Album Review: Jim Swim — ‘Unruly Automatons’ EP

I thought I knew what I was getting into when I started up “Creature,” the first track on Jim’s Swim’s Unruly Automatons. Keyboard chords stutter as if a DJ is warming up a crab scratch. A drum loop kicks in that would feel at home in a Metal Fingers Special Herbs volume. A lyrical showcase of multi-syllabic rhymes ensues.

At first, the EP firmly took me back to that transitory period of indie rap in the early 2000s.

Let the algorithm throttle me / I’m out of step / They push perfect reproductions / And I’m not impressed / Serve my purpose use datasets / They can’t collect / My code is quick and embodied / They ain’t caught up yet

It’s a rhyme scheme that would feel at home on an early Aesop Rock or El-P album, or one of Del The Funky Homosapien’s notebooks, or to be even more specific, in Deltron 3030, the classic project that Del took on with Dan “The Automator” Nakamura.

The cyber themes also draw comparison to 3030, with album art that features an illustration of Jim Swim affixed with cybernetic coils, metal plates and a pixelated photo of Swim’s eye behind a cyberpunk viewfinder. But if Deltron 3030 saw the future through the lens of anime DVDs and Rockman X playthroughs then perhaps, in contrast, Unruly Automatons is more aware of the potential malaise of our technological symbiosis.

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“Now that the project is finished, I realize most of these songs are about not feeling at home,” Swim said via email. It’s about feeling “like an animal in a cyborg’s world; feeling like an automaton in a capitalist system; feeling old on a young scene; feeling restless in the ‘right’ relationship. They are songs about feeling a little absurd, and all too human.”

But here is the one-two that set this EP apart from its influences in my mind. The first is when Swim starts to sing — the chorus for the second track “For Whose Entertainment?” is a perfect example of the melodic earworm hooks that grace each song on this project. How many times have we listened to an underground rapper that prides themself on their aversion to melody? On the contrary, each time Swim sings it’s a showcase of their songwriting and melodic chops.

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The second element is how varied and textured the instrumentation proves to be across the five tracks. All the more impressive, as Swim wrote, produced, recorded, mixed and mastered the songs himself. (Friend Tyler Stück is co-credited on the tracks, having laid down the initial drum tracks.) Check that seamless musical transition from “Randonaut” to the final track, “A Thousand Ways,” and tell me that isn’t the product of a musician with a deft touch.

By the project’s conclusion I had transcended my initial rap comparisons with a gestalt of musical genres and influences. “It’s a blend of bedroom pop, soul, alternative hip-hop, lounge and indie rock,” as Swim describes it. “It’s the closest I’ve got to combining all of the sounds I love.”

Ultimately, it’s this piece that has me most excited for the future of Jim Swim. The musical prowess on display — the willingness to weave in and out of genres — creates a warmth and humanity that stands on its own amidst the bleakness of a cyborg’s world.

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This article was originally published in Little Village’s September 2024 issue.