Bill Connors’s follow-up to his solo debut, Theme To The Guardian, is more than the latter’s other half; it is a deeper look inward. From the moment we step “Feet First” into this veritable sonic field, there is moonlight to be savored. It is a place where shadows open their arms to embrace other shadows. From the playful (“Frog Stroke”) to the plaintive (“Wade”), the inspirational (“Sing And Swim”) to the romantic (“Surrender To The Water”), Connors covers a travel diary’s worth of temporal terrain in 43 minutes. These qualities crumble like spring snow, each a reflection upon slightly disturbed surfaces. Other pieces, like “Survive” and “With Strings Attached,” lie somewhere between a wing’s beat and a song. All the more the appropriate, then, that we should end with “Breath,” expelling the very air that will condense into the lifeblood of the earth.
Every cell of Swimming… throbs with aquatic humility throughout its gallery of miniatures. Connors’s fingers are always in motion, transporting us to a place where rain never comes but where the sun is almost always hidden. Despite what the title might have you believe, there is no diving to be experienced in this album until you, fair listener, take the plunge. - Tyran Grillo
Tracks
01. Feet First
02. Wade
03. Sing And Swim
04. Frog Stroke
05. Surrender To The Water
06. Survive
07. With Strings Attached
08. Breath
BILL CONNORS guitars
All compositions by Bill Connors
Recorded August 1979 at Talent Studio, Oslo.
ECM Records – ECM 1158 (Germany)