Skee Mask – B
The past two years have seen German producer Bryan Müller, AKA Skee Mask, establish himself as a contemporary visionary in electronic music. His sound, which spans from vaporous manifestations of techno to minimal deconstructions of bass and breaks, gathers influences from leaders in club music over the past two decades and funnels them through Müller’s own point of view, largely mitigating their future direction. Last year’s A was a rare glimpse behind the workings of Müller genius, a collection of unreleased tracks composed between 2015 and 2019. That proceeds from the sales of the self-released A should go to various humanitarian organisations further reveals more of the man behind the Mask; an artist committed not only to the development and evolution of his craft, but so to the world he inhabits. His latest album, B, serves as a sequel to A, this time mining the Skee Mask archive from 2017 to 2020. Like A, these tracks are in various stages of completion and completely unmastered, offering further insight into Skee Mask’s process. This fact alone proves Müller as a god-tier producer, skilled beyond comprehension and perhaps, a bit of a perfectionist. It’s why the collection of strangely code named tracks that make up B hold together impressively well, regardless of whether they’re in pupal or imago stages.
In fact, Müller’s idea of “incomplete” is remarkably complex. His drafts are what others might consider a later stage of development. Even the most incongruous tracks, like the pulsating mWidit (Edit), follow an organic logic that makes them fascinating listens. mWidit (Edit) in particular evolves from its humid baile breaks into throbbing and acerbic eurodance in a way that feels startlingly logical. MFB606Delay feels reminiscent of Nikki Nair’s footwork products, spiralling and textured, but somehow for Skee Mask the most straightforward of the lot on B next to the bass and breaks of Portal Perc. On AD Dub, he sort of does jungle, but warps it from ambience, all the while retaining a backbone of space bound, vacuum suctioned psychedelia beneath the breakbeats. You could call JPP263 drum and bass, but in a syphon perhaps. Its percussion is cold and steely, the whole thing pressurised and metallic in flavour and texture. Tucked between these propulsive experiments are a handful of soft-focus ambient tunes that stand in contrast to its club focussed predecessors. There’s the amoebic Jambient, which radiates and undulates like warm ripples of euphoria during a post-high afterglow, or the dark cosmology of JD 327 which plays like Hans Zimmer’s synthesiser notes from the Interstellar score. It’s two sides of Skee Mask we are all too familiar with, more often than not blended together in his finished masterpieces in the vein of Pool or Compro, but here laid bare for us to peek at the parts that make up the whole.
It’s easy to feel like Müller and his work are unapproachable. The Skee Mask persona and Müller himself for that matter, carries itself with an elusive and knowing sensibility. But seeing the layers of this persona in raw format, as B allows us to, reveals the truth here. He’s painstakingly earnest, more awkward than aloof, sulking with a quiet genius that’s expressed best not in words or pandering to the public, but in what matters most for Müller: the music.
Listen to mWidit (Edit) from B below.
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