As to be expected from a “drummer extraordinaire” whose polyglot resume of session work and projects includes sitting-in with the likes of Sons Of Kemet, Mulatu Astake and Matthew Herbert (to name only a few), Tom Skinner’s debut is built around a global-reached set of rhythms.
Choosing the Residents’ broody Burroughs-esque wallowed ‘Hello Skinny’ song title for a moniker, Skinner as consummate bandleader, composer and producer goes on a placable empirical wander and mooch. His burgeoning album runs through a full gamut of genres and incipient moods, inspired by a rich coterie of composers.
Strange juxtapositions are enacted on every track: the diving-bell submersion into the oceans depths ‘Aquarius’ imagines Four Tet scoring a Jacques Cousteau documentary aboard Das Boot, and the cosmological angelic voyage across an alien panorama, ‘Venus’, sounds like a lost Mike Oldfield sigh into the ether. The Residents maudlin song, which lends its name to both the LP and Skinner’s veiled alter ego, is also cast into the mix. That vague Westside Story/Gershwin steamed jazzy backing is amped-up on this appropriated cover. Skinner adds some esoteric dub and squalling saxophone to a darkly narrated and phasered vocal.
Twanged folksy acoustic gestures; sonorous low bass tones; cooing clarinet; and willowing cellos all caress, or wash upon the reticent drum led ambient cinemascapes. With strained and attentative throughout the exiguous relationship between instruments and sound are subtle, unfurling a due process of deep thought and consideration.
With few surprises and scant room for bombastic statements, Hello Skinny deliberates over its choice of references, smoothly encompassing elements of psych, electronica, Ornette Coleman-esque sax (played with angular abstract skill by Shabaka Hutchings), trance and fusion-dub.
Already attracting a litany of recommendations and critical acclaim by the music press, Skinner won’t be crying on his pillow tonight if I decline from heaping more praise on his nine-track oeuvre. But despite the quality and execution, Hello Skinny is at times pedestrian and underwhelming, though because of its short length (35-minutes), each track is quickly replaced by the next. In a way Hello Skinny is more of a musical sketch than completed story.
Released 12th November 2012
[Rating:3.5]
