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What other people have said about Swimmer One’s releases to date. Other reviews of The Regional Variations will be added to this page as they come in…

The Regional Variations (album, 2007)

Swimmer One’s debut is a promiscuous synth pop marvel, littered with doomsayers, fakesters, bureaucrats, drowning men, black sheep, theatre freaks and TV clowns in fuck-me heels. An erudite deuce of Central Belt electro-pervs who tally Scotland’s coastal towns as one might red light one-night stands, Swimmer One are a bookish, codpiece-disco treat; their wanton small-town narrative perspectives see Japan negotiating West Coast chip shop etiquette; The Blue Nile grooming cyber phantoms. Swimmer One’s lascivious digital kitchen sink dramas are peculiar, humdrum, universal; less 15 minutes of fame, more 15 minutes of air: and they’re all the more buoyant, and cardinal, for it. Plan B

There’s a lot of idiotic, soulless electro pop around. It’s a good job that Swimmer One are here to redress the balance. This stunning debut effort more than meets expectations raised by the Edinburgh and Glasgow-based duo’s promising set of single releases, and might just be the find of the year for the uninitiated. Kicking off with the mighty force of Drowning Nightmare 1’s soaring melody and anthemic fan favourite Largs Hum, The Regional Variations combines catchy choruses with minimal beats, atmospheric soundscapes and some incredibly original subject matter. Like a stripped down Scottish Pet Shop Boys without the funny hats or a more melancholy synth-based Pulp, Swimmer One’s brilliance should be shouted from the rooftops. The List (four stars)

There seems to be an unofficial competition to come up with the most reference points for Scots-based duo Swimmer One. Some mention the Pet Shop Boys, others the Blue Nile or The Who. All are wide of the mark. A melodic and oblique approach, and a lyric sheet which reads every bit as well as it sounds, set them apart. Andrew Eaton’s flexible voice sometimes has the timbre of a David Sylvian or a Bryan Ferry, but The Regional Variations is about as original as it is going to get in pop land. Scotland on Sunday (four stars)

A debut album that has been four years in the making, you would hope that it was worth the wait. Happily, it is. From a tentative two-piece making hesitant melodies over backing tracks, they’ve grown into a band of larger stature - still just Andrew Eaton and Hamish Brown, but sounding like so much more. The whole four years are documented here since their debut single We Just Make Music For Ourselves burst onto the nation’s airwaves (it did, really, a Mark Radcliffe Record of the Week). It seems that the band have been preoccupied since, but recently, apart from geting this magnum opus out, they achieved a perhaps more significant feat - supporting John Foxx in Glasgow. Foxx, for the uninitiated, was founder of Ultravox, in the days long before Midge Ure’s pointy sideburns took the New Romantic scene and MTV by storm. Basically, Foxx invented everyone from Gary Numan to Soft Cell to the Pet Shop Boys in his bending Kraftwerk’s synth blueprint into something chart-ready. His patronage - even if via his agents rather than necessarily a personal decision - has great significance. Basically, Swimmer One have taken on the mantle of torch-bearers for electronic pop, and Variations is the legacy. From the metallic beats of opener Drowning Nightmare 1 to the mock gothic horror of Whatever You Do, Don’t Go In The Basement it’s an album of stark beauty, Brown’s sparkling guitar lines standing out like jewels in a sea of gloomy synth lines. While Swimmer One are taking a 30-year old musical style and polishing it up until it gleams, there have been other innovators along the way which the duo take under their wing - a touch of Closer-era Joy Division in the moodier passages, and conversely, the Blue Nile with beats on the likes of National Theatre. Scotland wasn’t exactly a pioneer in the synth wars, but Eaton’s accent reminds us where they’re from, but not as much as the album’s crowning glory - the sinister Scottish coastal travelogue that is Largs Hum. With all this praise for what is assuredly one of the best albums you’ll hear all year, if not millennium, there are fears that in this world of disposable pop they may be a band destined to vanish, rather like labelmates Luxury Car. Therefore, if you have any liking for - well, not just electronic music, but genuinely life-affirming pop, I urge you to listen to this album. You’ll not just be doing the band a favour, I guarantee you will not be disappointed. Is This Music (five stars)

