wing! is the moniker of Adam Swan, a London producer who won Green Man Rising last year for his ghostly collage of trip-hop, post-rock and ambient electronica – though to rely on such base signifiers feels reductive when speaking about the project. His debut EP ‘Missed It Just The Once’ was one of last year’s finest electronic releases, earning a Dinked vinyl variant and, more importantly, establishing a reputation as one of London’s most exciting new voices. We sat down with Adam to talk about everything from why he likes making music first thing in the morning to winning Green Man Rising, and the story of the “best night of my life” – his first gig at the Windmill.
Yesterday (15th April) marked two years since your New Music Monday gig at the Windmill…
Shit man!!! I was supposed to text a groupchat about that.
What do you remember from that night, and what’s it like looking back now with how much you’ve progressed?
Oh man that was one of the most thrown together and best nights of my whole life. Me and Joe had done three sessions, we called them sessions because they weren’t really rehearsals, and it wasn’t even a thing yet. I had just finished the EP and I remember I was working that day, left at like six in the morning to go to work, and as I was leaving I checked my email and Tim asked if I could do tonight. I was like shit yeah, I had the most stressful day at work, I had no idea of how we was gonna do it. I remember texting Joe on my break at work asking if there’s any chance he was free tonight and want to play New Music Monday, he’s like yeah I’m free.
I ran home and it was the most dramatic thing ever, it was like hailstoning and then drove to the venue and during the soundcheck they showed me how to route the clicktrack to okay, that’s how unprepared i was. Bouncing all the backing tracks right until up we was like going on stage and then we done it and it went really well. There was way more people there than i thought and I was so happy with it. Kai was in the audience as well, I hadn’t really met him weirdly enough but we didn’t have a bassist yet and none of the tracks had bass either. I remember coming off the stage and not being able to breathe, it was a mad day.
You’ve done countless gigs at the Windmill since, including your EP release party. What is it about the venue that makes everyone want to go back?
Some venues just have that magic to it and the Windmill has that, it’s kind of an unexplainable thing. I think a real part of it is how much they give artists the time of day, and there’s a lot of recurring faces which gives a nice community and scene feel to it, it feels like really like a youth club to me. A huge part of it is the sound is always great as well, the sound engineers are second to none. They just have good new music on and it’s a really good sign of what’s to come as well, like a lot of people who play there go on to do a lot of stuff – Tim does a good job of booking it.
You mention the community, there’s obviously a huge group of artists associated with the Windmill. How helpful is it when you’re an upcoming musician to have all these like-minded creatives around you?
I was so surprised because I wasn’t from the band scene, I was a producer so all of this stuff was kind of new to me so it was really cool that people gave it the time of day even though it was quite different. Everyone’s just so lovely, I learned so much from people by watching bands and their dynamics. And when you’re competing, not competing, but on the same bill as bands, you have to almost rise to that intensity so I was striving for that intensity of a band from early on. Just good people.
You’ve got a residency at Avalon Cafe coming up – what made you want to do that?
I was thinking about doing it for a while. I like the idea of doing a residency and it feeling like the beginning of something rather than a culmination. I’ve been working on a lot of new stuff and it gives you the chance to curate the night a lot more, and gives us a good platform to get new shit in and more chance to experiment. It’s nice you get to put it on a bit more, it’s a bit more in your world.
Do you think you’ll approach those shows any differently to a one-off headline gig?
I kind of want it to be like that, yeah. Maybe I’m wrong but the headline feels a bit like the culmination of everything and it has to be this certain way – I feel like there’s less pressure on the residency. The direction we’re going in is a new direction and a new sound so it’s a nice little way to open some kind of path that I’d like to go down.
You mention you’re playing a lot of new songs – what kind of direction is that new material going in, and did you take any lessons from the EP when you made it?
It’s always a natural progression, I’m just trying to push and challenge myself as much as I can – and Joe and Kai are coming up with new stuff for the parts with the live stuff too. I’m hoping to get to a constant thing of trying to go beyond myself a little bit, so I guess it naturally kind of changes direction.
The first EP got a vinyl pressing, how did that feel and how important is the physical element of music?
I was born in 2002 so I’ve always grown up with either CDs or mp3s really, so I got vinyl a lot later and I’ve always been a digital guy. But especially with sampling and DJing, vinyl is huge it’s on such a pedestal for me. Most of my heroes come from the vinyl world, I found so much music just going into record shops and seeing vinyls and getting to read the names on the back, so to have my stuff in a shop is insane. Streaming is cool and that but it’s a different level of being able to actually hold something that you’ve done – it’s mental, it’s a crazy feeling.
The EP is quite genre fluid, there’s a lot of trip hop, ambient jazz, dream pop – do you think about those genres at all when you’re making music, or is it pure instinct?
It’s massively instinct, it’s all instinctual. It kind of flows a little bit but I love all that stuff so much, so I guess it informs my instincts a little bit. I input a lot of that kind of music and try and listen to as much as I can, so all that stuff goes into the pot and then I guess it’s about how it comes out.
In an interview you said your music is based around “collages” – can you elaborate on that, what does that look like when you’re making something in practice?
