SWELL MAPS [UK]
In the mid-1970s, a collective of six English teenagers started creating music together in their suburban home-town of Solihull. This project evolved into Swell Maps, around a core of three musicians: Jowe Head, his school friend the late Nikki Sudden, and Nikki’s brother, the late Epic Soundtracks. Their 1977 debut 7″, Read About Seymour, came out on their own Rather Records. One of the first punk bands to set up an “indie” label, they were also pioneers of “alternative” music, mixing punk with experimental sounds Swell Maps released four singles and two albums in a brief but eventful career, in partnership with Rough Trade, topping UK indie charts and influencing acts including Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Stereolab, and Blur.
GEO
Post-punk/no wave oddity Geo are like a sentient slot machine: whatever seems happenstance is actually by design, and the more mismatched the moving parts appear, the more their music starts to make sense. Since the Groningen quartet’s inception in 2019, they have built a framework of skeletal agit-funk, cartoonish chromatics and neoteric art punk vignettes – sketching negative spaces where chaos and cacophony can sound perplexingly catchy. After releasing their esteemed EP in 2021, the band has entered its next creative chapter.
Out of Body – Geo’s long-awaited debut album – is an oblong snow globe utopia where dancing with two left feet is an actual custom.