Laden with doom-cast canticles, this debut LP is an understated juxtaposition of absorbing melody and scything lyricism that transcends beyond its initial coy ushering into a whooshing gem of elegiac synth-carved splendour. Exploring every imbecilic facet of modern day pop-culture – from reality TV’s inexhaustible grip on society to the trauma of a faceless internet romance – the duo of Andrew Eaton and Hamish Brown inject a stream of playful, yet caustic, asides through their minimalist digitisation; creating a record steeped in the crabit tradition of Scottish songwriters but exuding a warmth of heart akin to the ethereal excursions of Flotation Toy Warning. The machine crafted beat of opener ‘Drowning Nightmare 1’ tentatively leads the ears down a winding stairwell of dank zigzagging keys and bolshy bass, lit only by the placid demure of Eaton’s soft, intelligent mew. With such a bleak exterior it’d be easy to disregard Swimmer One as yet another proponent of the rejuvenated, but utterly dreary, shoegazing scene. But for all the downcast protestations of tracks like ‘The Fakester Genocide’ and the eerie ‘Whatever You Do Don’t Go In The Basement’, an uplifting hint of optimism begins to shuffle its way onto the fore with teasing regularity. ‘But My Heart Is Broken’’s transient subtlety recalls the heart-charged hopefulness of Aereogramme’s ‘Barriers’, dampening cheeks with a symphonic sheen reminiscent of ’80s synth-poppers the Pet Shop Boys. And it’s in these moments of brittle expectancy where Swimmer One ground themselves amongst the finest luminaries on Scotland’s expansive musical landscape. Skewed by a sprawling tableau of swirling, stirring electronica, the record’s laconic narrative is converted into a euphoric vantage point; allowing the morbid despair of ‘The Balance Company’ and ‘Regional’ to thrive as throbbing, dashing, lip-pursing slabs of cosmic regency. Captivating to the point of hypnosis, The Regional Variations is a record of such heart-melting honesty not even the bitter autumnal chill can penetrate its innately warm interior.
Drowned in Sound (8/10)

As one would expect from this quietly brilliant duo, The Regional Variations has been worth the epic wait: 11 intelligent, wry vignettes wrapped in rich, perfectionist pop, taking in guardian angels, drowning men, suicide bombers and the Largs Hum. That said, ‘pop’ doesn’t begin to do justice to the depth and complexity of the music, which calls to mind an earthier, more mischievous Blue Nile.
The Herald (four stars)

Swimmer One have been creating hummably arch music for a few years now, their instinctive irony galvanised by a fierce passion for the oft-maligned genre of synth-pop. The palate cleansing clarity of the celestial tones and digital choruses they wring from black boxes and keyboards is scuffed up by the addition of abrasive guitar lines and minor-key modulations. Equally, the beautifully pure singing disguises some pointed lyrical preoccupations, existential enquiry and the odd swear word. Tracks like the doomy The Balance Company have a driven quality at their heart; these are pop hooks, certainly, but they can tug quite painfully. And just to make sure you’re not deceived by the sweep and soar of tracks like Regional, there are two tracks named after nightmares about drowning. ‘Bittersweet’ has become an overstretched term in rock criticism. Perhaps Swimmer One would be better described as ‘sweetly bitter’. Sunday Herald (four stars).

