More about: Swim Deep
In their own words
When you're aksed to list B-Town bands, Swim Deep will likely be one of the first you think of. No doubt you'll know 'em for their of-the-era indie album Where the Heaven Are We, but be prepared to know them for their new EP Familiarise Yourself With Your Nearest Exit just as much too—because it's awesome.
Catchy tune after catchy tune lead on from one another here, and a musician friend appears on each of them. We asked vocalist Austin Williams to take us through each of the tracks on the new EP. This is what he told us:
You might also like...
'On The Floor'
I had a writing session for Phoebe Green coming up, and I was writing a song with her in mind for it: I ended up stumbling on something quite magic, and I think that comes down to the fact I was free from filters or barriers that I subconsciously sometimes set myself when writing for swim deep. after finishing the demo with Dave Mcracken and Phoebe Green, I took it home and kind of remixed it into the dreamy shoegaze rom com vibe it has now, which I thought sounded so swim deep, so I asked Phoebe if we could release it on our collab EP.
'World's Unluckiest Guy'
A song that started as a small acoustic lullaby about feeling like the whole world is against you, getting every red light on the way to work.
Again I took this to Dreamtrak and he helped us turn it into something so much grander. It was originally half time which sounded amazing, but when Oli (Dreamtrak) suggested making it double time, it made so much sense after hearing it, it was turned into a huge pop song.
'Big Green Apple'
In the height of the summer, Robbie sent me this instrumental which reminded me of a rusted root vibe. It just felt super classic already. I'd been listening to loads of Taylor Swift and I think that's where that super poppy sugary hook line came from. I asked Nell to sing the chorus line on the demo, and it was so perfect that we decided to keep it exactly how it was.
'Good News'
We have always loved going to Thailand to play for our fans out there, and to meet new people. There's something that just clicked with swim deep out there, and the fans are amazing, and so supportive. So I started listening to Thai indie music and thought it would be great to collaborate with an artist out there, you know, to shine a light on them over here, and then to hopefully build on what we have going there. 'Good News' was a bit of a lo-fi vibe before we changed that guitar line to a synth line, going for that 'time to pretend' anthemic vibe. Once Dept put their touch to it suddenly it was something so much more magic than before.
'Darklands'
this song came about pretty soon after 'mothers', I was heavily into Vangelis, and the yamaha cs80 synth. I took that main synth part to Dreamtrak's studio and we kinda just cooked it until it sounded even warmer. Didn't really do much to it. And then years later I revisted it and realised it needed someone else's vocals on it, my falsetto just wasn't cutting through, I had in mind 'five four seconds' by mccartney/kayne/rihanna for the vocals. So I reached out to Hatchie and she just put this incredible layered vocal on it and then it was finished :)
Familiarise Yourself With Your Nearest Exit is out now.
Issue Three of the Gigwise Print magazine is preselling now! Order here.
More about: Swim Deep
Photo: Press
