When Will We Land?

Barry Can’t Swim’s debut album arrived with the confidence of an artist who already understood that dance music can be as intimate as it is communal. When Will We Land? moves between house, electronic music and jazz-inflected textures without treating any of them as a stylistic costume. Joshua Mainnie, the Edinburgh musician behind the name, has described himself as more of a musician than a producer, and that distinction is useful here: the album feels composed and played as much as programmed, with melody carrying as much weight as rhythm.

Released on 20 October 2023 through Ninja Tune, the record quickly became more than an underground club success. It entered the UK Albums Chart at number 12, won BBC Radio 1’s Dance Award for Best Album in February 2024 and was shortlisted for the 2024 Mercury Prize.

Critics repeatedly picked it for their year-end lists, but the appeal is easy to hear without any awards context. Mainnie is particularly good at allowing tracks to breathe, building emotional momentum from piano figures, vocal fragments and warm rhythmic detail rather than relying on blunt drops.

That musicality is rooted in a background broader than the DJ booth. Mainnie began learning piano as a child and later studied music, and When Will We Land? often behaves like the work of someone interested in arrangement as much as impact. Its eleven tracks are concise, yet the album has a genuine arc: moments of uplift sit beside more reflective passages, and the production repeatedly finds ways to make electronic repetition feel human rather than mechanical.

What keeps the record rewarding away from a dancefloor is its balance. It can be euphoric without becoming sugary, detailed without sounding overworked and accessible without sanding away its personality. There is enough rhythmic pull to make the album immediate, but its real strength is the tenderness underneath. When Will We Land? is a debut built for movement, certainly, but also for the quieter feeling that often follows it.