Swimmer One have been compared to Belle & Sebastian and The KLF, which seems a little over the top, because they’re not really in either of those (wildly different) leagues. But that isn’t to say that Regional Variations is a bad record. There’s a straight-laced clunkiness to Swimmer One’s electronic pop songs, and they often sound like a Junior Boys with trad-rock instincts. Yet there’s an odd urgency here, and a real desperation. They sing in a cracked, half-spoken croon, ramping up the melodrama. Swimmer One sometimes sound like they’re drowning in grief and fear, and, when they do, can suck you in with them. Fact magazine (three stars)

You know how these things happen on the odd occasion - receive album, play album, love album and stupidly forget to review album. Much to our deep embarrassment there were a fair few such occasions last year (2007) that we must admit to having to put our hand up and say sorry about - though if we were to trim the endless list of offences three albums were in our opinion and recollection woefully missed by yours truly despite nearly being worn to death through overplay. - Genaro’s self titled debut full length for Benbecula, Crimea’s Secrets of the Witching Hour and Swimmer One’s debut The Regional Variations. First found needling their way into our consciousness with their delicately understated We Just Make Music For Ourselves way back in 2003, the Scottish duo Andrew and Hamish have continually dazzled and demurred with their brand of stand off-ish edge electronica, albeit the release being restricted to rare occasional hi-fi sightings. The Regional Variations took an age in gestation. The wait though is rewarded by the onset of a quietly alluring affair, a bleak and bruised slow burning epic that meticulously worked its way beneath the skin with each repeated listen, culminating in the albums most crushing moment A Petrol Pump in the Cradle of Christianity. Both The Balance Company and its accompanying flip cut The Dark Ages* are culled from that set, both in their own way revealing the uniquely contrasting melodic matrix adeptly weaved by Swimmer One and so contrasting to the point that you could well easily label the sides ‘light’ and ’dark’. The Balance Company- obviously the light side - is one of the most upbeat cuts from The Regional Variations set - a glorious whirling ball of strangely affectionate austere and clinically sterile futurist chill that prods and pushes with alarming authority amid a dispassionate and numbed carnival of clockwork electronics all decorated and braided with an almost insistent and automated glee. Assuming a cooled sophistication as though classic era Kraftwerk had collaborated with a pre Party Fears Two Associates, and yet traversing the same minimalist outer pop horizons commonly associated with the likes of Birdpen and Talk, Swimmer One apply all the techniques and craftsmanship requisite of a pop gem, though lance and apply them to an icy and disconnected landscape. Of course it’s clever in a pre Blue Monday New Order type of way - power pop for androids anyone? What The Balance Company lacks in warmth, The Dark Ages more than makes up for in mood. Fragile and frail this damaged beauty is a quietly affecting gem, an epitaph to Mother Earth perhaps (we’re not sure - how we hate these lyrical meaning games), dutifully dusted in a delicious snow globed haze of tenderly tip toeing and lilting cantering Brontean key motifs, initially introduced by the sound of an alarm clock, that find themselves applied delicately with a glacial crispness that defrosts slowly but sumptuously in waltzing florets, to unfurl into tear-stained passages of hollowed ache that silkily arc and finger their way through your emotional defences. all the time flirting subtly with Bowie’s Buddha of Suburbia. Sheer deceptive class. Losing Today. * This review appeared in April 2008, ahead of the release of The Balance Company single.

Edinburgh duo Hamish Brown and Andrew Eaton have released a surefire contender for debut of the year. Their colossal electropop is distinctly leftfield and sounds like no other band. There are echoes of the Blue Nile, Elbow, Pulp, Goldfrapp, the Associates and other, similarly sophisticated popsters. Swimmer One are a class act, head and shoulders above trite chart fodder. Shropshire Star (four stars)

With their wry lyrics and experimental pop, Swimmer One bear more than a passing resemblance to Pulp, albeit with a Scottish accent. Self-confessed perfectionists Hamish Brown and Andrew Eaton are behind the soaring synths and charming stories, which tell of such modern concerns as falling in love online or the vagaries of working for a big company. Multi-talented artists, they also tour with a theatre company, have contributed to short films and run a record label. For now though it’s the music that’s taking off, and with increasing radio coverage and a strong online following, you’ll be hearing from them soon. VLM magazine

