"Swamp Thing" is a song by British electronic music group the Grid, released on 23 May 1994 by Deconstruction as a single and is included on the group's third album, Evolver (1994). The song peaked at number three on the UK, Australian, and Danish singles charts and reached the top five in an additional seven countries, including Finland and Norway, where it reached number two. Its computer generated music video, consisting of dancing robots and a crawling baby, received solid airplay on music television channels. The song was later sampled in "Banjo Thing" by Infernal and "Swamp Thing" by Pegboard Nerds. British magazine NME ranked "Swamp Thing" number 41 in their list of the 50 Best Songs of 1994.[2]
Background and release
"When we played it at Ministry of Sound with Roger, there was a girl at the front staring at his banjo like she'd never seen one before."
The Grid formed in 1988, after Dave Ball and Richard Norris had worked with Psychic TV on the 1990 album Jack the Tab – Acid Tablets Volume One, which would later be described as "Britain's first acid house record".[4] "Swamp Thing" was made after Ball found banjo player Roger Dinsdale in a Irish pub in Marylebone and asked him to come to the studio. Dinsdale was a folk musician who also played the guitar and the mandolin.[5] The Grid got him to lay down some riffs written by himself over a bassline and drumbeat. No digital was used apart from computers, so the group had this massive tape loop spliced together, running all over the studio.[3] Dinsdale died in July 2009.[5]
Norris told in a 2024-interview, "'Swamp Thing' was meant to be joyous and immediate for the dancefloor, but we also knew that a banjo house record would piss off the people who were writing long, boring articles about so-called "intelligent techno".
Mike Pickering from M People gave it the dancefloor seal of approval when he played it at The Haçienda in Manchester. The duo then performed at the Radio 1 roadshow in Cleethorpes, which led to "Swamp Thing" being included on their playlist. The single ended up going to number three on the UK Singles Chart, staying in the charts for 17 weeks over the summer and autumn of 1994.[3] It is almost completely instrumental, consisting mainly of: drums, synthesizer sounds and banjo. The only vocals are Well alright, watch out, Feel alright and I just dig it, sampled from the 1973 reggae song "Papa Do It Sweet" by Lloyd & Patsy.[6]
Critical reception
Music writer and columnist James Masterton wrote, "I can detect a theme developing here over who can make the best dance record out of the silliest original idea. As if Doop wasn't bad enough we now have the Grid moving away from ambient dub and scoring their biggest hit ever with a dance track based on a banjo reel." He added that it "actually is quite inspired".[7] Holly Barringer from Melody Maker complimented "Swamp Thing" as "a cheeky little number" and "a kind of Deliverance with disco up its butt", concluding, "You can't help but squeal like a pig at the sheer foot-tappingness of the darn thing."[8] Maria Jimenez from Music & Media constated that the group "storms through Europe with their banjo-ignited stormer".[9] Andy Beevers from Music Week's RM Dance Update commented, "Part Two of the Grid's US travelogue takes us east from Texas [with their 1993 single "Texas Cowboys"] to the Deep South, where they successfully set frantic banjo picking against uptempo house beats to create a high energy hoe down."[10] He also declared it as "a mad banjo and house hybrid [that] works surprisingly well."[11]
Another RM editor, James Hamilton, described it as "a breezy progressive throbber."[12] Ben Willmott from NME named it Single of the Week, writing, "Bonkers cowpunk disco of the highest order from the vastly underrated Texas cowboys. No need for reams of descriptive prose here — "Swamp Thing" is the first and last word in banjo house and, more to the point, it's damn good fun too. Roll on the kazoo-gabber crossover."[13]NME editor John Mulvey felt "Swamp Thing" "is veteran techno-esoterics the Grid's latest whimsical sonic journey; a long, fierce trip into Deliverance country that mixes square dance-friendly banjos with the kind of sleek trance disco perfected by Underworld and Fluke. A bit of a novelty — all that finger-picking nonsense gets royally on your tits after a while — but endearing enough in its own backwoods, inbred, rabble-rousing redneck way."[14] The magazine's Paul Moody named it a "brain-denting belter".[15]Mark Frith from Smash Hits deemed the song a highlight of the album.[16]
Chart performance
"Swamp Thing" was very successful on the charts across several continents. In Europe, it soared to number two in Finland, Norway and Scotland. It was a top-10 hit also in Austria (4), Belgium (4), Denmark (3),[17] Iceland (8), Ireland (4), the Netherlands (5), Spain (8), Sweden (4), Switzerland (6) and the United Kingdom. On the Eurochart Hot 100, it hit number four on 3 September.[18] In the UK, the single peaked at number three in its fifth week on the UK Singles Chart, on 26 June.[19] It also reached number-one on Music Week's Dance Singles chart.[20] Additionally, it was a top-20 hit in Germany (13) and a top-50 hit in France (45). Outside Europe, "Swamp Thing" reached number three in Australia as well as on the RPM Dance/Urban chart in Canada. It also peaked at number 41 in New Zealand.
The single was awarded with a silver record in the UK with a sale of 200,000 copies and a platinum record in Australia, after 70,000 units were sold.
Music video
"Swamp Thing" was accompanied by a music video. The video switches back and forth between two scenes: computer-generated imagery of a group of robots dancing to a techno beat and a blank white landscape with a crawling baby and music synthesiser instruments. The scene with the baby and the instruments also inspired the Evolver album cover art. The video received heavy rotation on MTV Europe[21] and was A-listed on Germany's VIVA.[22] Later it was made available by Vevo on YouTube, and as of early 2024, the video had generated more than 2.7 million views.[23]
^Pennanen, Timo (2006). Sisältää hitin – levyt ja esittäjät Suomen musiikkilistoilla vuodesta 1972 (in Finnish) (1st ed.). Helsinki: Tammi. ISBN978-951-1-21053-5.
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