Artists talking craft, scenes, and instinct.
Casual Swim sits artists down for direct, curious conversations about how music and visual work actually get made. The tone is informal but serious about process, moving from samples and hardware synths to legacy, categories, and the strange pressure of being remembered.
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Casual Swim is a music interview show with a London center of gravity and a wide ear for creative culture. Its conversations are casual in surface rhythm, but the questions often reach for the core of an artist's working life. Guests are asked how they make, what they care about, and how much context matters once a record leaves the studio. The result is talk that feels close to the workshop rather than the press cycle. Norman Cook describes sample fragments, repeated phrases, and dance music made for bodies before theory. Andres talks about Detroit, gentrification, tempo, and the pleasure of mixing records that should not obviously belong together. Alan Fitzpatrick brings the discussion into hardware, touch, filters, keys, and the difference between clicking on a screen and shaping a sound by hand. Lee Scratch Perry answers from a more elliptical place, treating public response as part of the music's own meaning. Four Tet and Anna Liber Lewis speak about collaboration through family closeness, friendship, gallery space, and the uncertain line between music and visual art. Tim Sweeney's episode turns toward radio culture, London listeners, and the odd intimacy of a hotline voice becoming part of a show's mythology. Roots Manuva gives the show one of its clearest debates, looking at hip-hop, grime, ragga, storytelling, and the labels that scenes accept or reject. Casual Swim is not polished into tidy lessons. It is better at catching artists mid-thought. A guest may answer with philosophy, technical detail, nostalgia, impatience, or a joke. The interviewer often asks large, slightly risky questions and lets the room react. That gives the show a human texture: curious, sometimes blunt, often funny, and rarely overproduced. It suits listeners who care about music, DJ culture, radio, art spaces, and the decisions behind records. It also suits people interested in how scenes mutate as cities change around them. Casual Swim's best moments come when creative people stop explaining their image and start describing their instincts. The show keeps finding that point.
Made for: Suited to listeners who care about music, DJ culture, and the creative choices behind records and exhibitions. It works especially well for people who like informal interviews with serious attention to process.
What sets it apart: Casual Swim pairs relaxed London interview energy with unusually direct questions about craft, legacy, scenes, and taste. It lets technical production details and big existential questions share the same room.
Webby and Cannes Lion award winning Casual Swim pick the brains of the creative and music worlds greatest artists and thinkers. Recorded in London, broadcast worldwide. Guests so far include Four Tet, Lee Scratch Perry, Roots Manuva, Flying Lotus, The Pharcyde, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Michelle Coltrane, daughter of Alice Coltrane, and John Coltrane, Gilles Peterson, Mac Demarco, talking Ninja Tune with Kid Koala, Blackstreet, Tim Sweeney, Jordan Rakei, Andres, Nightmares on Wax, Jacques Greene, Slum Village to name a few. IG @casualswim
A throwaway Lord Finesse intro becomes the reason you hear sampling differently.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A candid look at sampling, context, and making music that still wants to move people and make them smile.
Norman Cook treats the episode like a plainspoken defense of reuse, context, and fun. He is not precious about the music he makes, and he says so without fuss: loops, samples, found sounds, repeated phrases, all of it is there to get people moving and smiling.
A loose house-music conversation that favors feel, surprise, and DJ craft over polished talking points.
Casual Swim starts loose and ends up more thoughtful than it first sounds, moving between Detroit, London, and the ways cities keep remaking themselves under gentrification.
A candid, gear-minded conversation about early obsession, hands-on production, and legacy.
Casual Swim traces Alan Fitzpatrick from a childhood shaped by Northern Soul and radio tapes to the moment his first turntables in his early teens made music feel like a real path.
Joe Wong interviews drummers and musicians about craft, history, and the working musician's life.
Records, careers and arguments, weighed by people who listen closely.
Norman Cook says his music is for dancing, not self-expression, and he is only guarded when advertising or politics clash with his views.
Theo Parrish’s line "I don’t listen to genre, I listen to tempo" frames a discussion of genre-blending and "curveballs."
Casual Swim speaks with Alan Fitzpatrick about "Machine Therapy," his first album in 10 years, and the path from Northern Soul to techno.
An interview with a musician discussing their new album and the relationship between artist and audience.
Casual Swim's "Slum Village" episode combines live performance with discussion of Detroit club culture, hip-hop diversity, and the group's legacy.
Jacques Greene links Dawn Chorus to five or six months of focused studio work after deliberately avoiding a sophomore slump.
Tim Swinney discusses his annual London gigs and a memorable fan stalker experience on the Casual Swim podcast.
Rodney P discusses the state of hip-hop, genre divisions, and the decline of storytelling in mainstream hip-hop.