Swim Schallplatten & CDs

Review: First released in 1997 as his sixth and final LP project, Colin Newman's Bastard came to the innovative "post-everything" label Swim a good while after the Wire member and electronic experimentalist had already made several splashes in the mitts of the infamous Cartel, the arch-distributor and de facto trade guild giving rise to labels like 4AD and Beggars. Keeping in close knit to such sonic romanticists helped propel Newman's sound into dreamier realms over the years, and this seven-tracker functions as the pinnacle of this tendency. First coming across as a more convincing analogue to contemporaries like Lush, Newman's sound here is less polished and thus more "authentic"-seeming, basking in militant breaks and techstep entrainments and which come blent with incredible pad and amped-up guitar washes. In the in-betweeny moments, we're also met with trip-hop delights resting on the lower-ends of the spectrum; the alien middle finger on the cover says it all, a veritable "fuck you" gestured by an early subject of dance music, a genre that Newman recalls was a misunderstood, much-maligned genre at the time.