressing of this record, although it has just been lovingly remastered (I'd love to hear the mule kick on that fucker). I could fanboy about this shit for hours so don't take my word for it, just listen. If you've heard it before there's no reason not to do it again. Crank it ALL the way up for this one. 

Swans - To Be Kind

A recurring theme in my posting to Lines In Wax is my reluctancy to approach my absolute favourite bands. I eventually get to it with most of them (look how many Agoraphobic Nosebleed posts I’ve done!) but with Swans I always hit that wall. How in the fuck am I supposed to describe this album in only so many words?

 I was still getting my head around The Seer when To Be Kind was announced. In a press release, Michael Gira stated something along the lines that this new album will be as long as it needs to be, and with live versions of “The Seer” mashed up with “Bring The Sun” and “Toussaint L'ouverture” reaching nearly an hour in length, I was expecting To Be Kind to be a bigger, badder, mind-boggling big brother to The Seer. But it wasn’t.

Instead, what I believe we have here, is the much calmer and more refined sequel to The Seer. A gentle, elegant older sister, rather than a snarling big brother. It’s actually a little bit shorter than it’s predecessor. I’m not saying that it lacks at all in what Swans do best (total sonic transcendence / annihilation), you just need to spin the unfathomable epic “Bring The Sun” to confirm that; it’s a track that builds and builds (and builds and builds) with maddening repetition to ride a crest of an all-consuming musical orgasm. Personally, I feel sorry for the drummer(s), and slightly more long term – my ears. But, man it’s good. No, what differentiates To Be Kind from The Seer is the aching passages of calm moments in between the sheer walls of aural bliss , accentuated and kept plodding mostly by a much more prominent presence of the bass guitar. The bass playing on this album is absolutely fucking phenomenal (check “Oxygen”), and the songs seem to be built more around bass grooves rather than repetitive guitar leads.

My favourite tracks are “Just A Little Boy” (which takes a while to get going but has the most epic ending sequence ever), the previously mentioned “Bring The Sun / Toussant L’ouverture” (the 34 minute centrepiece to this circus of insanity), the maddening bass verses brass  frenzy of “Oxygen” and the ultimate duality of the title track, with it’s  love/hate, hot/cold, creation/destruction kinda vibe as it folds from sheets of sheer bliss into cataclysmic free form noise and destruction.

Like I said, words can only describe so much. Play this as loud as you possibly can.

The Angels Of Light - We Are Him

To me, We Are Him is the heaviest of all the Angels Of Light material, for lack of a better way of describing it. In hindsight, their final album was a precursor to the reformation of Swans in 2010. It mashes together the usual artsy, folky vibes of earlier Angels stuff with heavy bass lines and thumping percussion attacks. Listening to the first ten seconds of "Goodbye Mary Lou" is enough to cement that We Are Him is still steeped in the roots from which the Angels Of Light spawned, but there is a palpable menace brooding over this record. 

Let's face it, "Black River Song" and "My Brother's Man" could easily have been on the Swans reformation album, My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky. Both are mind numbingly repetitive, driven by bass and heavy percussion, and narrated by twisted, slightly disturbing vocal lines. But, this is still an Angels Of Light record, and moments of clarity and beauty are in abundance. I never thought I'd ever be into something that resembles country and western, but Michael Gira will take you strange places if you are willing to follow. "Sunflower's Here To Stay" and "The Visitor" are simply stunning, intricately composed and immensely delicate tracks of American goodness. 

If you liked the softer side to Swans and haven't heard Angels Of Light yet, there's no better place to start than here. Self-released by Gira on Young God Records. 

Michael Gira - Benefit CD - Jarboe Emergency Medical Fund

This simple little CD housed in a tray insert can sell for up to £140 on Discogs, which is, in all honestly, absolutely fucking retarded. I'd always had it marked down as another piece of Michael Gira discography that I could never get because of silly hipsters with too much time and money on/in their hands. I could have kissed the merch guy at the recent Jarboe gig in Bristol when I saw this little gem shining out of a maze of various Jarboe records. I felt like a bit of a dick going to a Jarboe show and leaving with only a Swans t-shirt and a Michael Gira CD (hahaha) but hey...she was selling them! 

