Fuck off! Off!” Bill Ryder-Jones barks gently but sternly, swatting at the hand looming over the synth in front of him. Beside him, James Balmont pulls back, the mischief running through his fingers extinguished as he’s scolded like a puppy whose energy is becoming a bit too distracting. As Swim Deep’s keyboardist slinks back to his seat, he protests through a mock pout: “I was going to play the X-Files theme!”
It’s late August 2025, and Swim Deep have decamped to Brussels’ ICP Studios to work on their fifth album, ‘Hum’. After helming 2024’s ‘There’s A Big Star Outside’, Ryder-Jones is back in the producer’s chair, and alongside engineer Giovanni Lando, the cohort are entering the final stages of recording when NME joins them in Belgium.
Over the two weeks that Balmont, frontman Austin “Ozzy” Williams, drummer Thomas Fiquet and new guitarist J.J. Buchanan have spent in the wood-panelled studio (bassist Cavan McCarthy has had to sit out the trip due to childcare commitments), progress has been good. The band are in good spirits, but a slight undercurrent of tension starts to build in the 24 hours NME spends in their company. In a few days’ time, they’ll return to the UK. Before then, fat needs to be trimmed, details nailed down, and ideas fleshed out until each song reaches its maximum potential. The clock is ticking, and each time they listen back to a track, a discussion follows about what needs fixing, adding or taking away.
Once the layers and details are worked out, though, the world is in for a treat. Even on first, unfinished listen, it’s clear that this album is shaping up to be something beautiful. As Williams leaves the room to work on something by himself, the rest of the band play through a handful of tracks for NME – the results of a “purple patch” of songwriting between the frontman and Buchanan. “Each song should go on a journey,” Balmont shares as one track fades out of the speakers, calling the notion one of this album’s “guiding lights”. You can sense that approach in the likes of the slow, grungy stomp of ‘Mud’ and the emotive beauty of the Buchanan-penned ‘Broken’ – songs that grow, change and weave stories.
While there’s often a marked difference between each Swim Deep album, here they dig deeper into the sound of ‘There’s A Big Star Outside’ – softer, grungier, more songwriterly. Lyrically, it’s introspective but accessible, filled with personal reflections that are moving, but also make you consider where you are in your own life. On the bright, bursting ‘You, Me & Mary’, a touching contemplation directed to his wife and one-year-old daughter, Williams wonders with infectious self-observation: “Is this the best that I can be?”
ICP Studios is a fitting place for these reflections to unfold. It’s a space Swim Deep have visited at several points in their journey, first setting foot inside in 2012 when, as a rising act backed by plenty of buzz, they came to record their debut album, ‘Where The Heaven Are We’. “That first year, [we were signed to a] major label, [had] three meals a day, private chef, all that stuff,” Williams recalls. When they came back to record follow-up ‘Mothers’ in 2014, there was “one less meal [a day], [the label were] a bit more cautious with us”. In the evening, as we walk to a bowling alley imaginatively named Brussels Bowling – a consistent fixture in the band’s visits to the city – Balmont regales us with youthful tales of drunken festive nights, dragging Christmas trees to the studio, and “tops off in the club” for one of Williams’ birthdays past.
In 2023, they returned to make ‘There’s A Big Star Outside’, no longer those responsibility-free kids but adults in their thirties. At that time, Williams was about to become a father; his experience of that then-impending reality becoming actualised colours ‘Hum’. When NME visits the band, his daughter Mary and partner Nell have also come over to be together for a few days between sessions, reinforcing that sense that the studio is somewhere the band have grown up.
Across ‘Hum’, Williams meditates on family and the ties that bind us together, the shift that comes both with a new life and the grief of departures. In the same month Mary was born, Nell’s father died – a combination of seismic life events the musician calls “mind-splitting”.
“Mary was the thing that brought anyone joy in that time,” he says, slouched in a booth at Brussels Bowling after a chaotic round on the lanes (Williams comes out on top; NME and Fiquet hold up the bottom end, despite frantically studying bowling tutorials on YouTube to aid our game). “You’re mourning, you’re trying to be sensitive, and you don’t want to put any of that on the child. A lot of growth came with that and the songs came out of that.” This album, he half-jokes, is one that can be summed up as “live, loss, love”: “The love makes the loss harder, but the love makes the live easier.”
