SWAMP CHILDREN
biography




The Swamp Children formed in Manchester early in 1980, the original line-up comprising: Ann Quigley (vocals), Tony Quigley (sax and bass), John Kirkham (guitar), Ceri Evans (keyboards and bass), Cliff Saffer (sax) and Martin Moscrop (drums). At this time everyone in the city seemed to be forming a band, and for six months the new outfit practiced at a rehearsal space shared with fellow avant-funksters A Certain Ratio and the nascent New Order. Ages ranged from 16 to 19. The Swamp Children name was also applied to a one-off fanzine, largely the work of Ann.

Moscrop was also a Ratio, and Ann had provided the artwork for their Flight single and To Each album. Although their close association with A Certain Ratio lead many to assume that Swamp Children were merely an ACR splinter group, Swamp Children always pursued a more latin, bossa nova and jazz tinged agenda, and were a totally separate affair. Although the band adopted a post-punk attitude towards making music, from the outset their sound was heavily influenced by the records they were listening to at the time - Miles Davis, Brazilian jazz fusion and heavy funk dancefloor sides.

The band made their live debut at Manchester's short-lived Beach Club in May 1980, as support to Eric Random. Thanks to a double-booking another support band turned up and were turned away, having traveled all the way from Dublin for a string of British dates. Poor old U2.

Factory invited the Swamp Children to make a record, and the band recorded Boy in March 1981 at Cabaret Voltaire's primitive Western Works studio in Sheffield. The track was co-produced by ACR frontman Simon Topping and Stephen Mallinder of the Cabs, and was proved a fairly experimental affair. In June Topping produced two more tracks in Manchester, and the 12" single appeared in October to a warm reception. Another track, Flesh, again produced by Topping, was recorded in July and donated to Belgian label Les Disques du Crepuscule for their deluxe compilation Fruit of the Original Sin.

In July the band also played at a Crepuscule night held at hip London venue Heaven, along with Marine, Richard Jobson, Repetition and Eric Random. But within the inky pages of Sounds reviewer Chris Burkham praised only Marine (later to become Allez Allez), condemning Swamp Children as too derivative of ACR and merely 'pretty babies' who needed to 'grow up soon.' Crepuscule's Michel Duval didn't agree, and invited the band to record for sister label Factory Benelux. The result was the 12" Taste What's Rhythm, recorded in March 1982 and featuring a small hours tune of touching, tender resignation to love in You've Got Me Beat. A live version of this track from a show at The Hacienda on 29 June 1982 also appears on the Factory Outing video.

In 1981 a new jazz scene was already developing in the UK, with bands like Weekend, Animal Nightlife, French Impressionists and Carmel forming a disparate vanguard. In Manchester the Swamp Children, ACR and the Jazz Defektors would hang out at Fevers, Legends and Berlin, three nightclubs where DJs Hewan Clarke and Colin Curtis were introducing incredible grooves to an intimate, knowing few. Even though most of the band had only being playing their instruments for a short while, they soon began to find their own tracks being dropped into the mix, and in turn refined their own chops. A similar scene also sprang up in London, thanks to DJs such as Paul Murphy and Gilles Peterson.

By the time the band recorded their album So Hot in August 1982 they were well on the way to developing a distinctive sound of their own, albeit way less abrasive than fellow (free) jazz-informed Mancunians Ludus and Biting Tongues, and in which sometimes the ideas were greater than their musical ability. Standout tracks include Samba Zippy, El Figaro and Secret Whispers. Indeed the album received a Five Star rating in the Virgin Rock Yearbook for 1982, and was praised as 'one of the best records of the year' by Frank Worral in Melody Maker, who detected 'a shimmering kaleidoscopic brightness' as well as 'silky panache' and 'superb execution.' Also in August, the band played a London showcase at the ICA as part of a season of 'new jazz' billed as The Joy of Mooching.

But with modest success came problems. Although by late 1982 Factory had begun to release seminal early dance records by New Order, ACR, 52nd Street and Quando Quango, the label had grown increasingly unpopular with the music press in the UK, and was still seen in many quarters as gray and industrial, and as a result found it hard to market and promote the bossa nova Swamp Children, who were now picking up favourable notices in papers such as Blue and Soul and Echoes. Indeed the band faced something of an identity crisis, for as the music became more sophisticated, and as they hit their twenties, the name no longer seemed to fit. And so despite having begun to establish a profile as the Swamp Children, it was decided to change the name to Kalima who went on to record four albums for Factory between 1984 and 1990, and more recently In Spirit for their own Kin label in 2001.

All the Swamp Children really wanted to do was come out and play.


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