What’s This?
After years of jam sessions, Beautiful Swimmers (Andrew Field-Pickering and Ari Goldman) have completed their much anticipated debut album, Son. As expected, the sounds of disco, house, and new age ambience are ever-present, but beyond that the grooves make this one infectious full-length. Over the course of 11 songs, the duo takes us through various studio sessions that clearly proved very productive.
What’s It Like?
Beautiful Swimmers jumped into life in 2009 with the single “Swimmers Groove.” This track appears as the 3rd track of Son, it starts out with rave whistles, big shotgun factory drums and a mish-mash of cow bells and computer jams. Then they drop into a silky groove, a very Random Access Memories style vibe, full of funk guitar and much more disco bass.
A bridge home to grunting and swirling computers, whistles, church bells, cow bells and slide of some kind help to break up the undeniable cheesy but infectiously danceable groove.
‘Running Over’ is house to a tee. Fizzing electric hi-hats overlays an ever growing synth loop, that over takes the hi-hats for stage presence quickly. This track is the true meaning of a build track, different elements are slowly added, contributing to the growing sound each and every time. The final element added after the small lull are electronic vocal loops, the actual lyrics are very hard to make out but these loops really bring ‘Running Over’ to life, transforming the track from a faceless dance track to a euphoric late night summer banger.
Heavily reverbed drums commence the album closer, “Big Coast.” Organ stabs with reggae feel fill your ears as intermittent chants are looped over the beat and flurries of bass and delayed trumpets ebb and flow between each over.
Tracklisting:
1.No!
2. Spezi
3. Swimmers Groove
4. Running Over
5. Easy On The Eyes
6. New Balance
7. Cool “Disco” Dan
8. Joyride
9. Dream Track
10. Gettysburg
11. Big Coast
Final Verdict
Son is a real mix of many sounds, some blended together nicely while some fight each other for the top position. The album is infectious and danceable but it can be monotonous in places, too.
3/5
