Kaleidoscopic Visions Tom Skinner

• 1 There's Nothing To Be Scared Of 02:47
• 2 Auster 03:49
• 3 Margaret Anne 04:54
• 4 Kaleidoscopic Visions 03:47
• 5 MHA 04:26
• 6 Still (Quiet) 01:28
• 7 The Maxim 09:57
• 8 Extensions 12 04:30
• 9 Logue 05:16
• 10 See How They Run 04:17
• Total Runtime 45:11

Info zu Kaleidoscopic Visions

Popular sociology cliches notwithstanding, the middle years are a curious bridge to survey one’s life from. Especially for artists. The bank behind is a backlog of experience, for-better-or-worse perceptions of how the world works, unequal measures of laurels and regrets, plus a rolodex of dear ones (for the lucky) and lost ones (for all). The shore in front contains a shorter winding road (still loaded with possibilities if not quite as open-ended), informed by wisdom gained and failures seared, shadowed by mortality, responsibility and inevitability. Lots of water passes under this bridge of mid-life. For creative types—adept at listening to the tides, recognizing their flow as a circadian rhythm, reconciling the planet’s clock with their own—the view from this bridge has been known to inspire great art.

Upon the release of Kaleidoscopic Visions, the second album that Tom Skinner has made under his own name, the drummer-composer will be 45 years-old. Skinner is already in possession of an incredible career—two decades as a key member of London’s jazz community, including co-founding the mighty Sons of Kemet; in-demand collaborator to a who’s-who of famed electronic producers and noted rhythmalists; purveyor of his own left-of-center musical pursuits (see: Hello Skinny); and, most recently, a budding experimental-rock star (see: The Smile). Off-the-clock, Skinner is a life-long Londoner, husband and father, keeper of poly-generational sonic memories, a soulful creature attuned to old and new relationships.

The Kaleidoscopic Visions that form Skinner’s view from the bridge between his past and future take all these roles and details into account. Where on his bandleader debut, 2022’s star-studded quintet piece Voices of Bishara, Skinner used Abdul Wadud's 1978 solo cello masterpiece By Myself as inspiration for an album of post-session edits; Kaleidoscopic Visions leans into “more personal,” fully composed pieces, interpreted by his band’s improvised choices, a timeline of life reconciled in his creative subconscious.

Like classic albums of yore, Kaleidoscopic Visions is composed of distinct but overlapping sonic strategies to narrate Skinner’s journey. On the entirely instrumental Side A, he orchestrates a gorgeous song-cycle, artfully illuminated by the live Bishara band—bassist Tom Herbert, cellist Kareem Dayes, plus Robert Stillman and Chelsea Carmichael on various woodwinds and reeds—plus the occasional electric guitar of Portishead’s Adrian Utley. Skinner says the floating often-backbeat-free music was composed by following his “instinct and intuition,” written mostly on guitar, an instrument that is secondary to him (“When I play it, I don’t really know what I’m doing”), but one he finds to be a “productive compositional tool.”

A meditative atmosphere encircles the dodecaphonic precision of his writing, refreshed by Stillman and Carmichael’s interwoven airy harmonies. Dayes’ cello and Herbert’s bass underpin the melodic figures, harkening somewhat to the “naturally flowing composites” sound of Bishara. Yet the music’s emotional intentions seem a world away from its predecessor, a product of listening less to outside inspiration, than to one’s internal insights. “Auster” is dedicated to the late novelist Paul Auster, whose words on life’s chance-based developments inform the album’s interpretive process (how, for instance, Stillman’s soprano saxophone illuminates a line Skinner wrote on the guitar). More poignant is “Margaret Anne,” a rhythmically taut piece honoring Skinner’s mother (very much alive), the former concert-piano prodigy Anne Shasby. She abandoned a promising career for her family, largely due to the misogyny of the classical music establishment’s glass ceiling. Yet according to Skinner, Anne also imparted upon him “the gift of music,” and claims her sensibilities, especially her ear for piano music, pervade his compositions. Lived experiences that shade this kaleidoscope’s palette.

The vocal features occupying Side B double-down on the album’s consideration of time, both literally and circumstantially. Most of all, “The Maxim,” Skinner’s collaboration with Meshell Ndegeocello. A dubby, spacious, nearly ten-minute incantation on human existence, addressing birth and death in one breath (“we are here, soon to return home”), the song frames blues-spiritual stanzas in an astral light, bringing the Grammy Award-winning singer-bassist’s (recently unstoppable) historical gaze to the album’s storyline. It also raises a full-circle moment for Skinner, whose album plays host to an artist he travelled to see at Glastonbury as a teenager in 1994, whom he’s now befriended and been playing with over the past year. (Imagine that feeling!) “I was asking quite a lot of her,” says Skinner of the long-distance back-and-forth that animated “The Maxim,” “and I feel what she’s done to that song is quite astounding.”

