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Events

Swimmer One, as regular listeners will know, appear on stage quite rarely. Our live outings to date have included a theatre show staged in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Italy, some club nights in London, our own Edinburgh night, Here (although it’s had only two outings in four years now, so don’t hold your breath waiting for the next one), the opening party of the Glasgow International contemporary art festival, and the occasional straightforward pop gig with the likes of John Foxx, Union of Knives, Smoosh and Client. We are always open to generous, unusual and interesting offers from friendly people with PAs that can cope with loud, electronic basslines.

To book Swimmer One, contact our label, Biphonic, at biphonic@postmaster.co.uk.

COMING UP...

Saturday 10 May 2008 - Green Wedge at the GRV, 37 Guthrie Street, Edinburgh. A benefit gig for the Green Party, in which Swimmer One attempt to reverse climate change using the power of song, and warm up for their big weekend of gigs and travel on 24-25 May. Tickets on door, all in a good cause.

Saturday 24 May 2008 - Feeling Gloomy at Bar Academy, 16 Parkfield Street, London. Swimmer One make their second appearance at their new favourite London club night. For ticket info, visit www.feelinggloomy.com.

Sunday 25 May 2008 - Neue Liebe at Voodoo Rooms, 19a West Register Street, Edinburgh. Swimmer One headline the capital’s regular, eclectic cabaret spectacular, supported by a line-up of burlesque performers, poets, artists and other colourful folk. www.thevoodoorooms.com

NEW - Thursday 19 June 2008 - Limbo at Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh. www.thevoodoorooms.com

Thursday 26 June 2008 - Carnegie Hall, East Port, Dunfermline. How did we get to Carnegie Hall? We practised, man, we practised. For ticket info, visit www.carnegiehall.co.uk


REVIEWS


Here’s a review of a recent live show at the Carling Bar Academy in London, from The Independent…

“Who mentioned Stoneybridge?” asks Swimmer One’s snappily waistcoated singer with a laugh after opening this short but persuasive appearance with Largs Hum, a pumping, soaring electro anthem about a mysterious low-frequency noise that has plagued the inhabitants of a small Strathclyde town for more than 20 years. The song begins with the Edinburgh poet Rodney Relax enumerating the names of various rain-lashed Scottish coastal towns - Rothsay, Dunoon, Campbelltown… but not, tellingly, Stoneybridge, the town that became a byword for Caledonian parochialism in the early 1990s thanks to the Channel 4 sketch-show series Absolutely.

Andrew Eaton and Hamish Brown make their angsty but uplifting electronic pop in a small attic by the sea just north of the Scottish capital, and their songs often evoke the wind-blown expanses of the Scottish countryside and coastline. But there’s little narrow-minded or hidebound about their exhilarating debut, The Regional Variations, one of the finest of this year’s freshman efforts. It is, indeed, an “attempt”, they say, “to describe the fascinating differences between people”. The album draws on some of the best elements of Scottish pop over the past 20 years (the Blue Nile, The Associates, Belle and Sebastian) and some of the best elements of English pop over the past 20 years (Pulp, The Pet Shop Boys, Kitchens of Distinction) to create something stirringly fresh and smart.

The endearingly camp Eaton, with his tousled, Bryan Ferry looks and jokes about his unlikely penchant for Strongbow, makes for an engaging frontman. Brown, meanwhile, is a synth-pop boffin as imagined by Charles Schulz. The actress Laura Cameron Lewis, who as part of the Edinburgh theatre collective Highway Diner has worked with, among others, Franz Ferdinand, cuts a commanding dash in Debbie Harry monochrome stripes and is a striking keyboard player, singer and tambourine shaker.

National Theatre and The Balance Company both sound like killer hit singles - beefier, more erudite takes on the kind of now deeply unfashionable dance-pop essayed by Jon Marsh’s somewhat unfairly derided Balearic outfit The Beloved. National Theatre - “a love song for shy people” - chews over the lack of privacy in modern relationships, while The Balance Company, based in part on Wings of Desire, steps inside the mind of a disaffected guardian angel and features the excellent line: “Keep singing the first part, and you will be fine/ The company disco will teach you to dance in time”. The title of the set closer, We Just Make Music for Ourselves, smacks of Stoneybridge insularity, but as Eaton steps off the stage into the crowd to sing, the warmth and inclusiveness of their music becomes crystal clear. It’d be a shame if this clever band remain a purely provincial concern.


And here’s a review of one of our earlier shows, at King Tut’s in Glasgow, from the music magazine Plan B…

And here’s a pair of jangly electro pimps, sleek of manner, hair and tongue, exposing themselves live for the fourth time ever. With a perky line in shy, wry, poetic synthpop, Swimmer One groom tonight’s audience with deceptively dark tales of frigid ambition and rancorous lust. Joined by glam Fife chanteuse Cora Bissett, they seduce us with How Could Something Like That Be Love. Less Human League and more human lung, it’s also the best pop song to chart a rakish case of homoerotic agoraphobia… ever. These demi-perv wordsmiths make songs that go ‘I will picture the two of us laughing on a fake plastic tropical beach and i’m holding your head underwater so you can’t raise my hopes again’ and they make songs that sound like Casio handclaps, egghead bleep pop, warm guitar, Soft Cell, burbling keyboards. With their measured delivery and drone-fuelled audacity, they also make the best ‘da da das’ since the Flying Pickets. And they make us amazed; extorting rapturous laughter when, replete with Bissett, they render a gung-ho, teeth shattering version of Cloudbusting as a fitting, ebullient conclusion.


Finally, here’s a review of the first live show we ever played, at Caledonian Backpackers in Edinburgh, from the Scottish music magazine Is This Music…

Swimmer One are apparently “bricking it”, according to our promoter.  Well, it is their first gig, so their cause isn’t helped by the fact that the computer packs in midway into their first song, even before their own inner tensions get the chance to show through. However, they’re among friends, as shown by the throng of people wearing swimming goggles in the crowd by way of homage. It’s electropop - like an ultra-catchy Blue Nile, or Kraftwerk with a human edge. The duo get over their nerves and the computer eventually behaves itself meaning that the likes of We Just Make Music For Ourselves are heard live for the first time, and with songs this good, the guys have nothing to fear. All things considered, something of a triumph.