Cold music for cold weather

We live in an era in which software pirates float aimlessly along the high seas of the Internet, seizing and pillaging any errant piece of software that comes their way.

A separate movement in the current decade is that of musical software abundance: There are just so many ways to reach inside one’s mind, wrench forth an idea and transmute it to something resembling a tangible product.

When these two phenomena intersect with the newest, most entitled generation, the result is a cornucopia of “me too”-ism, a plethora of would-be musicians with something to prove.

Unfortunately, this intersection produces a bevy of aural garbage for the unsuspecting music fan to wade through.

Everyone who ever thought they could make music now has a free outlet, with only those who have enough time on their hands to promote themselves freely managing to chew their way to the top of the pile.

Finding quality music in the IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) genre now takes a fine-toothed comb because “intelligent,” as it turns out, is quite a relative term indeed.

Luckily for the IDM lovers of the world, there are people who get paid a living wage to sort through all this muck for you.

These people are label owners, and the Internet has woven a tapestry of specialized labels for most every genre imaginable.

Imagine my delight when I discovered the existence of Accidental Guest Recordings, which is affiliated with Fan Death Records. Fan Death happens to be one of my favorite labels right now, so perusing the AGR library was a no-brainer.

As it turns out, there isn’t a whole lot to peruse, but the newest addition to the limited AGR catalog is S.W.I.M.’s Harm Reducer.

AGR has worked extremely hard to plug its nose and dive into the stagnant pool of IDM that plagues cyberspace. But the label has emerged from the IDM shipwreck with the proverbial treasure chest: Harm Reducer is a truly great fission of dense electronic mist.

As one travels deeper into the IDM abyss, the identities of the producers become murkier and murkier. S.W.I.M. offers little to no information about where he or she hails from other than “the Pacific Northwest.”

No information is given about number of members, their genders, ages, specific geography or anything else one would ever hope to learn about a musical act. In fact, when I took it upon myself to contact S.W.I.M. about its identity, “the Pacific Northwest” was all I received for my troubles.

Clearly, S.W.I.M. cares to let the music do the talking, and it certainly upholds its end of the bargain. Thick, viscous drums pummel the listener throughout the record, and S.W.I.M. manages to keep it consistent with drum samples even though today’s IDM is soaked in maddening amounts of ADD.

Frankly, it’s one of the most refreshing things I’ve heard in the IDM scene in quite some time. Let me explain.

The “element of realness” that one expects from music is all but erased from today’s alternative electronic music. Because thousands of software programs, virtual instruments, sample packs and so forth now exist, IDM producers have an expansive sonic palette from which to draw.

In fact, producers usually get so overzealous that each track is filled with sounds that didn’t exist in the track before it. The disc is a rambling, disjointed mess—the record sounds like a bunch of separate ideas held together with rubber bands and painters’ tape.

S.W.I.M. finally gets it right, and Harm Reducer sounds more like a single, terrifying vision than a dream journal put to tape.

The beauty of the record isn’t that the sounds are incredible and inspired—which they are—but that the record is much, much more than the sum of its parts. Songs like “Burner Phones” pack enough of a punch to be considered a blackened, magma-oozing single, while the final track, “Time to Live,” is an unrelenting exclamation point at the end of a brief yet
powerful statement.

The percussion on “Time to Live” is as triumphant as any IDM cut in recent memory; the jangly, explosive drums seem to leap out of the air and reach your nervous system by way of your ear canals.

Trying to keep your extremities from tapping during this track is an exercise in complete futility, despite the syrupy evil engulfing you by the second.

Though the sounds on Harm Reducer are certainly up to snuff, some aspects of the programming (albeit very few) are somewhat erroneous. In “Time to Live,” the momentum is thrown off in a couple areas.

Normally, I’d chalk this up to intentional disruption, a tactic that most IDM seeks to exploit rather mightily. However, this comes too late in the final track on the record, which makes it seem more like an accident than not.

My only other real complaint would be that Harm Reducer just isn’t long enough, but such is the folly of an EP, and I’d prefer to judge the album based on what it is rather than what it’s not.

In the end, Harm Reducer is a mile ahead of its contemporaries in the dark IDM realm, and as a first release, it is better than most.

If Harm Reducer is even a preview of things to come for S.W.I.M., don’t expect this name to be unknown for too long.