Sebastian Palomar “Alpine Retreat”

06 Sep 2013 — Nestor Burma

After choosing the world of city banking over a promising swimming career, Italian producer Sebastian Palomar has achieved creative redemption in the form of a motivational booklet with accompanying songs, entitled The Physical and Emotional Benefits of Swimming. While Seb's often baffling rhetoric is clearly the sound of a man who's gobbled up too much self-help literature (or chlorine), his music is welcoming and gorgeously narcotic. Over-treated synths and garbled instructions tow the listener through refractions of Debussy and Popol Vuh, evoking impressions of turquoise against marble or the cacophony of the bath. This is the noise of the swimmer's headspace - or, as Palomar would put it, the "weird kaleidoscopes of atomised thoughts" that come to mind when immersed. On "Alpine Retreat" we hear Seb at his luxurious and muscular best, reclining in a jacuzzi that could be powered by the man's pomposity alone. Sebastian Palomar's album is out now on Dramatic Records, and you can see him play live this Saturday at Hackney's Power Lunches.