Underwater experiences
- About Colin Newman's label (~ Swim) and life & art in general -

How did you come to the idea of launching Swim?
It was kind of a series of accidents really. We kind of fell into it. We were very early with the concept of making music in one's own space/ studio (beyond the 8 track aesthetic). At the time (mid to late 80's ) record companies we knew just weren't interested in stuff that wasn't done in a "proper" studio (it seems laughable now but true) so we worked for years on what was to become the Oracle album, in a vacuum, absorbing everything that went on musically. In the end we moved to London and mixed "Rosh Ballata" (an album originally slated for another company) because we found an Israeli record company that wanted to license it. Daniel Miller advised us to release it ourselves in the rest of the world (Mute helped a bit with exports & production in the early days) and totally surprised ourselves by selling some!!

What was your original purpose and has it changed along the years?
As I've said the original plan (if you can say we had one) was to put out our own stuff. Gradually other artists came. The musical styles have evolved as we ourselves have evolved and naturally attracted new artists to the label.

Could you please give me some technical data and figures about the label?
I can't imagine I could give you anything that would impress anyone!! We are still a very small label. The fact that certain activities (promotion, production etc.) are done by other companies means that we don't actually have any employees. This is not so unusual : we know smaller labels than us run by people who have full time jobs! Our approach has not been at all the way it "should" be done. It's basically an artistic venture. That doesn't mean we are averse to earning money from it or that we don't hope that our artists will be successful but we have survived so long by keeping our costs down and being realistic about what we can achieve in the short term.

Which lessons did you get from your former experience with record companies as an artist (earlier you spoke of your "disillusion" concerning Wire in 1980)? Are there things that you are decided never to make, and on the other hand, which problems did you have to face that you try to "solve" in your own label?
So much has changed over the years since I first became involved in making music and was somehow involved in the music business and in general I could say that in many respects it only got worse. Certainly by now the main thrust of the mainstream is about pushing kid pop to an affluent pre-teen audience. There isn't anything intrinsically wrong with this. It's just that it absorbs so much of the resources/ media space etc. Even when you get to the so-called underground so much is PR driven that one wonders just how much anyone can make their own judgement any more.
We try pretty hard at swim to make the label quality driven. This means that if we don't have anything good to release then we don't release anything. Many independent labels are pressured by the system into making releases every month and it is a good way to build profile but they lack the resources to maintain the quality that made them interesting in the first place.
There's some kind of balance that has to be somehow struck between the fact that if you don't use the system you can't get any exposure and ultimately the whole thing becomes unsupportable financially yet at the same time not to be compromised.

What is your policy concerning the bands you sign on Swim? Which "criteria"do you follow?
The criteria are very simple.
1. Are these people convinced by what they are doing? (you CAN hear it!!)
2. Does it have something original/personal about it? (very related to criteria 1)
3. Do we like it?
If these criteria are fulfilled then we like to get to know the artist(s) a bit to see if they are people we can work with. We get a lot of unsuitable stuff in through the door BUT we do listen to everything. In general if it lasts on the stereo more than 30 seconds you have our undivided attention!

Could you please briefly explain how you ended up signing each of the artists on your label?
Each was very different.
Lobe has been on the label longest. A friend from Edinburgh sent us tapes of everyone from the Edinburgh scene from the mid 90's (then currently unsigned) and we just loved Ian's music more than anything else we heard. Ian is very special, he never gets really high profile attention but people who like his music just love it. He's had more than one "album of the 90's accolade".. He's a real master of subtlety and a very nice bloke to boot! He's so much family by now we couldn't imagine not working with him.
Ronnie & Clyde was completely different. We've known Rob Fitzpatrick for ages. He used to work in Beggars Banquet record shop in Putney and we have a few friends in common. We didn't even know he did music till he gave us a tape one day which was kind of not the best thing we'd ever heard but because he's a mate we said him and Ronnie could come round and use the studio and we talked quite a lot about how we kind of judge what people do. We were out one day and got back to find a tape on the doormat with a demo of what turned out to be "Last Hand" - they had improved out of all recognition and we just let them use the studio whenever they needed to. We have never been much involved in their recordings but I always felt we gave them encouragement at a time they needed to find a voice for the project.
Silo was different again, they sent us a demo - they actually contacted us because they'd heard a Bowery Electric remix we'd done and had never heard of Wire - with "Templates" as the first track (good move to put a really good track first!!) and a terrible bio (not really a problem as we never read them unless we like the music first!!). We were going out for lunch with Ronnie & Clyde and someone we were working with in the USA at the time. Driving there I slipped in the tape to see if anyone else thought they were as good as we thought they were. Within seconds Rob asked who it was and when I said he replied "Silo rock!"… The band turned up a few weeks later and played me their new material from their laptop (how cool is that!!). We are very close with the band on a personal level, they came to us at a time when we had enough experience as a company to be able to encourage them as an artistic venture yet still be able to give them realistic expectations about what they could achieve short term without compromising their direction. They toured last year with Lobe and all get on very well. Perhaps one day there will be a collaboration?
Legion of Green Men is slightly different as although we've known them for a long time they actually have their own label and their album was a license. They've done a few remixes for us in the past and there has always been a lot of admiration between them and Ronnie & Clyde. They are two very nice brothers from Canada who are perhaps the most "professional" in sheer recording quality terms we work with. They always get great compliments at the mastering. It's a real pity they live so far away so we get so little chance to hang out. I'd love to do some recording with them sometime.
Symptoms is the most recent on this list and has the real classic demo story. We were listening to a pile of CDs and put this one on. The first track came and went and we both felt it was pretty good. By the second track Malka was asking who the hell is this so we searched through the pile of letters to discover who it was being very pleasantly surprised to discover it was Fred Ammitzboel from Silo's brother!! I don't think it would be an understatement to say that Klaus is a genius, not that there aren't other genius types on the label but Klaus so much more fits the role with his personality.

Over the longer term the artists we have tended to stick with tend to be people we get on with best. There is a kind of family element to swim. There's not a lot of money in it for anyone but we try and make up for that by making a real creative atmosphere for people to grow in.