Through that world-uprooting time, the experience of becoming a dad has reminded him of the purpose of the path he’s chosen. “With Mary, I just write my songs like nursery rhymes or whatever,” he explains fondly. “It brings you back to what songwriting is about – sharing stories and keeping stories memorable for people with melody.”
Around the time of Mary’s birth, Williams questioned whether continuing to make a living from music was “the right thing to do” or if he should find a more stable way to provide for his family. It’s the kind of conundrum that’s plagued many musicians, the financial insecurity of band life causing Swim Deep to lose some members over the years. Today, each of the five bandmates works a day job alongside the band – a necessity that also means they can’t be a “proper band” because their clashing schedules make it impossible to rehearse.
Why, then, do they keep going? “I think 10 years ago, a big part of making music was trying to get recognition,” Balmont reasons the next morning as the band gather around a table in a room lined with plaques celebrating albums made at ICP. “I think now, we’re pursuing creative satisfaction as a more personal thing.” He nods to an interview he did with Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne a few years back in his day job as a culture journalist. “I remember him telling me, ‘When you get to this age, it’s not about just being with the lads anymore and having a good time – you’ve really got to love the music.’ I feel like that’s a realisation we’ve come to and that’s maybe why we are still here.”
“Me and Cav have always said that our day will come – we just don’t know when” – Austin Williams
“But also, what would we do if we weren’t doing this?” Fiquet says in a tone that suggests there is no alternative for him. “I’ve never not been in a band since I was 15, except for one month when I lived in London. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“I saw someone in a band that makes a lot of money say, ‘All of our peers have given up’,” Williams adds. “It’s like, ‘Well, yeah, obviously – they haven’t been making money.’ It does feel sometimes like we’ve been left on the shelf, but I think it’s really important that we carry on to show that it’s possible for bands to do that.”
For those who believe in the band – whether fans, peers or colleagues – Swim Deep still elicit a huge passion. As we wait for our lane to be ready at the bowling alley, Ryder-Jones waxes lyrical to NME about the band’s talents in a way that could convince the staunchest non-believer. Midway through, he makes eye contact with Williams at the bar behind us, a bemused look on the frontman’s face. “She didn’t ask, but she wanted to know – I could see it in her eyes,” Ryder-Jones grins.
The next day, the producer isn’t quite as buoyant, that ticking clock getting ever louder. “It feels like there’s still a lot of work to be done,” he sighs, taking a drag of a cigarette. “It still feels like we haven’t quite cracked some things.” Whether they have time left to tend to those areas remains to be seen, but he’s sure of one thing. “They’re definitely going in the right direction. Sometimes it takes two or three records to settle into a new era. It can be a challenge to your audience, so you [just have to] keep putting out good quality records, which I think we are doing.”
‘Hum’ might not mark a fresh chapter for the band in terms of sound, but it feels like their energy has been refreshed by the addition of Buchanan. The new guitarist officially came into the line-up in spring 2025 after Robbie Wood had to quit due to the financial constraints of the band. “It’s completely changed the band, in my opinion,” Williams enthuses. “We never really want to use session musicians because, as great as they can be, we always want there to be a brotherhood.”
As they look ahead to what might come next in this rejuvenated family unit, there’s a pause to reflect on how much they’ve grown. “It feels like we’re much more complete and assured of ourselves,” Balmont suggests. “We know who we are as people now, and I feel like the music is much more wholesome and, in a way, more sophisticated. It just feels like us, like we’ve arrived at the conclusion of who we are.”
Back in the booth at the bowling alley, as balls clatter into pins, Williams’ mind turns to a romantic, optimistic streak that’s run through the band for years. “Me and Cav have always said that our day will come – we just don’t know when,” he smiles. Until that day arrives, Swim Deep will be here making music and sharing the stories that mean the most to them for as long as the world will let them.
Swim Deep’s ‘Hum’ is out on June 19 via Submarine Cat Records.
