Swell Maps

Halfway through the 1970s, a group of six English teenagers in Solihull started making music together. Around Jowe Head, his school friend Nikki Sudden and his brother Epic Soundtracks, this grew into Swell Maps. Their first single, Read About Seymour, was released in 1977 on their own label Rather Records.
Swell Maps was one of the first punk bands with their own ‘indie’ label, and they grew into pioneers of alternative music. They combined punk with an experimental sound and released four singles and two albums during their short career, including A Trip to Marineville and Jane From Occupied Europe. The band later influenced, among others, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Stereolab and Blur.
Although the original crew split up in 1980, the music continued to inspire new generations. From 2021 onwards, Jowe Head began organising concerts again with a group of musicians around the Swell Maps repertoire. The performances in Great Britain and Europe eventually led to C21, a new studio album via Tiny Global Productions.
C21 contains songs written between 1979 and the present, including previously professionally unrecorded material and a new version of Soundtracks’ Jelly Babies. The album combines strong melodies and riffs with the adventurous, idiosyncratic and experimental spirit of Swell Maps.
The current group, alongside Jowe Head, includes David Callahan, Jeff Bloom, Lee McFadden, Lucie Rejchrtova, Chloe Herington and Luke Haines, among others. Swell Maps will perform again in the United Kingdom and Europe in 2026. The vinyl sleeves of n C21 are hand-printed by a feminist cooperative in Valencia and are released in three variants.