Swans albums, with all their dark grandeur, can be expensive things to put together. And so frontman Michael Gira usually funds the albums’ recording sessions by selling live albums to his fanbase. Gira recently announced plans to follow up last year’s To Be Kind with the final album from the current Swans lineup, and now he’s selling The Gate, the album that will pay for those sessions. The Gate is available in a lot of different formats and bundles, and each copy will also be unique. The covers are hand-brushed white ink, signed by cover artist Nicole Boitos. (Her drawing is based on a sketch from Gira.) Gira will also draw on and sign every copy. The albunm’s six live songs include four long unrecorded pieces that Gira describes thus: “(long) pieces that were developed through correction, improvisation, and catastrophe over the course of 16 months touring, and they’re still not ‘finished,’ per se – as always, this is work in progress, to be further explored in the studio.” The album also includes four solo demos from Gira that he plans to re-orchestrate and re-record for the new album. You can buy The Gate here.