Skee Mask: Resort (Ilian Tape)
Mr Mask, as I like to call him, has done pretty well out of my annual albums lists. His highly-praised 2018 Compro was my fifth favourite album of that year, while he fared even better under his previous guise as SCNTST when Self-Therapy came third in 2013.
His fourth Skee Mask album for Ilian Tape feels like a submarine dive into the deepest bits of his brain. Amid slow globules of ambient gloop, electronic crackles form a kind of cartilage that I would describe further if I knew anything about anatomy.
He is no rush to lay out his vision. It's ten minutes until we get a substantial beat, on Reminiscrmx. Even then, it's a rolling break that's so ungrounded, it wafts in and out of consciousness. On Waldmeister, he ramps up the BPMs yet sounds quieter than ever as the bass drum barely registers.
The sound design is mixing knob-perfect, every layer precisely configured in 92 different dimensions, but its the shimmer and the wooze that will stay with us the most. Event with more straighforward electro like the gently giddy Daytime Gamer, it's all about the ooze. The ooze and the wooze.
At its fastest? Imagine Autechre doing Balaeric house classics. At its slowest? Imagine Boards of Canada's synthesisers melting like Salvador Dali's clocks. And in the middle? Er... um... somewhere in the middle of that, I suppose.
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