The quality on this CD isn't the best in the world, I will be honest. You can even hear people talking over the mix. I don't really know the story behind the need for Jarboe's "emergency medical fund" but it looks like to me that Gira rounded up a bunch of his music-making pals for a gig in New York to raise a bunch of money; a quest that was furthered by the release of this CD. It is my understanding that a lot of the musicians here went on to become involved in The Angels of Light (and the resurrected incarnation of Swans in the form of Phil Puleo), and that results in some interesting live versions of classic Gira/Swans songs. "God Damn The Sun" sounds particularly haunting with an Angles of Light vibe, it's just a shame it's spoilt by beret-wearing (a wild assumption) pricks who feel the need to talk through fucking gigs. 

I will end with simply saying that I don't think there's any need to buy this unless your a Swans/Gira/Jarboe super-fan or a collector hell-bent on getting all their stuff. I'm just happy I managed to get it for a reasonable £10, although to be honest I didn't really need to pay that to be reminded of how much I hate cunts talking over music. 

The Angels of Light - Angels of Light Sing 'Other People'

This is the closest that Angels of Light ever came to Gira's bare bones solo work; ...Other People is a stripped down acoustic, folky romp that sees Gira and co. writing homages in song form to people that...well, deserve songs written about them, I guess. It's all very artsy-fartsy, and whilst I don't feel it's the best Angels of Light album in any universe, there is still a fair dollop of good tunes here.

The first notable difference here is that drums (or percussion generally) are absent for the entire album, rendering the whole thing with more of a Gira 'n' Pals kinda vibe than a full-blown Angels of Light record. For the most part, the songs are driven by Michael Gira's voice and a simple acoustic guitar, decorated now and then with some other sparse instrumentation and gang-style backing vocals on the choruses. 

My favourite song by a country mile is "Destroyer", although there is a whole bunch of decent tunes here, such as "On The Mountain", "Michael's White Hands" and "Purple Creek". For me, this is a funny one in the Angels of Light discography; in no way would I consider it vital, like How I Loved You, or We Are Him, but it is also by far the easiest Angels record to get a hold of on wax. I got this for a tenner, which was an absolute bargain considering how much original presses of earlier records of theirs cost.

In a short conclusion then; worth a listen if you enjoy the softer side of Swans or Michael Gira's solo work (the acoustic stuff, rather than the abstract stuff), but for beginners I'd say definitely start with one of the above-mentioned records rather than this one.

Swans - Love of Life

This little remix EP accompanied the release of the Love of Life album by Swans back in 1992. It makes things a touch confusing whilst researching online as both 12"s have the same title. It takes two tracks from that record, and pairs them alongside "long versions", which are essentially drawn-out, more atmospheric takes on the classic original tracks. This "single" isn't particularly rare, but at the same time it isn't very easy to find either. I know that doesn't make much sense, but don't expect these to fall off trees. Despite this, you can still get it fairly cheap (expect to pay around a minimum of £15). I found my copy buried in amongst all the crap at Kelly's Records in Cardiff market, much to my delight. This will eventually go inside my Love of Life black box set, which to date is still missing a record (White Light). When I get a copy of White Light I'll do a separate review for that as well and then do the Love of Life album review + box set overlook in another post, probably as something special like the 1000th post or something.

The title track remix doesn't really offer much, just drawing out the track a bit more and adding a weird funk to it, as well as a strange dance beat. When it kicks in proper, it has more time to unfold that the 3-minutes-or-so album version, but it does get a bit repetitive after 6 minutes. The "Amnesia" remix however is totally brilliant. It takes the drum pattern and extends it, filling the void with hellish screams, horns, mysterious sounds and Jarboe's haunting vocals. The original version of "Amnesia" is so short and to the point for a Swans song, so this creepy atmospheric version definitely feels more like the real thing!