Scottish leftfield electropop two-piece Swimmer One made quite a splash (excuse the pun) in 2006, with the creeping schizophrenia of Dogbox single Largs Hum. It was a slightly fey, stripped back take on the synth pop work of the Pet Shop Boys, the dark melodic patterns of Depeche Mode and Blue Nile, and the seedy knowing eye of This is Hardcore-era Pulp, all imbued with a personal sense of postmodern cynicism for the trappings of the modern world, juxtaposing the real life against the media imagery that swamps us. This distinctive sound looked set to carve a niche in the underbelly of the music scene. When their debut album The Regional Variations is good it’s very good. The aforementioned Largs Hum still sounds infinitely wonderful with its infectious, satanic, Goldfrapp-esque beats.It’s the sound of a man driven mad by a mysterious low frequency noise, while the mannered beats, and keyboard swirls of opener Drowning Nightmare 1 are imbued with a seedy darkness that sets out the impending nightmarish conclusions of being watched while you drown, with some very clever sexual juxtapositions: “Do you keep on going till you’re numb/What sound do you make when you come?” The whirring guitars and bleeps of But My Heart Is Broken have a kind of space and tenderness that isn’t always present elsewhere, in a song about what losing a loved one has in common with watching musicians you love sell out, suffocating and aching with heartbreak and betrayal. The second part of the Drowning Nightmare, a song about watching someone else die, is beautifully realised; dark and scratchy vocally, it sounds barer with lashings of ‘verb. It sounds like someone singing from the bottom of a cave, and it’s all better for it. Elsewhere there are problems vocally. Much of it is a bit too safe - imagine Bowie’s Berlin period given a massage by Marc Almond, ever so slightly camp and ever so slightly over-produced - thus they only occasionally peek out from behind the net curtains to really excite. Ironically, given the title of the album, the sound often lacks variation, a real shift in the melodic pattern, and when there is one it slightly misfires, as with the camp disco rhythms of National Theatre, a song about reality TV, or the repetitive workplace suffocation The Balance Company. Whilst there’s cleverness at work here, comparing this to another electro act like The Faint, who infuse their electro with real energy and at times passion, Swimmer One’s sound lacks a bit at times, in terms of engaging with the listener. There are moments of real quality here; Swimmer One weave deceptive, dark patterns marrying dual melodies with interesting lyrical observations of a modern world that seems slightly alien to them. But over the course of an entire album musically these ideas don’t always mesh successfully. All of which leads you to wonder whether this whole album has been a little too overthought, a little too studied, making it sound strangely distant. Which is a shame.
God is in the TV (three stars)

There are a few remarkable albums that sonically embrace technology while simultaneously displaying cynicism, paranoia and claustrophobia at certain aspects of the modern world. The Regional Variations is one such release and joins counterparts The Sophtware Slump and OK Computer in pulling it off so marvellously. The listener comes out the other side reshaped and bizarrely, feeling healthier for hearing it. Swimmer One’s Andrew Eaton recently told The Skinny in interview, “You can’t be truly happy unless you understand what it’s like to be utterly miserable.” From the blatant despair of But My Heart Is Broken (“I hate life”)*, to the craving for spurned individuality (“I liked you more when you looked like no one else on the planet”)** on The Dark Ages, despondency is a familiar theme. On an electro-wave of bass and synths, however, comes a blinding glimmer of hope. “It feels like the earth could be moved if we just shoved hard,” gushes album centrepiece Regional***. When put so wonderfully, Swimmer One make you think anything is possible. Perhaps not the cheeriest record of the year, but certainly one of the best, The Regional Variations will break your heart given half a chance.
The Skinny (four stars) (* For the record, the line is ‘I hate love’. ** This line is actually from Regional, not The Dark Ages. *** And this line is from The Dark Ages, not Regional)