ON THE RISE
M.O.T.H.E.R. – the new collaborative band helmed by Robbie Furze of The Big Pink and currently featuring Jamie T and Jamie Hince of The Kills – have given their first proper interview, talking to NME about the emotional origins of the project, their aim to be “the guitar version of N.E.R.D.”, and their hit-list of future collaborators.
Revealing the new project at the end of May alongside the blistering anthemics of debut single ‘My Love’, Furze shared that the seeds of M.O.T.H.E.R. had come from losing his own parent after a prolonged illness. “My mum got sick about five years ago and was ill for about four years before she died,” he told NME.
“In that period I had a daughter, which was this real juxtaposition of death and birth. My mates – Jamie T and Jamie Hince – came together for me, and then sadly Jamie [Hince] lost his dad too,” Furze went on, sitting in a West London pub alongside Hince.
Hince continued: “I lost my dad four days after Robbie [lost his mum], and it felt like, if ever there was a calling, it was that. But it didn’t all come out of that doom and gloom. I hate mentioning COVID but everyone had so much time on their hands and there was this open creativity back then. I was working on music with Jamie T, sending each other stuff, and the idea for the three of us to do something together came out of that. It felt nice, like we were buying into this camaraderie, and this gang.”
The three musicians have previous credits together, with the two Jamies also writing on The Big Pink’s most recent album, 2022’s ‘The Love That’s Ours’. Fully collaborating on M.O.T.H.E.R., Furze joked, was like “the clash of three egos”. “Everyone wants to work with each other because you like what each other does, and so it’s not quite imposter syndrome but you have to live up to [that idea] and jump in and be a character,” Hince continued. “You can’t be too humble about it.”
Recording between Hince’s studio in LA and Furze’s studio in London’s Bethnal Green, the current trio have also dropped their self-titled debut EP featuring three further tracks: ‘Real Human’, ‘Traitor’, and ‘Surrender’. The ethos of the band, meanwhile, is for the line-up to shift with each release, bringing in familiar faces from other groups and working with whoever might be available at the time.
“We did a little bit [of recording] with Jenny [Lee Lindberg, bassist] from Warpaint who I love; I really want to get something solid down with her,” revealed Hince, while Furze suggested that names including Zach Hill of industrial hip-hop trio Death Grips, and electronic producer Skream have all been in the mix for future iterations of the band.
“We ran into Zach and he seemed into it but then he started ghosting me,” he noted. “Whether or not he decides to text me back, it would be wonderful to have that kind of thing. Jamie Hince, Skream, Rhys Webb from The Horrors [who played on their recent radio session], and Zach – if I saw that, I’d wanna hear what that nonsense sounds like!”
Check out the rest of the interview with Furze and Hince below, as they discuss their endearing bromance, their admiration for Jamie T, and why the band are unlikely to ever make an album.
NME: Hello Robbie and Jamie! You must have been kicking about at a lot of ‘00s parties, how far does your friendship go back?
Robbie Furze: “Me and Jamie T started becoming friends on the circuit of festivals when the first Big Pink record came out in 2009. Then me and Jamie Hince met at Corona Capital in Mexico in 2012.”
Jamie Hince: “He had a reputation – I think we all had reputations… I remember his wife giving me these dried insect snacks and I didn’t eat them because I thought he might have laced them with something…”
Furze: “Every band playing Corona Capital was staying in this massive hotel, so it was just chaos.”
Hince: “It was at the height of ego. Everyone had bodyguards. Bands were trying to outdo other bands. Like, The Black Keys – you’re two guys from Ohio, you don’t need armed bodyguards…”
Where does Jamie T fit into all this?
Hince: “Our orbits crossed quite a bit. I remember seeing him at some tiny little pub when he was probably about 19, and I love how it’s come full circle. My heart sinks a little bit when I see Jamie T working because I know I’m nowhere near [as good as] that. I have to chip away at things and stand back and then dive in again to get the feeling, whereas he’s just got the feeling from the start.”
Furze: “He’s pretty incredible. The song ‘Traitor’ on the EP was supposed to be for my vocal, and he was almost getting pissed off that we couldn’t get the verses right. He was just like, ‘I’ll sort it out’, goes up to the mic, does one take and it’s done. See you later. He’s that kind of guy.”
