SWELL MAPS (UK)
‘A lot of late 70s bands wore grey. But we were determined to have fun’: the return of the mega-influential Swell Maps after 46 years
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 inf luencing acts including Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Stereolab, and Blur?
SWELL MAPS will be performing throughout 2026/2027 across the UK and Europe and are proud to present this stellar document, which maintains the group’s devotion to D-I-Y ideals and impulses. The vinyl album covers were hand-screened and stamped by a feminist cooperative in Valencia, Spain and are offered in three variants.
https://swellmapsc21.bandcamp.com/album/c21
Half a century ago a bunch of suburban school mates from Solihull banded together to form one of the most DIY and lo-fi of groups ever in Swell Maps. With crazy names like Biggles Books and Phones B Sportsmen they created songs with equally mad titles like Midget Submarines, Helicopter Spies and Read About Seymour. The songs were submerged beneath a fuzzy din made up of hoovers, wind up toys and all sorts of paraphernalia and yet against all the odds the amazingly catchy tunes fought their way to the surface. And how. Though Swell Maps’ flame flickered only briefly before splitting in 1980 they developed instant cult status and influenced a whole generation of bands to follow from Thrilled Skinny to Sonic Youth and from Stereolab to even Nirvana and Blur. And now they are back... Kind of...
I think it is important to set the scene because this is a very hard act to follow in the second incarnation of Swell Maps, not just the passage of time but because two of the three main driving forces, Nikki Sudden and his brother Epic Soundtracks, are sadly no longer with us. But the moment Swell Maps’ original Jowe Head and his all-star band of musicians roar into their first fuzzy masterpiece, A Morning Star, any concerns are absolutely blown out of the water. A succession of uplifting, killer guitar riff after riff, slam dunk into ultra-hooky choruses; you will soon find yourself Crow Crow-ing along.
Foam Rubber Wedding, Vertical Take-Off and Landing, Saved By The Warts the titles and themes are totally picking up from the C20 albums A Trip To Marineville and Jane From Occupied Europe. Some of the songs actually date back to that time but have never seen the light of day before. It’s wonderful to hear Epic Soundtracks’ surprisingly moving keyboard ballad Jelly Babies re-crafted in the hands of Lucie Rejchrtova (Crazy World of Arthur Brown). That all star cast includes members of Wolfhounds, the Auteurs and Alternative TV and Television Personalities. With the last two bands mentioned no wonder they perform a song called Tele Visions, an instant classic by the way.
The most important comeback of the year. The spirit of a legend has been respected and represented to another generation. It doesn’t matter one jot if you are too young to have been hooked first time around you absolutely need to submerge yourself into a surreal state of Swell Maps’ C21. You can probably tell that I am enormously excited by this album. It is simply wondrous. >> https://narcmagazine.com/album-review-swell-maps-c21/
https://swellmaps.bandcamp.com/album/the-john-peel-sessions
Tags
#alternative #post-punk #London
GOOD READ >>
Championed by the BBC’s John Peel and signed to Rough Trade, the band were punk when that meant DIY, psychedelia and prog as well as screaming chords. What’s more, they loved Pink Floyd ...Swell Maps were a punk band, but only because that word meant something different when they started making records in 1977. It didn’t mean bands called Knuckleheadz or Gimp Fist; it meant unfettered freedom, curiosity rather than rage. Theirs was a music that wandered off in unexpected directions, where songs barely hung together before falling apart, punctuated by peculiar sounds made by whatever happened to be around. It was psychedelia and it was prog and it was krautrock, every bit as much as it was punk. Most of all, it was DIY.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/mar/10/swell-maps-interview-jowe-head
Jowe Head “We polarise opinion: some people love our music, some people cannot stand it! It seems that Swell Maps continue to be an influence on many bands around the world. For example, I was amused to see a character in a Gorillaz video wearing a Swell Maps t-shirt!”
Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) “As soon as that guitar comes slicing off that crackling vinyl groove you know you’re gonna rock. It’s the best of both worlds: fist-in-the-heart guitar burnin’ rock and ahead-of-its-time songsmith awareness . . . The Swell Maps had a lot to do with my upbringing.”
Tim Gane (McCarthy / Stereolab) “When I first bought “A Trip to Marineville”, I must have played it a hundred times, just to listen to every single second of it.”
Scott Kannberg (Pavement) “Swell Maps was a big influence on our early records. They had these songs they fucked up somehow to make sound really dirty and low frequency, but they had these great songs underneath all this mess.”Alan McGee (Creation Records) “Swell Maps inspired a lot of bands that became the vanguard of the independent scene ten years later – Sonic Youth, Pastels, Mary Chain, Pavement, to name a few. Classic band and great people too!”
Ben Ayres (Cornershop) “Let’s Build A Car” is one of my favourite singles of all time, it’s like nothing else. So powerful and breaks all the rules, yet it’s perfect, with a great melody too. “A Trip To Marineville” was a really important album for me, as was “Jane From Occupied Europe”!
John Robb (The Membranes / journalist) “Swell Maps had an abrasive rawness that of course, we loved, but they had much more going on – they also had these amazing sound collages that you could get lost in. They were mysterious and they had an other-worldliness and that made you love them even more.”
Brian Turner (NYC radio presenter and musician) “My Swell Maps discovery came five seconds into the intro of “Midget Submarines” . . . avant-garage- gonzo-kraut-greatness, ambient experiments all punctuated by these incredible anthems of another universe that made complete sense and ignored everything else . . . this was a band that invented something.”
David Lance Callahan (Moonshake, Wolfhounds) “Swell Maps showed that people you can relate to could produce music of ambition, imagination and innovation. All of this was done with a liberating lack of inhibition and an overwhelming sense of fun – and music’s not music without that!”
Presale/door prices adjusted: our events are set up by volunteers in favour of supporting DIY touring acts, but it is getting ever more risky to plan and book events – please support the community and buy your tickets early! Presale closes 18.00 on day of the show.
