Music

This portfolio piece explores themes of memory and nostalgia in an ambient collage that evokes a place between sleep and the waking world. Obscured voices mingle with glitched-out loops, field recordings and distorted drones, forming shifting layers that emerge and mutate. Banjo, lap-steel and classical guitar form the backbone of the piece, with minimalist arpeggios bubbling out of the wash of texture and half-heard conversation.

The use of phone recordings played though guitar pickups and four-track cassette recorder create a sense of nostalgic reflection, which recontextualises memories and plays with a sense of ambiguity and impermanence. The piece aims to serve as a document of the past three years, expanding and reworking unfinished ideas sketched out during the Coronavirus lockdown as well as incorporating recordings of people and places that have had a formative effect on the artist.

A game, back and forth

Long distance 

released March 13, 2024

Phil Swan + Rob Shuttleworth

Bristol / Lisbon / London

2020 - 2024 

Awkward Branches, the new project of singer, keyboardist and former Fiction frontman Mike Barrett and close collaborator and guitarist Phil Swan, announce their debut EP Melody for a Friend due out May 4th via Tip Top Recordings. Beginning as a few tender sketches some years ago, the EP has grown, unhurriedly, into a set of six lovingly crafted alt-pop songs. From the acoustic opener and debut single, ‘A Frame not a Window’; the balearic dream-pop of ‘Summer of the Pine’; to the nostalgic title-track which closes the collection, this EP showcases Awkward Branches knack for weaving melody texture and lyricism into compelling and rewarding songs.

But Still Michael Grew is a short theatrical collage exploring growing up, mischief, and how we turn our own lives into narrative.

Part of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School Director's Cuts Season 2020

Directed by Lucy Hayes

Visuals by Bea Wilson

Music by Phil Swan

Edited by Lucy Hayes

Sound Editor Abhirup Obi Mukhopadhyay

Production Assistant Atlanta Russell

Devised by the Company

Additional Writing Lucy Hayes

Dramaturg Dan Scott

WITH Heloise Lowenthal and Mark Milligan