Do you have to leave your ego at the door in those situations?
Hince: “I did this amazing beat for ‘Traitor’ that I loved, and I sent it to Jamie T and got back a text saying: ‘One pound fish’. Fuck! I mean talk about leaving your ego at the door… I know what he was saying, he thought it was a bit ‘cor blimey’ waltz. But some of the shit he ends up doing, it’s totally ‘cor blimey one pound fish’!”
Furze: “But whatever works for the track works, and everyone has to be happy with it. You push each other without really knowing it.”
How did you envision the project?
Hince: “These things just come together. It sounds cheesy, but I wanted it to be the guitar version of N.E.R.D. – a production team of people that love each other.”
Furze: “We’ve got songs in the pipeline with other artists already, and it makes it like an N.E.R.D. or Unkle or Massive Attack thing. Being collaborative makes me more excited.”
Hince: “It feels like that time has gone where albums really last. Records seem to come and go quite quickly now. So I’ve shifted my enthusiasm because I think the attention span has gone. You spend so much time making records and so little time getting any reward.”
Furze: “I’d like to do standalone singles, or another EP of four or five tracks as a batch. I wouldn’t wanna go further than that.”
None of your individual bands and projects sound that alike – where do you think your tastes align?
Hince: “There’s something unspoken that we all seem to agree on which is this epic-ness. There’s a line in one of the songs that talks about ‘the last of the hooligans‘ and that seemed to be the feeling behind it all. If there’s a similarity with what everyone wanted, it was maybe just being a bit romantic and epic.”
Why do you think you were drawn to that?
Hince: “I don’t know, maybe we’re just lonely men?”
Furze: “Beaten down but being pulled up by hope…”
Hince: “We’ve all been bashing around, making all this noise and spending so much time doing it; I think it gives you that feeling. There’s something tiny and irrelevant about what you do but something life and death about what you do too, and I think the cocktail of that makes it… well, the last of the hooligans.”
Tell us a bit about ‘My Love’ – the first proper single.
Furze: “It’s one of the most basic songs. It’s a love song about hope, but it just has such an incredible energy to it with its simplicity. I’m not a massive Beatles fan but it has this relatable energy [like their early music]. ‘I wanna hold your hand’ – you don’t get more basic than that, in a great way. I think simplicity is power. Sometimes less is more, and if you mean it you can get away with it.”
Are there going to be live shows?
Furze: “Definitely. We’re playing a bit of catch up because we didn’t think ‘My Love’ would get the reaction it has, but we’re desperate to get out and do gigs.”
Hince: “In the spirit of the collaborative project, I’m really liking the idea of having different people in different countries playing with us; having a different vibe each time.”
Furze: “It would be really exciting to see different characters that you know from different bands. For the radio session [with Steve Lamacq on BBC 6 Music] we had Rhys Webb from The Horrors on bass, and I love that idea.”
You’re obviously very close – what are your favourite memories of this charming bromance?
Furze: “Jamie’s probably my best friend in the world and we’ve been through a lot together. In 2015 we both uprooted and went out to LA together, I went out there for about five years and he stayed, so we were pretty inseparable. It got to a point where it was breakfast, lunch and dinner together.”
Hince: “We just became one person. People would confuse us even though we don’t look the same. He had an ex-girlfriend who he went to say hello to and she said, ‘Hello Jamie’. We just started having the same vibe. The same embarrassing energy. We’ve chilled out a bit recently but when I was in LA and Robbie was in London we’d speak to each other for four hours a day. I was getting complaints from his wife.”
The ‘M.O.T.H.E.R. EP’ is out now.
The Big Pink returned with their third studio album, ‘The Love That’s Ours’, in 2022. It marked their first full-length effort in over 10 years. T and Hince worked on that LP, too, co-writing the single ‘Love Spins On Its Axis’.
The Kills released their sixth and latest record, ‘God Games’, in 2023.
Jamie T, meanwhile, made a comeback with ‘The Theory Of Whatever’ the previous year. He recently joined forces with Fred Again.. on the track ‘Lights Burn Dimmer’, and performed with The Maccabees at their big London reunion gig last summer.
