To My Brother

Album: Mothers (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • Recorded at London's The Church studios under the guidance of Dreamtrak and mixed by David Wrench (Caribou, FKA Twigs, Kate Tempest), this song is a marked departure from Swim Deep's previous tunes. Vocalist Austin Williams said: "There's been inspiration from the sound and ethics of the acid house movement of the late eighties. It feels like there are a lot of parallels with what we have today, that sort of determination to dance whilst everything falls apart around you."

    "We're not being revivalists though, for us every summer could be the summer of love," he added. "This track comes from pure obsession with Motown hits, a 303 machine we dusted off in the studio and a heroic breakbeat whilst lyrically it's reflecting a war with my own words, a sort of frustrated parody. Preaching to myself."
  • The song's kaleidoscopic music video was directed by Irrum (Cloud Control, Lonely The Brave) and features vivid imagery of an imaginary world. "The band said that they felt like they were ready to shave their heads and go to war with this new record, and they wanted a video that represented that feeling," said Irrum. "It felt like the perfect opportunity to re-imagine a completely new world, rather than a representation of psychedelia we have seen before."

    "I came up a concept that solely focused on an evolution of color; a giant spinning wheel that diffused color to birds, botanics, and statues of the band themselves," he added. "It felt important that the objects populating the video were real, so however surreal it appeared it felt tangible and vivid."
  • Austin Williams explained the Mother album title to HMV.com: "We spent ages talking about what to call the record and one of us suggested 'To My Brother'" he said.

    "I don't like the idea of calling a record after a song, so 'To My Brother' morphed into 'To My Mother' and then to 'Mothers,'" Williams added. "I think it ties the record together quite nicely, it's a good metaphor for so much of it."

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