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UID:occii-amsterdam-swell-maps-uk-geo-2027-03-12@onlyhere.app
DTSTAMP:20261031T161003Z
DTSTART:20270312T190000Z
DTEND:20270312T223000Z
SUMMARY:SWELL MAPS (UK) + GEO
LOCATION:OCCII\, Amstelveenseweg 134\, 1075 XL Amsterdam
GEO:52.354725;4.855206
DESCRIPTION:‘A lot of late 70s bands wore grey. But we were determined to
  have fun’: the return of the mega-influential Swell Maps after 46 years
 \nSWELL MAPS [UK]\n\nIn the mid-1970s\, a collective of six English teenag
 ers started creating music together in their suburban home-town of Solihul
 l. This project evolved into Swell Maps\, around a core of three musicians
 : Jowe Head\, his school friend the late Nikki Sudden\, and Nikki's brothe
 r\, the late Epic Soundtracks. Their 1977 debut 7"\, Read About Seymour\, 
 came out on their own Rather Records. One of the first punk bands to set u
 p an "indie" label\, they were also pioneers of “alternative" music\, mi
 xing punk with experimental sounds Swell Maps released four singles and tw
 o albums in a brief but eventful career\, in partnership with Rough Trade\
 , topping UK indie charts and influencing acts including Sonic Youth\, Nir
 vana\, Stereolab\, and Blur.\n\n SWELL MAPS will be performing throughout 
 2026/2027 across the UK and Europe and are proud to present this stellar d
 ocument\, which maintains the group's devotion to D-I-Y ideals and impulse
 s. The vinyl album covers were hand-screened and stamped by a feminist coo
 perative in Valencia\, Spain and are offered in three variants.\n\n\n\nhtt
 ps://swellmapsc21.bandcamp.com/album/c21\n\nHalf a century ago a bunch of 
 suburban school mates from Solihull banded together to form one of the mos
 t DIY and lo-fi of groups ever in Swell Maps. With crazy names like Biggle
 s Books and Phones B Sportsmen they created songs with equally mad titles 
 like Midget Submarines\, Helicopter Spies and Read About Seymour. The song
 s were submerged beneath a fuzzy din made up of hoovers\, wind up toys and
  all sorts of paraphernalia and yet against all the odds the amazingly cat
 chy tunes fought their way to the surface. And how. Though Swell Maps’ f
 lame flickered only briefly before splitting in 1980 they developed instan
 t cult status and influenced a whole generation of bands to follow from Th
 rilled Skinny to Sonic Youth and from Stereolab to even Nirvana and Blur. 
 And now they are back… Kind of…\n\nI think it is important to set the 
 scene because this is a very hard act to follow in the second incarnation 
 of Swell Maps\, not just the passage of time but because two of the three 
 main driving forces\, Nikki Sudden and his brother Epic Soundtracks\, are 
 sadly no longer with us. But the moment Swell Maps’ original Jowe Head a
 nd his all-star band of musicians roar into their first fuzzy masterpiece\
 , A Morning Star\, any concerns are absolutely blown out of the water. A s
 uccession of uplifting\, killer guitar riff after riff\, slam dunk into ul
 tra-hooky choruses\; you will soon find yourself Crow Crow-ing along.\n\nF
 oam Rubber Wedding\, Vertical Take-Off and Landing\, Saved By The Warts th
 e titles and themes are totally picking up from the C20 albums A Trip To M
 arineville and Jane From Occupied Europe. Some of the songs actually date 
 back to that time but have never seen the light of day before. It’s wond
 erful to hear Epic Soundtracks’ surprisingly moving keyboard ballad Jell
 y Babies re-crafted in the hands of Lucie Rejchrtova (Crazy World of Arthu
 r Brown). That all star cast includes members of Wolfhounds\, the Auteurs 
 and Alternative TV and Television Personalities. With the last two bands m
 entioned no wonder they perform a song called Tele Visions\, an instant cl
 assic by the way.\n\nThe most important comeback of the year. The spirit o
 f a legend has been respected and represented to another generation. It do
 esn’t matter one jot if you are too young to have been hooked first time
  around you absolutely need to submerge yourself into a surreal state of S
 well Maps’ C21. You can probably tell that I am enormously excited by th
 is album. It is simply wondrous. >> https://narcmagazine.com/album-review-
 swell-maps-c21/\n\nhttps://swellmaps.bandcamp.com/album/the-john-peel-sess
 ions\n\nhttps://swellmaps.org/\n\nTags\n#alternative #post-punk #London\n\
 nGOOD READ >>\n\n\nChampioned by the BBC’s John Peel and signed to Rough
  Trade\, the band were punk when that meant DIY\, psychedelia and prog as 
 well as screaming chords. What’s more\, they loved Pink Floyd …\n\n\n\
 n\n\n\nSwell Maps were a punk band\, but only because that word meant some
 thing different when they started making records in 1977. It didn’t mean
  bands called Knuckleheadz or Gimp Fist\; it meant unfettered freedom\, cu
 riosity rather than rage. Theirs was a music that wandered off in unexpect