Collages did I say that? Yeah I must have done. I guess I look at it as piecing together different things – obviously that’s what making music is, but when it comes to sampling it really is piecing together all this stuff that wasn’t supposed to go together, that was probably recorded decades apart. Different countries, different musicians who never even knew each other and I guess it’s my job to try and make all of them talk to each other in a way. I love the idea of anything referential so it is a huge collage of different scenes. There’s so much history that when you’re flipping something, each thing belongs to its own scene and has its own character to it – there’s so much connected to the stuff I’m choosing, especially records in the shop.
How does the creative process work with the collage, do you start with lots of different fragments and piece them together or build out from one central idea?
It usually starts with finding the records. That will be over a long period of time, I usually find stuff in bulk and then go inside on a big search mission, as much as I can. It all goes in and then it all kind of falls out in a natural way. I usually work really early in the morning if I’m off work and that means I can’t question myself as much, it’s a bit more like my subconscious doing it rather than me. I don’t think about it critically until later.
So I try to be intentional about where I’m finding the stuff and what direction it’s in, and then it’s the selection and then the making of it is where the collage starts to happen. That’s where you really get to express yourself – it kind of happens over a long period of time as well, I usually work on tracks for a long time and then they come as I live and grow with them.
Wing! started as a solo project but it’s now a three-piece when you’re playing live – how does it feel playing with a band compared to on your own, and when did you realise you wanted to add more people?
Oh man. I’ll say their names for the interview, Joe Killick plays drums and Kai Charlton plays bass. To play with them is the most fun, every single show is so unbelievably fun and they just put so much life into it. The way that they adapt it blows my mind every time, it’s so fun and doing it on my own would be so boring – not only for me but probably for the crowd as well.
The way we play together is like there’s not really an audience, we’re just looking at each other and that connection and chemistry is so fun for me. I knew that I wanted to start playing with other musicians probably around 2022 or something like that, I was always always really into jazz so playing with others was always in my mind. Then I made the EP and found Joe and Kai around that time, so I got lucky.
I read in So Young that you always wanted to start producing but had no idea where to begin. How did you begin, and what were those early stages like?
I was playing a guitar for a little bit but I always knew I was gonna naturally transition into producing because I wasn’t a guitarist, it wasn’t the way my brain worked. My friend was producing as well, he was in a similar transition to me but he was doing it longer than I was and knew way more than I did, so he was on Logic and had Serato Sample. I knew I wanted to sample as well, that was one key thing from the beginning – I had records that I wanted to sample, I was listening to a lot of stuff and was like, oh man I need to sample this.
I didn’t have a laptop so it started with a list of songs I wanted to sample, and then Manny showed me how to use Serato Sample and then I got that on my laptop and I was away. It was so fun and so new, it was a real light bulb moment for me – I kind of just slotted in and all my instincts and the things I love could go into one.
When did you realise that this wouldn’t just be a hobby but a full musical project, was there a specific moment when wing! was born?
I was going under wing anyway actually, I’ve had that name for a long time and I think my instagram was already wingroulette at the time. I never looked at it as like I’m gonna start a project, it was more just making music and then posting it. My friend George goes under the name Kashania but then it was Shredscars and we made a song called Showtime that was my first production credit. I made this beat on it and he needed something to put down on Spotify and I was like, yeah put wing man. Then I was posting a lot of stuff on Soundcloud and had the name wing there so it was a natural progression, it just kind of happened.
I read that you’re inspired by a lot of soundtracks like Eternal Sunshine and Birdman, so I was wondering if you take much influence from film in general, or any other non-musical influences?
Yeah massively man, I try and watch a film every evening if I’m at home and if watch one that really makes me feel something or impacts me, that’s always going to go into the art. There’s loads of films where I’m trying to recreate a feeling that a film gave me. It’s so visual making music, and these shots and lightings and colours all go into what I visualise when I’m making music, so it’s a huge thing. Nature is a huge thing too, just being outside and getting to observe the world.
It’s approaching a year since you won Green Man Rising, how do you think you’ve developed in the time since?
Just cracking on really, I’m kind of following my instinct in terms of artistic development. That was a really good validation for me and for us as a band, I genuinely did not expect to win that at all so you just keep going and getting stuck into whatever you’re doing next. I’m so focused on development and new music but that was a huge moment to stop and be proud of what we’ve done, that was one of the best memories I have.
Some of the stuff on your Soundcloud is from more than four years ago and feels a bit more upbeat and hip-hoppy compared to what’s going on now. Do you think your approach has changed in those four years, are there any similarities or differences?
I think it comes from a similar place, the techniques are still the same but that was me imitating Madlib and Alchemist and all my favorite hip-hop producers. It’s still always from a hip-hop standpoint but I’m trying to experiment and bring in other genres, like a hip-hop producer trying to do post-rock. It’s always got that hip-hop lens, I’m always looking at it from that context. But still I’m really proud of that early stuff, it’s way more minimal and I’ve definitely got into ambient music and textures since but I still make beats like that all the time, just chop up random soul beats and stuff because I love it.
Those Soundcloud tracks were four years ago, where do you see wing! four years in the future and what would you like to have achieved?
I just want to keep making stuff that I like, that’s all I’m doing. I’m not trying to do a big festival, if that stuff comes then it comes but I just hope in four years that I’ll be better at DJing. Hopefully I’ll surprise myself a bit in four years, keep growing and don’t get stuck. I’m just enjoying it and that’s the main thing for me above all the quote unquote career stuff, like climbing some ladder, I just want to enjoy it.
Words by Donovan Livesey