SWIM MOUNTAIN
https://www.instagram.com/swimmountain/?hl=en
Q: Introduce yourself.
A: My name is Tom Skyrme. I’m from London, UK and release music under the name of Swim Mountain.
Q: Can you walk me through a typical recording session of yours?
A: Yeah I do everything myself although sometimes I’ll get a mastering engineer. The first EP I mastered it myself. I work in a pretty traditional way I guess. I’ll just play around writing songs or bits of a song then I’ll start producing it and rewriting it until it’s done. I’ll usually produce a lot of versions of it trying different things until I find the one that works best.
Q: What do you having going on over the next couple of weeks in terms of music?
A: I’m finishing up these new songs at the moment. I find that’s the slowest and most difficult bit — letting go of them. Also taking a break and going to France to see visit friends.
Q: That’s awesome man! Good way to end the summer. Are you thinking of going in a similar direction as your past EP’s? Or down a different route?
A: I change things up each time each time I start writing a new EP but it’s inevitably always going to sound like me. I’m going to make a lot more music more often though. I realize how slow I’ve been.
Q: I saw you like to shoot film? So you’re visual as well. If you were to take a picture or paint a picture of your music what would it look like?
A: I’m not great at taking photos but I wish I was because I enjoy it. For the songs I’m working on right now I’ve had pretty specific mental images of each, especially the location. One song in particular would probably be Ecco the Dolphin swimming through an empty shopping center full of water.
Q: How did you take these? And where is this taken? What genre of film would that be considered and what camera/film did you use?
A: Oh wow good find — I forgot about these. I think I was using a Lomo Diana F and the blue ones definitely look cross processed. The top was in Brighton, England. The middle one looks like it was along the 1 maybe near Big Sur. Bottom is Disney Opera house DTLA. I still have the Diana somewhere but I bought a Mju-1 recently because a photographer friend recommends them. My friend has also lent me his x100f which I took around Japan and I loved it. So quick and easy. Got a bit of a film camera feel to it.
Q: Where was that picture of the water and docs taken? And how did you choose to use Ecco the dolphin?
A: The water was in Hakone, Japan. The street was Osaka, Japan. Ecco and the shopping center were just aesthetics I had in my head for that particular song.
Q: Do you game?
A: I don’t usually play games, but I ended up playing that new Zelda game on the switch a lot. I think I got addicted.
Q: Now if you were to give me three things that the public doesn’t know about you that you’d feel comfortable sharing, please share!
1. I grew up in Bermuda. I grew up in this paradise of white sand beaches, sunshine, tropical fishes. Then I moved to Dublin and got the shock of my life — snow.
2. It’s probably a cliché but the Beach Boys changed my life. Brian Wilson manages to capture a feeling that doesn’t fade with time. I think he called it Pocket Symphonies.
3. I spend way too much time on YouTube. YouTube has so many interesting videos on everything, it’s addictive.
Q: On your SoundCloud I see that you only cover one song and it’s by Beyoncé. what’s the meaning behind that?
A: The Beyoncé cover I just did for fun because I liked the song and the label I was on had asked me to do a cover.