Proving those end-of-year polls should never be published early comes the debut album from Swimmer One, containing choruses so addictive, so punch-the-air pop perfect, it deserves to be a contender. Over the last few years this pair have been responsible for some of the most intelligent leftfield pop around, so the electronic theatrics displayed on The Regional Variations don’t really come as a surprise. The album is 11 songs long and on it the pairing of Hamish Brown and Andrew Eaton tackle such subjects as dreaming about being watched while you drown, and falling in love with someone on the internet and not knowing how to find them when their identity is deleted. Oh, and there’s another one about that everyday conundrum of deciding to save the world and heading for the beach instead (the cads!). On a record that rewards repeated listening, The Balance Company is a hauntingly atmospheric highlight, while The Fakester Genocide, with its menacing blips and beeps, sounds like the song Thom Yorke has been striving for. Edinburgh Evening News

Largs Hum (single, 2006)

Swimmer One are a duo from Edinburgh. Their music is apparently made above a sex shop using a sampler that used to belong to Shakin’ Stevens, and is as brilliant as that sounds. Largs Hum is a fizzing electo-pop nugget that simmers with insanity and sound like Goldfrapp mark 666. High Voltage

From Dogbox Records, the people that brought you such delightful offerings from Luxembourg and the Bridge Gang comes a double free download release (with these treats you are truely spoiling us, Dogbox!). The first two downloads come from Scottish electro pop duo Swimmer One. Largs Hum is a gorgeously building piece of throbbing electro-pop built on a stuttering beat. It’s the sound of Berlin-era Bowie being tied up under the stairs of a sex shop with the seedy electro of Soft Cell and the grandiose melodic pop of the Pet Shop Boys. The guest vocals are supplied by punk poet legend Rodney Relax, a “tourist tour to scottish coastal towns conducted by a man who is either a paranoid schizophrenic or the only sane person in scotland”. The vocals build and build to a cresendo full of introspective melodrama, the lyrics revealing whole inner worlds: “My head is full /but my heart is empty/i don’t think that anyone can save me”. The b-side, Clloudbusting, is a Kate Bush cover originally conceived before the Futureheads and before it became “cool” to like Kate again. In some ways it’s a pretty straightforward retread but the electro squelches, driving beat and the faint sense of danger that exists within the snaking vocal lines and melody push this into the ‘worthwhile cover’ category. God is in the TV

Swimmer One, Edinburgh synth johnnies and faves of Luxembourg’s Alex, play thoughtful electronic pop tunes that are spacey enough to appeal to the drone-loving stereolab-assistants amongst us. These songs ooze a warm, treacly synth sound, replete with woobly phasing and slightly sinister knob-twiddling and mr cool cucumber on vocals sounds uncannily like Martin Fry, which can’t be bad. Their cover of Cloudbusting (a song i’ve always found fantastically upsetting - in a good way) sounds kind of downy and strokeable whilst Largs Hum manages to sound majestic and bouncy in equal measure. Like a stag on a trampoline, maybe. Kitten Painting

You are 31. You are walking to walk, choking on the traffic. A hooded child hurls an orange at you. You chase him for 3 hours. You stop and decide to leave London forever and head north. This is your soundtrack - a pulsating manifesto for unglamourised electronic pop with superbly timed guest vocals by “Edinburgh punk poet legend Rodney Relax. Take Your Medicine

Shades of Nectarine #9 in their blackly warm intro that woozes confidently into a kind of fat les meets synthed bagpiped beat and electro-glam Euro-sleaze. The KLF are jealous, Death in Vegas more so. How, I wonder, can they fail to be ruling the universe? Unpeeled

Hey, music, I remember you! Swimmer One hail from Scotland, have an album out in the near future, and appear to be fantastically good. ‘Largs Hum is a deliciously brooding fit of electro-pop, propulsive shades of Ultravox and vocal melancholy melding into a strikingly graceful melody. As if this wasn’t enough, there’s also a clipped take on Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting, stuffed to the brim with things that sound vaguely like The Knife. As if this wasn’t enough, the whole thing can be downloaded for free at http://www.dogboxrecords.co.uk. As you can see, 2006 is clearly now the best year of your life. To Hell With