Both remixes were done by a guy called Martin Bisi, who runs a recording studio in New York with Bill Laswell (the guy who produced The Burning World), and the 12" was put out by Gira's own label, Young God Records. You check out both extended remix tracks below. Get in!

Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind

Soundtracks for the Blind is often hailed as something incredibly special in the original Swans catalogue. After spending the majority of the 90s focussing on much more softer material, Swans' issued a perplexing final death rattle with this double album. Listening to it, even from the first few opening seconds, evokes deep feelings of sadness for me, even though I never got into the band until they reformed three years ago. This record was literally everything the band had left before they quit. There are a few full-band songs in here, but the majority of the two discs is made up of sound collages by Gira and Jarboe. Some of them are tests of patience, sure, but for the most part they are extremely efficient and poignant passages of noise, ambience or atmosphere to rival any long-term artists in this field.

As a whole, Soundtracks for the Blind is an absolute mammoth task to try and conquer in one go. You really do get your money's worth here. Both discs are crammed full, and the total running length for the entire album is nearly two and a half hours long. Even with the recent release of The Seer, I believe that Soundtracks is by far the most "out-there" thing that Swans have ever done. It's creepy, moving and downright edgy, and leaves you with that sinking feeling you get in your chest after looking at old photographs or something. Due to the sheer volume of ambient tracks here, when the full band finally kicks in it is infinitely more impressive. Most of the band tracks last easily between 10 and 15 minutes, a scary decade-plus long ago look at what was to come in the future, and also a downright perplexing move for a band that had spend the previous seven years or so peddling acoustic-driven four-minuters like it was nobody's business. I mean, just compare this record to the album before it (The Great Annihilator); such startling change continues to puzzle me to this very day.

Couple that with the fact that a few of the songs here scarily pre-date the stylings of the post rock explosion ("Helpless Child" and "The Sound" as examples) and you really have an absolute relic of a record that must be cherished until the end of time. Its length makes it almost impossible to market commercially, its content relating to neither the brutal Swans of old or the soft Swans of the 90s, and it was released at a time when it would be seen as a statement along the lines of "This is all we have left of any worth. This should have been the future, but it is all you are getting". If I had been a Swans fanatic in the 90s then I would have torn this record apart and analysed every single second of it. I'm so fucking glad Swans reformed. So. Fucking. Glad. Out on Young God Records.

 

If you have a spare 2 hours and 22 minutes why not give the entire album a listen right here. What do you have to gain expect complete and total enlightenment? 

Swans - We Rose From Your Bed With The Sun In Our Head

Whilst I wasn't quick enough to snag one of the original hand-made run of 1000, and whilst I am not rich enough to pay some prick hipster cunt with a wardrobe full of berets £90 for a second hand copy which no doubt they have never even played, I was finally able to get my hands on this live album when Mr. Gira thankfully re-pressed an unlimited, non-special edition run on CD. Phew. Unfortunately, this does not contain the excellent acoustic demos that the original hand-made version has, but that is a small sacrifice to pay.

I don't think I've ever been as excited about a live album before in my life. As a general rule, live albums suck ass, but at as far as Swans is concerned, I think they break enough general rules in music anyway so why not snap the live album rule too? They seem to put a live album out for every single era of their existence and they've only done one fairly shit one so far (Anonymous Bodies... anyone?), so that's not too bad going! Before The Seer came out, I needed something to compare with the utterly exhausting and all-encompassing experience that is Swans live, but My Father... just didn't cut the mustard. I love the record, but it is lacking in the certain intensity that Swans hold as a live group. We Rose From Your Bed... kindly provided me with that Swans-feel right in my own home, until The Seer came along and gave me a brain haemhorrage due to it's severe awesomeness.

When Swans play live, the songs become drawn out, almost improvised versions of themselves. The fact that the incredibly simple "No Words / No Thoughts" is dragged out for over 20 minutes here should be worrying, and to be fair when I saw them at Roadburn I was a bit confused as to what was actually going on,  but every single time the intro riff is repeated over and over and over, instead of getting more annoying, it gets more anxious; it keeps building and building until it eventually explodes. This is the general rule here - the seeking of total sonic annihilation! You can't fault Gira and Co. for not living up to that!

