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Swim Ignorant Fire is the ongoing exploration of composer, audio engineer, and sound artist Stephen Holliger, who has been shaping the Midwest experimental ambient landscape since 2005. Over two decades of recording, touring, and collaboration have honed a practice that blurs the line between modern composition and sound sculpture.

Holliger works like a collage artist of the invisible—gathering fragments of reality and memory through found sounds, field recordings, guitar looping, FM and modular synthesis, and intricate sample manipulation. His pieces move slowly, like shifting weather systems: melodies surface briefly, dissolve into texture, and return as echoes in the periphery.

The result is music that inhabits both vast and intimate spaces—cinematic in scope yet personal in tone—inviting listeners into environments where time feels suspended.

Outside of Swim Ignorant Fire, Holliger collaborates with Yea Big and Nate Hahn (pedal steel, Ohtis), with Eddie Breitweiser (pt.fwd) as Slow Dog, and as co-founder of No Below Editions, a small Midwest label devoted to experimental music and limited, carefully curated physical releases.

production, arrangement, audio engineer, and mix:

bass performance

production, arrangement, audio eng, mix, and master:

synthesizer / piano performance

production, arrangement, audio eng, mix, and master:

guitar performance

production, arrangement, audio engineer, and mix:

guitar performance

Swim Ignorant Fire Live @ The Space in Urbana IL (2023)
Swim Ignorant Fire ft. Yea Big - A Swift Uplifting Rush (2024)
Swim Ignorant Fire - Glow (2023)
Swim Ignorant Fire - Belly of the Whale
Swim Ignorant Fire - Gone (2021)
Swim Ignorant Fire - Initiation (2022)
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