A wintry collage from one of 2024's breakout stars.

As far as crossover electronic success goes, Barry Can't Swim's 2024 scorecard would take some beating. His singles have racked up hundreds of millions of streams, he bagged a Mercury Prize nomination and has the range to both pack out festivals as a DJ and sell out tours worldwide with a string-accented live show. 

Barely 12 months on from the release of debut album "When Will We Land?", it's fair to say Josh Mannie is one of the most in-demand artists working in dance and electronic music right now, with a follow-up LP nearly done, he says.

For RA.968, he pulls in the complete opposite direction from any of that. Sure, there are nods to Mark Leckey and late-night jazz haunts throughout his catalogue, and the ruminative clouds drifting across his signature golden-hour glow do suggest an artist with a sharp grasp on meteorological melancholy. But a beatless collage featuring Suso Sáiz, Slow Attack Ensemble and Lorenzo Senni? It's a surprise, and a welcome one at that.

Speckled with exclusive airings of brand-new ambient material, Barry Can't Swim's RA Podcast charts a path from This Mortal Coil to Ryuichi Sakamoto, with a detour through some Linkwood and Anthony Naples deep cuts we've not heard for a good while. (He even includes a Stars of the Lid favourite which namechecks Fulham's home ground, an act of mid-table grace for the diehard Everton fan).

RA.968 has the crackle of a frosty night walk set to tape—a holiday gift from one of the most popular acts in the game. 'Tis the season.

@barrycantswim

Read more at ra.co/podcast/968

RA.968 Barry Can't Swim

s o n d e r - the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk. -John Koenig

                          🕯ɖ ῳ Ꭵ ɠ 🕯 
                                ♋︎ ♎︎ ♈︎ 

  from amiskwacîwâskahikan // ᐊᒥᐢᑲᐧᒋᐋᐧᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ
           treaty no. 6 territory // turtle island

                          ❤️‍🔥 ~ 💀 ~ ❤️‍🔥
                          ᴋ ɪ ɴ ᴅ • ᴄ ᴏ ʀ ᴇ
  𝕨𝕖 𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕘𝕣𝕠𝕨 𝕚𝕟 𝕕𝕚𝕗𝕗𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕡𝕝𝕒𝕔𝕖𝕤 𝕒𝕥 𝕕𝕚𝕗𝕗𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕡𝕒𝕔𝕖𝕤
             𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚎𝚗𝚎𝚛𝚐𝚢 𝚛𝚎𝚏𝚕𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚜 𝚒𝚝𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚏.

          ( ( { ａ ｆ ｆ ｉ ｎ ｉ ｔ ｙ } ) )

RA.968 Barry Can't Swim

Resident Advisor