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Artist
Swim Surreal
12+ albums
electronicchilloutchillwavedowntemposoft rock
about
The story began back in 2013 when Zero 7 and Swim Surreal (singer-songwriter Thomas Leonard/Tom Leonard/Tommy Leonard) joined forces to create "Don’t Call It Love," a hidden gem buried away on an obscure white-label release. And so the tale unfolds… Late one night, the phone reverberated on the bedside table. It signaled another dispatch from the mercurial Californian musician, Swim Surreal, no doubt fresh from another cosmic splash in the Pacific. The email, directed to Zero 7, was sparse in text. However, attached was an innocent-looking audio file. Curiosity dictated the next move. Swim Surreal’s soulful croon crackled through the speaker, delicately weaving around a sun-dappled melody — a taste of the West Coast finding its way to North London. And thus, the dialogue resumed. Swim Surreal inundated Zero 7 with demos — arriving sporadically, each one a unique manifestation of his rich timbre, sometimes accompanied by piano or guitar. Occasionally, there'd be no music at all — just a digressive five-minute audio file excitedly describing Salvador Dali’s belief that a train station in Perpignan, Spain, was the center of the creative universe. It was unpredictable but undeniably intriguing. Looking back, it was a journey of about-turns, detours, kernels of ideas abandoned, picked up, and dropped again. There was little structure. They were never quite sure of what they had or where they were going. But sometimes, things have a momentum of their own. It’s the ineffable
