Skee Mask -- Pool: Review

Skee Mask -- Pool

[ILIAN TAPE]

Skee Mask’s announcement for his second album Pool was about as quiet as you could make it in the social media era. With one short tweet in lowercase, he announced “hey my new LP is out today” like some kind nonchalant humble brag. And to make it even more spicy, he said it was 3lp’s--meaning two hours long--and it wouldn’t be available on any streaming services. No uppercase. No streaming release. And 1 heart emoji at the end.

Why do this? Why release an album like this? Honestly, I’m not sure. It’s cool nonchalant-ness and intentional flaccid lowercase text might be intentional in marketing the album. Maybe he thinks he’s bein’ cool and indie by keeping it lowkey so it feels more exclusive to his intimate fanbase (which includes me :]). Or maybe it’s the complete opposite of that…

Skee Mask’s debut on ILIAN TAPE Compro released in 2018 to a surprising amount of fanfare from the mainstream press. For an indie release from a small Berlin DJ under a new alias, you’d expect it’s vagueness would hide it from the press, but the mystery behind the record elevated its unique sound and catapulted it into the indie spotlight. With a glowing review from Resident Advisor, and a “Best New Music” designation from Pitchfork, the record got into the hands of many more people than were expected from an artist with as low a profile of Skee Mask.

So maybe Pool’s quiet announcement via lowercase tweet and Bandcamp exclusive release was a reaction to the high pressure attention gotten from Compro and Skee Mask preferred his next album to relax in a cool dark corner of Berlin IDM like he’d want it to be. But honestly I couldn’t know or care either way.

Pool’s minimal album cover, like the cover to its predecessor, says a lot about the album. It’s simple. No text. No people. No faces. Just a patch of grass in a field. Filling the corners from a bird's eye view it feels like an ocean of greenery. And like the contents of the album, it’s textured, it’s all-encompassing, and it’s simply beautiful.

Often many songs on Pool feel like interweaving collages of electronic fundamentals, blistering drum ‘n’ bass samples, blockhead synth leads, or rich ambient ambient synths coming together in a unique style that only Skee Mask could pull off. For example, take “Collapse Casual” which throttles the listener through the morphing synth journey over audacious drum samples that commands your attention. Or take “CZ3000 Dub” which feels like a late night stroll into some neon-infested cyberpunk nightclub complete with tubular chimes, muffled percussion, and a persistent bass drum pulse to guide it along.

But Pool instills encompassing beats through less flashy means too, sometimes opting to put nuanced ambience in the foreground. “Rio Dub” is this winding interlude that messes with distant sound effects rippling over a lowkey ambient loop to give this feeling of staring out the high window of a skyscraper during a foggy storm and watching cars drive by below. “Fourth” closes out the album by focusing on this brilliant vocal sample that plays over and over but constantly changes shape with the effects playing around it.

Skee Mask’s insistence on depending on simple loops allows him to do his signature sound effects and tape fuckery to keep even the most repetitive of samples sound new on every repeat. Songs like “LFO” and “Harrison Ford” play over these brilliant little melodies, constantly reshaping and repeating them in different forms to make the tracks feel like living, breathing beasts as opposed to just songs.

What makes this album different from Compro is its deliberate decision to make landscapes as opposed to stories. While the linear structure of songs in Compro felt like narratives holding your hand all the way through, Pool builds snapshots of environments that don’t have distinct structures, and consequently feel a little more real. By building soundscapes that inflate and contract more unexpectedly, the moods of Pool feel more open-ended, and allow listeners to prescribe any number of stories we can imagine.

Skee Mask hits it out of the park again with Pool, providing a unique, multi-genre experience that transports the listener to interplanetary worlds with electronica landscapes that breathe with life.

Sadly, Pool is only available on BandCamp for purchase, so be sure to check it out at the link here and consider buying it. [Ben Nguyen O’Connor]

RIYL: Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher

Listen To: “Harrison Ford”, “DJ Camo Bro”, “CZ3000 Dub”

8.8/10.