Largs is a town in Scotland, and I think I might have played golf there once (I use the term ‘play golf’ VERY loosely - I used to have a few pints, then spend the next four hours having a splendid stroll around well-tended lawns while trying to get the ball in the holes in under 160 bashes...). Hum? Dunno. If they were saying that it smells, then it would be ‘hums’...or maybe it’s just a hum that he does when he visits. Whatever, it sounds like Divine Comedy dabbling with mellow techno - in a GOOD way - and the second track is a heart-warming version of Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting with vocals courtesy of a woman who sounds not unlike Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick. Definitely something VERY interesting going on here. Playlouder

Swimmer One hail from Edinburgh, which when compared to its Glaswegian cousin is the equivalent of a quiet stroll in the park on a summer’s day, but to the rest of us is one of those places where you wouldn’t venture on your own in daylight, let alone after hours. “What has this got to do with the record?” I hear you ask. Well, after a few mere seconds of Largs Hum and its sinister electronic caterwaltz, a forboding narrative reveals some of the darkest confines in the underbelly of Scottish coastal history, and in the process, Swimmer One’s position as the chief reconstructors of northern fables is firmly ensconced. Scary. Its other half is a cover of Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting that isn’t particularly THAT different to the original bar a few electronic squiggles and squirts but is pleasing on the ear nonetheless.  Drowned in Sound

Come On, Let’s Go! (single, 2003)

And it just gets better, another old missive favourite back in the fold. Come on, Let’s Go is the delayed follow up to the wonderful We Just make Music For Ourselves debut from 2002 (which had us, okay well just me, speechless)… Come on, Let’s Go belies a delightfully sly dance beat that recalls the Associates, had they gate crashed club land with Kraftwerk. Insidiously catchy, it’s almost thrown down with a casual matter of fact attitude, perky rhythms bounce and jostle with a spacey mellowness, a fluffy and fiercely consuming electro pop gem. Lake Tahoe, unless my memory is playing tricks, featured on the debut single, billed as ‘a bedtime story for people who work for a living’, maybe so if your bag is deranged nightmares, featuring a range of treated vocals that at times sound like Radio 1’s Mark Radcliffe doing one of his comedic alter egos from the good old days when the graveyard slot ruled the wireless. Packing their bags for an early bath the duo kick in with the sultry How Could Something Like That Be Love which has guest vocals by Cora Bissett who in the past has been known to put her tuppence worth on releases by Arab Strap and Mogwai. Well it’s elegantly slick and sophisticated, more Beloved than Moby retreading the more cool passages of Heaven 17’s back catalogue and instilling a soulful edge to the proceedings - the end result, sensually hypnotic wrapped in a darkly lit mindset. You have been warned - essential. Losing Today

Everyone’s favourite Edinburgh-based electropop duo and the most suave act on the block: Come On Let’s Go, a call to action as laid back as you can imagine. And, of course, a new version of itm?’s previous cover CD track, How Could Something Like That Be Love - this the dream ticket duet version with ex-Swelling Meg vocalist Cora Bissett. Sublime. Is This Music

This beautifully packaged three track single is a supreme example of old school electro pop. Not following the desire for ultra sleaze when using synths as is the current norm, the band have obviously listened a lot to the melodies and styles of Erasure/Depeche Mode/Pet Shop Boys. The title song is very catchy and by the third listen its completely familiar and a wonderful way to spend four mins. Swoonsome electro backing and excellent vocal interaction makes this a very special pop track. I Really Love Music

Beautifully produced CD with three tracks and a video from Scottish band Swimmer One. I like the stylised video and it really fits the music well - but the track Come On, Let’s Go! does nothing for me - using a similar leaden rhythm (music and vocals) as Sophie Ellis Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor (Ibet that comparison will make me unpopular with the band!). Lake Tahoe on the other hand is playful and a bit ambient - a spoken story played at various speeds over a meandering keyboard backing. I assume this isn’t a sampled story voice and I have to say that it sounds great - and a spoken vocal is really hard to carry off. How Could Something Like That Be Love? has a funky synth bassline. The male vocal shakes with with a little vibrato and converses with the female vocal. A delicious lassitude and world weariness pervades the song; storytelling of the highest quality. So, two out of three ain’t bad - and the two really are very good. Cool Noise