 ed directions\, where songs barely hung together before falling apart\, pu
 nctuated by peculiar sounds made by whatever happened to be around. It was
  psychedelia and it was prog and it was krautrock\, every bit as much as i
 t was punk. Most of all\, it was DIY.\n\n\n\n\n\nhttps://www.theguardian.c
 om/music/2026/mar/10/swell-maps-interview-jowe-head\nJowe Head "We polaris
 e opinion: some people love our music\, some people cannot stand it! It se
 ems that Swell Maps continue to be an influence on many bands around the w
 orld. For example\, I was amused to see a character in a Gorillaz video we
 aring a Swell Maps t-shirt!"\n\nThurston Moore (Sonic Youth) "As soon as t
 hat guitar comes slicing off that crackling vinyl groove you know you’re
  gonna rock. It’s the best of both worlds: fist-in-the-heart guitar burn
 in' rock and ahead-of-its-time songsmith awareness . . . The Swell Maps ha
 d a lot to do with my upbringing."\n\nTim Gane (McCarthy / Stereolab) "Whe
 n I first bought "A Trip to Marineville"\, I must have played it a hundred
  times\, just to listen to every single second of it."\n\nScott Kannberg (
 Pavement) "Swell Maps was a big influence on our early records. They had t
 hese songs they fucked up somehow to make sound really dirty and low frequ
 ency\, but they had these great songs underneath all this mess."Alan McGee
  (Creation Records) "Swell Maps inspired a lot of bands that became the va
 nguard of the independent scene ten years later - Sonic Youth\, Pastels\, 
 Mary Chain\, Pavement\, to name a few. Classic band and great people too!"
 \n\nBen Ayres (Cornershop) "Let's Build A Car" is one of my favourite sing
 les of all time\, it's like nothing else. So powerful and breaks all the r
 ules\, yet it’s perfect\, with a great melody too. "A Trip To Marinevill
 e" was a really important album for me\, as was "Jane From Occupied Europe
 "!\n\nJohn Robb (The Membranes / journalist) "Swell Maps had an abrasive r
 awness that of course\, we loved\, but they had much more going on - they 
 also had these amazing sound collages that you could get lost in. They wer
 e mysterious and they had an other-worldliness and that made you love them
  even more."\n\nBrian Turner (NYC radio presenter and musician) "My Swell 
 Maps discovery came five seconds into the intro of "Midget Submarines" . .
  . avant-garage- gonzo-kraut-greatness\, ambient experiments all punctuate
 d by these incredible anthems of another universe that made complete sense
  and ignored everything else . . . this was a band that invented something
 ."\n\nDavid Lance Callahan (Moonshake\, Wolfhounds) "Swell Maps showed tha
 t people you can relate to could produce music of ambition\, imagination a
 nd innovation. All of this was done with a liberating lack of inhibition a
 nd an overwhelming sense of fun – and music’s not music without that!"
 \nGEO\n\nPost-punk/no wave oddity Geo are like a sentient slot machine: wh
 atever seems happenstance is actually by design\, and the more mismatched 
 the moving parts appear\, the more their music starts to make sense. Since
  the Groningen quartet’s inception in 2019\, they have built a framework
  of skeletal agit-funk\, cartoonish chromatics and neoteric art punk vigne
 ttes – sketching negative spaces where chaos and cacophony can sound per
 plexingly catchy. After releasing their esteemed EP in 2021\, the band has
  entered its next creative chapter.\nOut of Body – Geo’s long-awaited 
 debut album – is an oblong snow globe utopia where dancing with two left
  feet is an actual custom.\n\nhttps://geoband.bandcamp.com/album/out-of-bo
 dy\n\nLife is beautifully strange and Geo embraces it with dancepunk from 
 the cracks of the earth. Their self-titled EP is a cocktail of no wave\, p
 ost-punk and weird funk\, which is so addictive that Bandcamp decided to l
 ist it as essential release. Geo shapes an estranging world of mutant funk
  that is fueled by dissociative vocals. Here the grooves dictate the songs
 \, while wired guitars and vexing synths keep them company. A surprising c
 rossover between bands such as The Contortions\, The Fall and Liquid Liqui
 d. Please do come and dance to it.\n\nno wave\, post-punk\, weird funk\n\n
 Poster: https://www.instagram.com/prettyuglyshows/\n\nPresale/door prices 
 adjusted: our events are set up by volunteers in favour of supporting DIY 
 touring acts\, but it is getting ever more risky to plan and book events 
 – please support the community and buy your tickets early! Presale close
 s 18.00 on day of the show.\n\nDetails and tickets: https://onlyhere.app/a
 msterdam/whats-on/occii-amsterdam-swell-maps-uk-geo\n\nFound on OnlyHere 
 · onlyhere.app/amsterdam
URL:https://onlyhere.app/amsterdam/whats-on/occii-amsterdam-swell-maps-uk-g
 eo
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