"Lagoon" by Havana Swim Club Is Joyful and Rich with Details

Havana Swim Club is a project by film and TV composer Dan Koch. While on quarantine, he started crate-digging and experimenting with vintage samples of ska, disco, funk and jazz. His debut single "Lagoon" is warm, sunny and rich with little details he found in the process and brought together. The track instantly brings to mind 2000s lounge music, but, as we learned from Dan, the similarity is pure coincidence.

— Your song is rich with details and layers. How many tracks in your DAW did it take you to build this?

— The main big band sample does a lot of the heavy lifting, but even with that, I ended up with 22 additional tracks.

— You mention modern dream pop and chillwave projects as an influence, but for someone who grew up as a music fan in the 2000s it's hard not to hear the elements of 2000s lounge music in your track, particularly De Phazz. Was this an influence? And if so, why don't you mention it as such?

— I'm actually not familiar with De Phazz or that scene. I spent most of the 2000s touring in an emo-pop band called Sherwood. We were such a 2000s band that we were actually on MySpace Records!

So I came to more electronic and more sample-based music a bit later, more like 2012 or so.

— Cool! Are we going to hear any emo influences in your new music?

— Ha! I don't know that anyone would put that together, but possibly some of the melodies and chord progressions on a few album tracks share somewhat of an aesthetic with emo.

— Thank you for the interview!