“Logue” is an abstract pastoral on which young South Carolina-based singer Contour (Khari Lucas) applies his heavenly tenor to a lush harmonic bed of winds, keys and strings, while Utley adds stunning distorted guitar work. The song feels like an ambient soul koan. Then comes the album’s denouement. Though younger than Skinner, keyboardist-vocalist-wordsmith Jonathan “Yaffra” Geyevu is also member of the London working-musicians community; and his perspective on the grind and often-self-inflicted dark side of living in the metropolis fuels the closing “See How They Run.” Delivered over a spare, minimalist track that Yaffra and Skinner constructed in the studio, the words sound like a resignation, “the time starts spinning back / this could be forever / could you check?”

It’s the kind of conscious wisecrack you might mutter quietly to dispel the self-reflection, walking off the bridge towards whatever happens next. A recognition of the moment’s resonance. Almost accidentally (but not really), Tom Skinner’s Kaleidoscopic Visions chronicles the importance of considering the view from the middle of one’s own life, taking stock alongside memories and family, heroes and friends new and old. Its beauty is not extreme but expert, outside of crisis but informed by it, a document of what the feelings, here and now, sound like.

Tom Skinner, drums, percussion, vibraphone, electric guitar, 6 and 12 string acoustic guitars, synths, piano, drum machine, FX and processing
Tom Herbert, electric bass, acoustic bass
Robert Stillman, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone
Chelsea Carmichael, tenor saxophone, flute
Kareem Dayes, cello
Adrian Utley, electric guitar
Additional musicians:
Meshell Ndegeocello, vocals, clavinet, Wurlitzer, bass-synthesizer
Contour, vocals
Yaffra, vocals, synthesizer, piano

Recorded by Dilip Harris and Antonio Feola at Fish Factory studios
Additional recording and overdubs at St Luke’s West Holloway
Mixed by Dilip Harris at Mancrush Studios
Mastered by Guy Davie at Electric Mastering
Produced by Tom Skinner

Tom Skinner
London based drummer, composer and producer Tom Skinner has been a vital and central figure in the burgeoning underground music scene in London throughout the last 20 years. From his early days in Tomorrows Warriors, forming the band Jade Fox with school friends Tom Herbert and Dave Okumu, through to touring and recording with Zero 7, Matthew Herbert, Floating Points, Eska and Mulatu Astatke, Tom is constantly evolving across a broad spectrum of music, ever pushing his musical limits in different directions, always on the hunt for new sounds inspired by the music, people and places he’s found along the way.

In 2012, Tom released his debut self-titled solo record under the alias Hello Skinny to critical acclaim, MOJO Magazine describing it as “…existing in that fertile zone where jazz, dub, techno and avant-pop deliquesce into an exhilarating free-for-all.” The second Hello Skinny album Watermelon Sun, released on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood label in 2017, featured a collaboration with acclaimed veteran New York composer and trombonist Peter Zummo.

Tom is an original member of award winning band Sons Of Kemet alongside band-leader and frequent collaborator Shabaka Hutchings. Their third album Your Queen Is A Reptile [Impulse! 2018] garnered worldwide critical acclaim including a Mercury Prize 2018 nomination. Their latest album Black To The Future [Impulse! 2021] has been met with rave reviews, NME giving it 5 stars, claiming the album to be the band at their “most dynamic and urgent”.

Tom works regularly with legendary grime MC Kano, featuring on his 2016 Mercury Prize nominated album Made In The Manor and forming an integral part of Kano’s live band. He is also a third of London jazz trio Wildflower, alongside bassist Leon Brichard and saxophonist Idris Rahman as well as a founding member of the Owiny Sigoma Band, an inter-continental collaboration between musicians from London and Kenya’s Luo tribe.

In addition to his illustrious career in creating and performing music, Tom has curated his own bi-monthly live music night at The Pickle Factory in East London and hosts a monthly radio show on Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide FM.

Tom has performed and recorded with many notable musicians such as Jonny Greenwood, Graham Coxon, Grace Jones, Jarvis Cocker, Joy Crookes, Melt Yourself Down, Matthew Herbert, Zero 7, Floating Points, Beth Orton, Eska, Mulatu Astatke, The Invisible, John Surman, Batida, Alexander Hawkins, Byron Wallen, Steve Beresford, Toshio Matsuura and many more.

Dieses Album enthält kein Booklet