It's been a while since we put any new CD releases out @ swim, Colin has been pretty busy with Wire and so we've been saving up some little gems to trickle out through 2003/4. The first one is this.

AKATOMBO "Trace Elements" (CD) Wm 24

In common with all swim releases this album is hard to pin down to a genre. One could define this as a very urban sound with it's roots in hip hop and close observation would reveal this statement to be entirely true BUT without listening this would create an entirely erroneous view of what this album is.

The author & main protagonist Paul Kirk is in fact an ex-patriot Scot living in Hiroshima and the album crackles with the urban displacement of a stranger in a strange land. It is a music which is not separated from the place in which it is made, disembodied voices, street sounds, telephones, bad connections and urban detritus are constant reminders of the Japanese cityscape. Paul Kirk says - "Trace Elements came about through a fascination with the layering of sound - any type of sound - from any source. Not necessarily those that most of us think of as musical". He goes on to say - "Each song on the album was written, recorded and mixed on the same day of it's conception - in Hiroshima, in a studio that specializes in soundtracks for TV adverts with the help of an engineer who didn't speak English."

Paul also employed a few musicians to add to the effect those include the former bass player of Long Fin Killie, Colin Greig and some mates from his days running the Human Condition label (which actually put out Idlewild's first single but we won't hold it against them!) Grant MacNamara & Gavin Henderson. Meanwhile, guitarist Masaru Saeki actually toured with Japan & Roxy music!