The foundation of the SWARM industrial groove ensemble is the work of Bill Wallace, who has been at this sort of thing for some time.
Based in East Vancouver the group operates at the interface between mechanized oceanfront and wilderness. Both conditions are reflected in the work.
SWARM performances are always live and direct – the whole world is our sound system.
The SWARM corpus has been developed over years of concentrated effort. The music we are making now combines a rigorous body of work with influences from global rhythm traditions and modern electronic music technologies.
The core instruments are one-of-a-kind handcrafted sculptural objects. Some individual instruments have travelled tens of thousands of kilometers and been played in thousands of performances for audiences of all kinds. Some are recent creations or refinements on older designs. Other instruments are improvised or transient, ringing out at the appropriate moment and fading away.
SWARM today is Bill Wallace, Daniel Lunn and Wayne Mercier. The current lineup has played hundreds of shows and trained together for thousands of hours, giving them an intuitive grasp of the flow and dynamism of a performance. The group has an intimacy with the instruments and a rapport with the audience that is unlike any other contemporary spectacle.
