With Somnia, Swimming Bell—the project of Katie Schottland—drifts into our orbit, trailing moonlight from a parallel sea. Produced by Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Kurt Vile, Cat Power), the five-song EP gently pulls you under the shifting tide. The release date is May 16th, but honestly, time has no business here.
Recorded in Los Angeles but beamed in from somewhere liminal, Somnia isn’t quite awake or asleep. It’s the sound of falling upwards. In a world twitching with madness, Schottland intended this EP as a soothing balm for the soul, a collection of weightless alternative folk tracks gliding gracefully underwater.
The opener, “Meet My Shadow,” is a lullaby wrapped in self-mythology and doubt. “I don’t want to meet my hero / Because I can never be a hero,” Katie sings, as clouds of pedal steel and percussion float around her. It’s folk music for dreamers who’ve seen too much news and may need a digital detox.
“95 at Night” sways like a roadside mirage, warm air rising off asphalt and the hum of far-off surf as Tyler English’s pedal steel glimmers like stardust. “I’m Always Down” shuffles in, breezy on the surface, yet whispering tales of emotional ghosting: “She’s always down / She’s always around / But she can’t be found.”
The real plunge arrives with “Found it at the Bottom of the Ocean”, where Katie’s voice becomes submerged, siren-like, as if she’s singing from inside a conch shell carved by memory. And then there’s “Mushrooms in July”, the closer, a lo-fi spell of humid ache and summer hallucinations. It flickers, pulses, and disappears before you’re ready to let go.
Somnia is retro-folk filtered through a dreamcatcher, with Schottland’s voice anchoring the fog. It’s an invitation to float, to feel, to dissolve. A short, shimmering EP for the soft-hearted that will soon be released by none other than Perpetual Doom.
Pre-order Somnia by Swimming Bell on Bandcamp here.
Swimming Bell: Official Website | Bandcamp | Instagram
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