SWIMMING

Washed in sound with a great big brush, Swimming's canvas is wide and
handsome, big as the sky, colour dripped from above, layer on layer, like
an Aurbach take on Pollock. - Artrocker

SWIMMING - THE FIREFLOW TRADE (COLOURSCHOOL)
By toonwaves

swimming-firelow-trade Awash with cinematic psychedelia, the debut album from Nottingham-based quintet Swimming is a technicolour acid-pop gem. Drawing on the raw energy of The Pixies and the expansive expermentation of Boards Of Canada, the lysergic five-piece deliver an epic slice of melody-laden neo-shoegaze. From the hypnotic roll of opener ‘Panthalassa’ to the brooding rock of the title track, The Fireflow Trade is a triumph. (TR) - Toonwaves

Innovative live act breaks the waves.
An inventive rock quintet, Nottingham's Swimming consistently thwart easy labelling, often switching genre and twisting textures mid-song. On the openeer, Panthalassa, vocalist John Sampson lures us in with a lick of Ziggy feyness before the track builds into an emotional post-punk-ish surge that recalls Magazine or Mansun.
Elsewhere they drift into dreamy Nu-Gaze that might echo Ride or Chapterhouse before lurching into proggy flourishes that grandstand like Muse.
Single, Crash the Current is flushed with phase guitars and trippy falsetto, while the effect of the whole is hyperactive and often exhilarating.

Chris Roberts - Uncut

Swimming
London, Barden’s Boudoir
31/03/2009

Do you remember those heady days of black-hearted, passion-driven guitar music before emo turned up and gatecrashed the party, vomiting it’s biley self-loathing residue everywhere and leaving a horrible stain everywhere on your porcelain basin? Those were the days weren’t they? For any of you who might feel a slight tinge of nostalgia from those BMCR (Before My Chemical Romance) days then Swimming may just ignite that same thrill of excellently lush and textured emotional excitement in your heart.

Sounding somewhere in-between My Bloody Valentine, Oceansize and Echo And The Bunnymen, Swimming tonight sound murky and melancholic like a soundtrack to a new Donnie Darko film, thriving from 90s shoegaze dreaminess and thrusting some psychedelic unhinged, wigging-out segments to their set at the aptly shadowy Bardens Boudoir. The outsider-styled Nottingham five-piece look like archetypal music-enthusiasts, with their Slipknot-influenced Mohawked drummer, lurching long haired keyboardist and placidly assured frontman who seems unaffected by anything else that’s going on around him other than his mic. The live effect of Swimming tonight is an euphoric Boards Of Canada epic experience, moments of the booming 'Panthalassa' and 'Tigershark' are heightened by a sporadic use of flickering strobes to give out a My Bloody Valentine frantic feel to it all.

Swimming’s performance creates a vast hybrid of mysterious sounds, with romantically sombre moments (such as the lighters aloft 'Pacific Atlantic') and furious, feverish anthem 'Crash The Current' sounding positively familiar. Wearing their dirgey shoegaze influences on their sleeve, in today’s grunge revival whirlpool Swimming couldn’t have emerged from the murkey depths at a better time.

Harriet Gibsone - The Fly

Swimming: Primary EP (Izumi)
15:34 | Wednesday August 20, 2008
This fresh fusion of post rock, driving indie and atmospheric electronica has just been picked up for a new Simon Ellis movie through Vertigo Films, though its clear this innovative collection will appeal to more than just the sync execs, leaving the band's growing gaggle of admirers thirsty for more.
The complex arrangements and carefully interwoven melodies are hypnotic, exciting and strangely reminiscent of late Cave-In.
And the progressive nature of each of the five tracks – all different in their own way – help place this band in a class above other leftfield indie outfits trying things out in their bedrooms.
What's more, this EP is a healthy indicator for their forthcoming longplayer, which is likely to be a hit amongst Arcade Fire fans.
Having picked up fans after playing Glastonbury, the band have played on Huw Stephens' Radio One show and Dean Jackson's Radio Nottingham show.
They are playing a handful of live dates this month including gigs at Camden's Purple Turtle and the Roadhouse in Manchester.
By Sanj Surati
- Music Week (UK)