Legendary Belgian post-punk/new wave pioneers The Names have released a new EP, Swimming With Brian Jones. The EP consists of three versions of the "Swimming With Brian Jones" track from the band's recently released Encore! album.
Some songs shimmer on the surface, and then some dive deep, slow, inevitable. "Swimming With Brian Jones" is one of those songs. Not just a track but a vision. A metaphor soaked in saltwater and memory. A descent through time where guitars ripple like waves and words carry the weight of everything we'll never say.
Descending a valley, the idea surfaced - sudden, luminous: to swim with Brian Jones. Not the icon, not the myth, but the man - blond, silent, floating just beneath the waterline since 3 July 1969. A final companion in the pool of endings. A quiet metaphor for that one truth we all share, dressed in shimmering echoes from The Names' early years, when another song, "Swimming", told of youth, hope, and open water.
With "Swimming With Brian Jones", The Names invite us for one last plunge. A slow-motion ballet in the undertow, where arpeggios clash like light on water, rhythms surge like tides, and - somewhere unexpected - a lone bagpipe appears, drifting from nowhere, calling from the edge of consciousness. What melody did Brian hear as he slipped beneath? Perhaps this one.
The EP unfolds like a submerged dream: the original album version, precise and poignant, full of undercurrents and unfinished thoughts; an exclusive remix by Gilles Robert, awash in dreamy synths and gentle distortion, recasting the song as a fragile trip-pop hallucination; a live version, recorded in Brussels on 9 November 2024 - a moment suspended in time, raw and immediate… and to top it all, a black and white video, filmed under the April sun on a Belgian beach, where sea and sky blur and memories are swallowed by the tide.
As the water rises, the clocks dissolve. The present drifts. We all move slowly toward that last swim. Will Brian be waiting? Will there be music playing? And when it's time… will you remember this song?
Another captivating, eclectic release from cult act The Names, which has etched its place in music history, once emerging from the iconic Factory Records alongside Joy Division and New Order. Link
THE NAMES - Swimming With Brian Jones EP Out Now
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- Written by: Jerneja
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