Somebody once likened Scotland’s Swimmer One to a less pervy Soft Cell. I can see that, but i reckon they’re closer to Cousteau out of their tuxedos and wearing t-shirts, or Hefner on Broadway, or Fonda 500 tackling ABC. I could go on, but by now you’ll get the idea that Swimmer one craft classy lounge in the public bar, are the kind of people who’d turn up at a black tie dinner wearing it as a belt, people who fit effortlessly in the upper echelons of Scottish music… whatever you’re looking for in music look for it north of Hadrian’s Wall. It’s all there, and it’s all great. Logo

Swimmer One have made a perfect piece of pop. It has a beautiful video that could make you cry all on its own. The tune springs along in an upbeat Scottish Blue Nile meets Chimikal Underground sort of way; happy and sad at the same time, the lyrics touch on loss and death with no cause for alarm, but some promise of contentment. The song has the genius of simplicity and the mass appeal of smooth edges. Two extra tracks show off the range and quality of Swimmer One: Lake Tahoe uses a slightly too long voice sample; but it does comment on cocaine use in a gently sceptical way. How Could Something Like That Be Love? should be a single in its own right. Leeds Music Scene

We Just Make Music For Ourselves (single, 2002)

What do you get if you cross the Super Furry Animals with the Diff’rent Strokes? Actually the Diff’rent Strokes thing falls apart under close scrutiny, but despite being scottish, the sfa thing remains. Trust me. We Just Make Music For Ourselves has, as the title suggests, a message of indie-individualism that you’ll hear most bands spout at least once in their lives, but sometimes they actually do mean it. And though the smell of the KLF might hang around the band (they’re making an EP of a £50 grocery shopping session, costing £50 a copy) you can’t say the KLF didn’t make a few well targeted records in their time. Sometimes you can aim for throwaway pop and actually do it well. This is indie-electronica for a new millennium, but are they (swimmer) one to watch out for this year? Perhaps, yes… Drowned in Sound

Takes a while to kick in but the three tracks tucked away on this awkwardly neat little release form one of the best debut outings i’ve had the pleasure of hearing in a long while. Swimmer One are Scottish duo Hamish Brown and Andrew Eaton who enthusiastically ingest abstract electronica for fun and breathe into the framework disjointed sparse pop elements that has the overall effect of creating a beguiling tapestry of down tempo electro oddness. We Just Make Music For Ourselves is a neatly scripted affair that points ambiguously to mid 80’s Wire grooving with
Peter Gabriel and Pulp, one of those tracks that just seems to burn itself on the brain’s senses, and a beautiful thing indeed. Talk Me Down From 20,000ft widens the net further - drone-like electronics busy themselves in the background creating head swirling patterns while Eaton’s vocals despatch desperation and controlled frustration in equal measures, in many ways reminiscent of a more experimentally fused Associates… Very smart stuff indeed.  Losing Today

This is a song that deserves to be heard by a wider audience. The fantastic title track is like a jaunty Blue Nile or perhaps a more dance-minded electro duo, The Associates. As well as the bonus video there’s three tracks here and Talk me Down From 20,000ft is probably too good to be consigned to a b-side, though its subject matter is a bit black for daytime radio. In all, an early contender for record of the year. Is This Music?

The tellingly titled We Must Make Music For Ourselves has made quiet little ripples that crossed oceans. The current edition has already picked up considerable airplay on Radio One by way of Mark Radcliffe and the Session in Scotland. Now accompanied with a video featuring squash, scrabble and explicit sex, the record melds the fragility of the Lotus Eaters with Eyeless in Gaza’s understated electro burbling, with the prettiest of melodies on top.  The Herald

It’s a delight to hear Edinburgh duo Swimmer One. Like Boards of Canada sucking on smoothies with New Order, We Just Make Music For Ourselves is a gentle, blissed out piece of wonderfully intelligent beats and bleeps, with killer melodies to boot. The List