Music and Vinyl: Swim Surreal & Zero 7

Swim Surreal is the stage name of Tom Leonard, and In The Half Light is a 2024 album co-written and co-produced with Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker, aka Zero 7.

You can do no better than look at this Jazzapedia article and scroll down this link on With Guitars to find out more about the collaboration.

Here are the first three tracks, played with a Thomas Schick Das MM cartridge. Based on the Tonar Diabolic, a DJ cartridge with a whopping 8mV output (about double the normal value for moving magnet cartridges), this version strips all the plastic off the body and stylus assembly and mounts it in a solid block of a material Schick uses for turntable plinths. Far from being a DJ-only cartridge, Das MM now produces great results on all kinds of music - not with the attention to fine detail that a good moving coil cartridge would produce, but giving an enjoyable and very dynamic sound nevertheless. I've a few classical orchestral posts lined up for the future with it.