Choosing to extinguish the band name under which Gira & Jarboe had worked together for so long must not have been an easy step, but when they decided to end Swans with one last studio release as a prelude to a farewell tour, they did so with what turned out to be their biggest & best album ever. Interestingly, the double-disc, two-&-a-half-hour long Soundtracks makes no pretensions at being a uniform creation like The White Album or Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness; Gira's own notes