What Barry might lack in basic aquatic survival skills, he makes up for in producing deeply melodic and jazz-laden electronic dance-floor fillers. The project, honed by Scottish-born Londoner Joshua Mainnie, began when Mainnie couldn’t convince former bandmates to make their output more electronic, so he started producing music on the side. While initially reluctant to show his creations to the world, in 2020 he put the first of his Barry Can’t Swim releases online, quickly gaining plaudits, before 2021’s “Blackpool Boulevard” was named one of the tunes of the year by everyone from Mixmag to Pete Tong. The More Content EP (“It’s got a double meaning,” Mainnie tells Apple Music. “I’m more content because I’m making more content”) was born out of the roller coaster of the COVID era. “I was so fed up during the lockdown last winter [2021] that it was totally my escape,” he says. “And then, when life opened up again, I was DJing more than I ever had before, so the EP’s informed by the records I was digging for clubs as much as anything else. It’s a bit heavier in places; there’s a lot of breaks, and it’s influenced by all these genres I was opening up to.” Moving from the delicate melancholia of opening track “Sonder” to the euphoric love letter to dance music that is “Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore”, the collection finds a producer pushing at the edges of their sound and hitting their stride as they do it. We caught up with Mainnie to talk us through the EP, track by track. “Sonder” “So, this track actually began with me trying to make some content for my socials as opposed to sitting down and trying to write a tune properly. I was just trying to create something quickly, on the fly, using a sample and chopping it up and playing around with it on my Launchpad. I added some old funk breaks and pianos on top of it, and then some strings from the Spitfire Audio Strings pack. People seemed to really react to it online, so I decided to finish it properly. The original sample’s a classical piece which I got remade. It’s my favourite tune on the EP.” “Can We Still Be Friends?” (with Laurence Guy) “I’ve been a fan of [UK house producer] Laurence’s music for a while, and we’d chatted on Instagram a bit previously. Then we bumped into each other in a pub in East London by chance and got chatting away and decided to get together to make something. Laurence has a studio and already had the vocal sample for this track in place and the drums. He has a piano in his studio, so I just started playing around and adding ideas for melodies over the top. Then we got a Roland TB-303 and started adding some acid basslines underneath it. The track’s quite downtempo, but it’s breaks-driven, too, and was definitely inspired by DJing and us being allowed back out again.” “God Is the Space Between Us” (feat. Taite Imogen) “This track’s less of a club track than the others on the EP. It’s got euphoric moments and emotional peaks and troughs, but overall it’s quite downtempo and more of a track for listening to at home. It all started with the stabby chords, and it’s the same synth sound I used on my track ‘Lone Raver’, which is one of my favourite tunes I ever made. And then Taite added an absolutely amazing vocal over the top. She’s super talented and the collaboration came together really organically, as I already knew her brother.” “Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore” “Walking around London, you’re constantly confronted by different types of dance music just blasting out of car stereos or someone walking past with a boom box. It made me think about the huge influence the city has had on dance music, even if all the genres didn’t necessarily start here. I wanted a chopped-up jungle break in there—those kind of swung garage hi-hats and then sections where it was just a four-to-the-floor house kick. It’s a massive nod to rave culture in general. And then the name is taken from an old rave documentary from the ’90s by the artist Mark Leckey. It’s got quite an art school vibe and it’s just loads of footage of people raving, plus all the downtime moments. The tune’s about capturing that sense of euphoria of living in the moment on the dance floor.”