Wild Swim – Untitled EP

January 2016

BBC Introducing in Oxford’s Band of the Year 2013, Wild Swim, are calling it a day – which is a huge shame. The biggest tragedy is that they weren’t more prolific, considering the multi-influenced, genre-melding and flamboyant promise of their early singles Echo and Another Night. Their farewell EP, Untitled, may be more measured and less histrionic or arty than their earlier stuff, but it’s the perfect showcase for – and testament to – their intricate, exotically textured and unnerving folky indie hip-hoppy electronica.

On Hollow, floaty orchestral atmospherics and singer Richard Samson’s almost whispered, seemingly distracted refrain of “Tonight we fall in love again” are underpinned by a contrasting, relentlessly arpeggiating math-rocky guitar, creating a creepy, unsettling track that gets under your skin – like a manipulative Air.

My Love and Too Late take trip-hop to the more menacing Massive Attack and Tricky end of the scale, with laid-back beats and plaintive vocals layering over beautiful reverbed guitar and piano chords.

The stand-out track, however, is the almost anthemic Cut Me Out, on which the light Burundi Beat drums of the early 80s flit back and forth with the crunchy electro guitars and careworn sonority of Dave Gahan’s voice of recent-period Depeche Mode.

We can only hope that the quintet responsible for all of this greatness stay making music; a legacy like this is far too good to not build upon.

 

From Nightshift, March 2016