 

Just looking at this record makes me excited for the up and coming UK tour in April. A recent Facebook status by Gira informs us that in recent gigs, the song "The Seer" has mutated into something that is now one hour and a half in length! Jesus fucking Christ! I have recently been "diagnosed" with tinnitus and need to source out proper hearing protection before heading to more shows, but I just cannot imagine listening to Swans with earplugs in! It would be Sacrilege! Out on an unlimited run on Young God, and signed by Michael Gira. 

Swans - New Mind

In my quest to own all Swans shit I endeavor to pick up all the singles as 12"s, with the exception of New Mind as the 12" doesn't really offer me anything for the increased price. For the singles that follow, a lot of alternate versions / exclusive tracks occupy the B-side, but with New Mind all the 7" gets is a shorter version  of what's on the 12" B-side. And that is actually a good thing, because we get the lush Jarboe track "I'll Swallow You" without the crappy remixed "New Mind" intro. Straight to the point! The whole 12" version appears as the final track on any repress of Children of God anyway, so I've heard it and own it and it's fucking crap. Also, as a note, the version of "New Mind" here is cut down to just under four minutes.

 

Swans - The Burning World

Hmmm, this is going to be a controversial one for me. I don't know how I can write about this without being downright horrible about one of my favorite bands of all time. Hard Times. Fuck it, here it goes. Burning World is Swans' sixth album, and marked the final nail in the coffin for the early days of audible hell. Industrialists, grinders, artfags and noise nerds dropped their support for this band in fucking droves the moment The Burning World hit the shelves, and it's very easy to see why. Even compared to the tamer-than-usual sound of fifth album Children of God, The Burning World is a hundred thousand miles away from anything Cop or Filth. Gone are the dirging bass rhythms, the relentless and pounding drums, the hellish and fucking loathsome lyrics! In are all the acoustic guitars in the world, a plethora of studio session musicians, a major label budget and THAT Johnny Cash crooning. Yikes!

And thus began a period in the history of Swans that both Jarboe and Mr. Gira like to pretend didn't happen. In retrospect, Gira admits to "loathe" The Burning World, and he even repressed the two albums to follow it on a compilation called Various Failures. You think he's trying to tell us something? The fact that he didn't repress The Burning World for fucking aeons also cements the fact that he hates this record, and even when he did so in the compilation form of Forever Burned, the pressing number was significantly lesser than all the other Swans re-issues. Following "gay" Swans records White Light... and Love of Life went on to achieve something of a cult status (I personally think Love of Life is spectacular) but The Burning World sank like a stone and for the most part remains in the depths of the music world where nobody gives a shit about it.

I've seen this and the CD version go for some ridiculous prices online so when I saw it for like £15 on Discogs I snapped it up, mainly because I am a massive Swans fan boy and simply must get every single record (I cringe at the day I have to fucking buy The Great Annihilator which is by far their worst output), and in all honesty, it started to grow on me. I don't really know why, because it is a shameless, major label funded, Bill Laswell fueled try-hard attempt to break into the mainstream, but I gotta say, The Burning World has a few great songs. If the tribal drumming aspects of "Mona Lisa Mother Earth" aren't good then I might as well be deaf, "Universal Emptiness" is far more impressive that similar-sounding depressed cunts The Smiths and "Saved" is the best song in the world for describing my life. I don't deserve it, but I'm Saved.

Until the disappointing chorus kicks in, "Jane Mary, Cry One Tear" builds and builds in such an epic fashion, with heart-wrenchingly depressing lyrics, and closer "God Damn The Sun" has gone on to become a Gira acoustic classic. It is the only track on this album that stands head and shoulders above the rest. It is purely one of the most goddamn fuckin' miserable things I have ever heard. Even though Swans changed just about everything to do with their sound, the same themes remained. Okay, it's not quite "push your ass up / cry / open your mouth / here's your money / cry / this feels good" or "somebody weaker than you should rape you, bastard" but the lyrics still center around demons, loss, death, depression and apparent incomprehensible self loathing. I think then, we can forgive the mighty Swans this one hiccup! Long live the crushing monster!

