The Shortlist: Swindle | whynow
Published by whynow.co.uk, October 2021
Picture this: the end of the world is fast approaching, and it can only be rescued by music. You’ve got five minutes to assemble a team with the skills to save it. In this scenario, it would certainly help to have the crème de la crème of British talent on speed dial. Names like Loyle Carner, Kojey Radical and Greentea Peng, for instance, or Joel Culpepper, Akala and Maverick Sabre.
Producer and lifelong music aficionado Swindle found himself in pretty much this position during the joyless and memorable-for-all-the-wrong-reasons spring of 2020. The world wasn’t so much ending back then, but it did feel like the death of things in many ways and while some succumb to the inevitable, others rise up in the face of a challenge.
“That was a pretty dark time for lots of reasons,” Swindle explains mid-photoshoot on a call from Waterloo. “We were all isolated and everything felt very messy. I spoke to people on the phone during lockdown and like me, they were finding it hard to create so I thought to myself, what we really need is to get away. The idea was to do a musical retreat, so I texted all my friends, collaborators and musicians and we went away for a week.”
Holed up for seven days with the aforementioned artists and the likes of Ghetts, Joy Crooks, Knucks, Poppy Ajudha, JNR Williams and Daley, the results have been stitched together in The New World, Swindle’s latest album and perhaps his most resonant piece of work to date. Never shying away from tough topics like race, grief, love and hopes for a precarious future, it’s a collection of tunes that arouses the mind, plucks the heartstrings and speaks volumes about the time in which it was written.
“We were all looking for inspiration so when we got together the music just poured out,” he recalls. “The one thing I said to everyone was that they could do no wrong. I didn’t dictate anything, I wanted everyone to feel relaxed and express whatever they felt when they felt it.”
It’s a laissez-faire approach that meant organic conversations were given the space to ebb and flow and subsequently, a rare kind of musical coalescence was reached that didn’t feel premeditated or forced. “It’s the easiest record I’ve ever been involved in,” Swindle asserts. “It’s almost like it wrote itself to be honest.”
That The New World is a collaborative effort only adds to its poignancy, especially against the backdrop of solitude so many experienced during lockdown. “We all went there feeling so heavy,” he says. “On that trip, people cried, people laughed, and everything just started to feel better from that point onwards. I think creatives need to create to feel happy and when that’s taken away it’s almost like you lose your purpose. When I listen back to the album it really feels like the sound of us healing.”
Collectively, there was a lot to work through. That period of time will forever be remembered in reference to the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that rose around the globe in the aftermath. It was a moment for shared grief and reckoning, and that’s discernible in some of the tracks.
‘No Black, No Irish’ was casually written by Maverick Sabre and Joel Culpepper over the dinner table one night, for example, but its message about the weight of discrimination is anything but, and its call for unity feels real and pertinent.
“And that’s one of the great things about music,” Swindle explains. “People don’t choose whether to like it or not. You hear something and absorb it and you can’t help but be moved. Some of the greatest artists who’ve ever lived have been able to deliver a message when people’s guards are down because they’re enjoying the music. It’s like Joel says,” he adds. “‘you’re getting the medicine in the message but you’re getting sugar in the music so it’s not a bitter medicine.’ That’s why there’s no more powerful force on earth than music.”
Indeed, Swindle firmly believes that good tunes possess the dynamism to enact real change, though since those fated months last year, there’s not been as much visible progress as he’d like, especially within the music industry. “I think it’s productive that there’s a conversation that’s happening but there’s still some way to go,” he says. “I want to see people make music that speaks to their identities while having the confidence to know that there’s an industry there to support them and lift them up and I’m not sure there has been in the UK in recent years.
“There’s been change within ourselves and from the underground but it would be nice to see it filter in from the industry from the top down instead of the bottom up. It’s easy to have a black intern but how about the head a&r or the president of the company?”
Meanwhile, he’s devotedly plugging away at that chasm with his own work because as much as The New World embodies ideas of change, it’s also a celebration of Blackness and being together again that’s filled with genuine moments of happiness. “For me and the other artists involved, it picked us up when we needed to get back on track,” he explains. “So I hope there’s something in it for everyone else, too. I hope it brings people joy and inspiration.” He channelled this positivity into The New World: The Film, the visual accompaniment to the album that’s as slickly produced as its audio namesake.
“I think it might well be the best thing I’ve contributed to date,” he smiles down the phone. “I wanted to represent the music with sophistication and while it started off as overambitious, we managed to realise it in the end so I’m really proud of it.” Featuring a solid handful of some of the artists involved in the project, they all gather round tables in grandiose buildings, dressed in dapper, made-to-order suits and glamorous dresses that nod to the roaring ‘20s.
Perhaps it’s a hint of the good times still to come, or maybe they’re about to rip off the couture to reveal skin-tight lycra onesies beneath. “The ongoing joke in the studio was that we were all superheroes and there was an Avengers Assemble vibe because of all the powerful people in the room,” he laughs. “But I wanted to bring that into the real realm. It was a labour of love.”
Having spent pretty much every second of his life dedicated to music — even his toys as a kid were instruments — Swindle is better-placed than most to understand the power of music and what it can achieve. “I feel like music is god — that’s my belief system,” he concludes. “It’s like prayer, and if you pray with good intentions then those prayers will be answered.” Step aside, Tony Stark, the world is in safe hands.
Photos by Chris Tang.
