Frankly, Nottingam-based Swimming made quite a hash of their last release. The Primary EP from last year was a missed oppurtunity, and contained a couple of decent songs disastrously weighed down by an amount of outright filler which was simply criminal for such a small release. This debut full-length album, The Fireflow Trade, has been on the cards since shortly after Primary was released, and I've been in two minds about it, anticipation-wise - one the one hand, redundant efforts from the EP like "Pretle Pang" made me tempted to write Swimming off, whilst the pulsing single 'Panthalassa' offered a glimmer of hope. Consequently this album becomes, subconsciously, a make-or-break event for this band in my mind. Happily, what Swimming have done is they've taken the best aspects of their sound, improved upon them, and build a soaring, organic epic of a record. Especially played out against the backdrop of their EP, this is a triumph. At first glance, The Fireflow Trade appears to be a similarly lightweight effort. Only nine tracks long and containing three songs that have appeared on previous releases (the aforementioned 'Panthalassa', single 'Tiger Shark' and another appearance for 'All in Time to the Shoreline' which was also on the EP), this album looks like something the band have swiftly bashed out. But appearances can be deceptive.The old songs here are better produced than before, and work much more effectively in this album format, especially 'Panthalassa' which serves as the epic opener here. A touch over six minutes long, it's a layered symphony of noise rock which apparently depicts the time of pangaea, when the world's land area comprised one supercontinent about 250 million years ago. Suddenly, it becomes probably the best album opener I've heard since 'Son the Father', the similarly monstrous first song from Fucked Up's second album, last year. Elsewhere there is the patiently, slowly unfolding '9 Sky Open' and the throbbing, nervy 'Crash the Current', sitting alongside the peaceful and appropriately-titled 'Ease Down the River' and arguable core of the album, the almost seven-minute 'Crescents'.Swimming have enough sense to realise that given the lengthy nature of several of this album's songs, to expand it to a more typical ten, eleven or twelve songs would turn it into a nigh-unlistenable hour-long album, and they've reined themselves in from doing that. There is a sense of flow here, a sense that these are songs that are meant to be heard together. In that sense, The Fireflow Trade sometimes looks and sounds like a work of Led Zeppelin-esque album oriented rock - yes, that dirty phrase! Repeated listens show that this album is anything but lightweight. These songs are densely constructed and often fairly complex, and yet they frequently crackle with energy. This is not an unchallenging listen but it eventually becomes an enthralling one. It's not the kind of record you'll listen to on repeat but is one you can immerse yourself into in a darkened room, grasping every tactile note, every submerged throb of bass. Played loud enough, this is one of those albums you can really feel - it has its own pulse, a wonderful sense of gradual building of tension and cathartic release. There are unearthly sounds here, notes dragged out to sound like trucks plummeting down bottomless caverns in slow motion, elongated yaaaaawns of space and weight.A gripping 42 minutes of your life, The Fireflow Trade often sounds as if it's being broadcast from another planet. This debut is essential listening for anyone interested in ambitious, skyscraping rock, and for many others besides. 90%Swimming on MySpace