Michael Gira - Songs for a Dog

This post is dedicated to Michael Gira's dog Nina, who passed away last week. 

Songs for a Dog is essentially the vinyl version of what would become The Milk of M. Gira on CD. Both act as compilation albums of Gira's self-released acoustic stuff, which is all out of print, limited edition and worth a fucking fortune. This was originally put together by a British label called Lumberton Trading Company back in 2006. It is a fairly simple affair comprising mainly of a plain cardboard sleeve with minimal art by Gira himself (co-incidentally the same front cover stamp that adorns The Milk...) and a lyrics sheet.  

All the Gira classics are here, be they solo tracks or borrowed ones from Swans or The Angels of Light. Stand out tracks are the ominous opener "Promise of Water", the personal homage that is "Rose of Los Angeles" and the self-destructive depress-o-classic "God Damn the Sun". "Purple Creek" is pretty good too, and closer "Mean Monster Mike" is just plain insane.

I'm not entirely sure if this record is still in print (I got it at a stall in Roadburn Festival 2012) but if you are looking to get some of Gira's acoustic stuff this is the cheapest you'll find anywhere, ever. The Milk of M. Gira is still in print but unless you can catch him / Swans on tour your never going to get it at a decent price when beret wearing hipster cunts are selling them on Discogs for over sixty quid each. All the other hand-made CDs are valuing at a hundred or more, so this simple 12" at an average of fifteen pounds is your best bet, I'd wager.   

I fucking love Gira but I fucking hate hipsters. What an endlessly painful situation, eh?

PS - This song isn't on this compilation, but it is an excellent example of Gira's acoustic show.

Swans - The Seer

I've been anticipating the review of this monster for a very long time; it has been nagging away at the back of my mind since I heard the album a few months ago. I almost wrote the review on the mp3 files I heard, but I pressured myself into waiting for the actual finished product, and boy am I glad that I did! The Seer is an absolute fucking monster of a record, and is by far the longest record I own at nearly 2 hours in length (I think it even outruns Bitches Brew by Miles Davis, although I could be wrong on that account so don't quote me on that). Swans have come literally leaps and bounds from My Father... that was released in 2010; literally, unexplainable progressiveness in such a short time is quite frankly mind boggling! But, that is what Swans have always done (for better or worse) and will most likely continue to do, should they ever somehow manage to figure out how to top this record for sheer ambition.

I got this excellent triple LP package directly from Young God Records on pre-order, and what a fantastic package it is, almost rivalling Boris & Sunn O)))'s Altar collaboration in terms of sheer shininess (although nothing quite beats Southern Lord shininess). The entire thing folds out like a rectangular snake, each partition holding a new record full of experimental, post rock-cum-noise madness, or a poster, or a download card, or a live dvd of an entire Swans performance. To top it off, the thing is signed on the back by the man himself, Mr. Michael Gira; the ringmaster in this circus of lunacy. Swans has had it's fair share of musicians, but it has always been about centring on Gira, and to an extent Westberg and Jarboe, but for once Gira doesn't shadow over as the "leader" (although he is that, if you get what I'm trying to say); the band is whole; each performer is bringing an equal amount to the table here. Phil Puleo and Thor's dual percussion attack is the defining backbone to the modern era Swans sound, and Christoph Hahn's oft-redneck-as-fuck slide guitar is fucking awesome as fucking fuck. I now want a slide guitar. The remaining two guitarist and one bassist flesh out the monumental cacophony almost perfectly, leaving Gira's baritone to lazily (or crazily) echo over the top of the whole lot of it almost like the icing on a rather large and weird cake. Oh, and Jarboe is back, if only for two songs.

