Mono presents…
SWELL MAPS
with Normal Service
18+
In the mid-1970s, a collective of six English teenagers started creating music together in their suburban home-town of Solihull. This project evolved to become Swell Maps, around a core of three musicians: Jowe Head (bass, guitars & vocals), his school-friend the late Nikki Sudden (guitar & vocals), and Nikki’s brother, the late Epic Soundtracks (drums & keyboards). They recorded their debut single, “Read About Seymour” in 1977, and released it on their own label, Rather Records. Swell Maps were one of the first punk bands to set up an “independent” record label. They are also known as one of the pioneers of “Alternative Rock”, mixing punk with experimental sounds.
Swell Maps proceeded to release four singles and two albums in a brief but eventful career, in partnership with Rough Trade Records. They topped the UK independent charts, and influenced various bands such as Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Stereolab, and Blur. The original line-up split in 1980, but those two original studio albums, “A Trip to Marineville” and “Jane From Occupied Europe”, are still attracting a new generation of enthusiastic listeners.
In 2021, Jowe Head organised performances with ten musicians to perform Swell Maps music over two concerts on consecutive nights at Cafe Oto, in Hackney, east London. They performed a diverse selection of Maps material, some of which had never been performed live before. Many of these musicians also performed together again at Rough Trade in 2022, at the launch party for Jowe’s book on Swell Maps. More concerts followed at Glasgow, Edinburgh, Paris, Manchester, Leeds and Berlin, and more are planned. This ongoing project has resulted in a new album, recorded in early 2025, titled “C21”, and released through Tiny Global Productions.
The material was composed by Jowe and other band members at various times between 1979 and the present. For example, Jowe co-wrote two of them with Nikki Sudden, and two with Phones Sportsman. Swell Maps still offer memorable melodies and wild riffs with super hooks, while retaining radical ideas and eccentric musical shapes. There are contrasts of mood, including a new recording of Epic’s ballad “Jelly Babies”, his 1982 solo single.
The current collective of musicians features:
Jowe Head (vocals, guitar), a founder-member of Swell Maps.
David Callahan (vocals, guitar), from Wolfhounds and Moonshake.
Jeff Bloom (drums), from Television Personalities.
Lee McFadden (bass), from Alternative TV.
Lucie Rejchrtova (keyboards), formerly in Crazy World Of Arthur Brown.
Chloe Herrington (melodica, electonica), formerly in Chrome Hoof.
Luke Haines (vocals, guitar), formerly of Auteurs, Black Box Recorder.