It will take you several listens to even comprehend what-the-actual-fuck is going on here; "The Apostate" and "A Piece of the Sky" are both at the twenty minute mark, "The Seer" itself is just over thirty minutes, and "The Seer Returns" lulls on for another six, bringing the title track experience to nearly forty minutes. That's an hour and twenty for those four tracks alone, and you got a whole bunch of other tracks to comprehend on top of that! My only irk is that with the vinyl version the track list runs in a totally different order, and that all three of the massive tracks are split onto different sides of vinyl. With "The Seer" I can understand why for quality reasons, the title track and it's afterthought "The Seer Returns" (which is the original version of "The Seer", for those who've not heard the demos on We Rose From Your Bed...) takes up a whole disc in itself. But, I cannot understand why the two twenty minuters are split; they could easily take up a side each and not have to be broken up.

 

I could literally write on about this album for longer than it's actual duration so I'm going to round this off now. The Seer is a maddeningly ambitious record that will, without doubt, send you through various stages of insanity whilst trying to listen to the whole thing in one go. It is set to more than likely split the Swans fan base in two (again), and if I am totally honest a record of this gargantuan length does have a few dull moments (opener "Lunacy" springs to mind) but the longer, more progressive tracks more than make up for it. Give the track below a chance, and if you can stomach it, download / buy and love it forever!

Swans - A Screw

In the 80s, Swans went through various forms of horrible music; starting with the fuckfest of jazz and no wave, then somehow mutating to dirgy, percussion heavy, bass guitar driven nightmares. With the album Cop, Swans added real distorted guitar into the mix and created something more musical yet still epically heavy, and thus instantly inventing Godflesh and a hundred other bands in the process. In the remaining gap between that period and Swans becoming a much calmer beast with Children of God, the band pursued a strange electronic direction. Equally as visceral and crushing as earlier efforts, but with an almost pop sensibility laughing at you from the edges of the songs.

When the record starts, you get a pretty unobtrusive beat and a bog standard bass line that doesn't sound threatening at all. And it's not like the song builds or gets heavier, what happens is a rare case of mood changing so subtly within a song, accompanied by minimal instrumentation changes. All of sudden Michael Gira is groaning about (presumably) stuffing dollar bills down the throat of a hooker and things seem a lot different to what they were mere moments ago. In a split second, that unobtrusive beat is grinding your soul to pieces and the bog standard bass line is making you feel horrible, horrible vibes. It bashes your skull to smithereens in all it's lo-fi glory. It is dirty, yet so clinically executed and machine-like that it covers both ends of a very jarred and weird spectrum and puts you in a place that only early Swans can put you in.

 

The pounding beat is like a timekeeper to some seriously perverse fucking. It makes you want to get on a plane to Amsterdam's red light district, find the youngest, most innocent and naive looking girl there and give her a cold, hard, perfunctory pumping over her sink until she starts to fucking cry. I wish I was joking*. Early Swans is a drug that should be taken with extreme caution, and this k.422 pressing of A Screw, along with the pressing of Time Is Money (Bastard), are two of the most challenging and disturbing pieces of music ever written.

(*disclaimer: I am joking)

Swans - Feel Good Now

This is an extremely collectable Swans "bootleg" of live performances recording during the supporting tour for the seminal album Children of God, pressed on double 12". It was actually recorded for the band by Jack Balchin, the band's sound engineer at the time, using just a Sony Walkman, and was originally marketed as a bootleg to save any hassle with record labels. Feel Good Now doesn't quite live up to the total aural destruction of previous live albums such as Real Love or Public Castration is a Good Idea, but it is still an interesting document of swans history.

To the casual Swans fan and / or general observer, the tracks here are nothing more than just badly recorded live versions of songs from Children of God. Check the link below to see what I mean. That being said, it would be silly to consider this record anything but a completist's item for hardcore Swans fanboys such as myself. The cheapest I've seen this go for on Discogs is around £30, but I fluked my copy on a no-reserve eBay auction for just £3.20. What a steal! Granted, my copy doesn't include the tour poster but it is a small price to pay for such a great bargain!