On Saturday March 13th Index presents one its most unique artists to date, the one and only SHACKLETON. His maverick take on big basslines and complex beats doesn't fit into easy categories and that's how it's going to stay. Shackleton has carved out his own brand of eclecticism on Skull Disco releases so far with intricate, snaking percussion, hypnotic melodies, seriously deep bass lines and dubwise sensibilities. For what may well be Shackleton’s only ever appearance on Australian soil, INDEX has been fortunate enough to secure a date on the back of his first and only world tour. Miss this at your own peril!
INDEX present SHACKLETON “LIVE” ( Perlon, Skull Disco, Scape, Mordant Music, Hotflush )
Line-up
SHACKLETON “LIVE” ( Perlon, Skull Disco, Scape, Mordant Music, Hotflush )
SUB BASS SNARL
MARK PRITCHARD
CLARK NOVA
PAUL FRASER
VICTIM
Saturday March 13th , Civic Underground, Pitt and Goulburn St, City
10pm – 4am, $23 presale via residentadvisor.net or qjump.com.au or more on the door
Information on this eccentric artist is scarce and that’s just the way he likes it. No biography and no press shots (although we did manage to source one of him performing at Sonar!) so various semi bio’s and reviews of his releases will have to do…
Shackleton mix for Mary Anne Hobbs:
http://soundcloud.com/surefire/shackleton-mah-mix-september-2009
Shackleton video, live in April this year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d76FO5tHQ3I&feature=related
SHACKLETON bio (courtesy of DNA Dance Department)
In 2004, prior to the founding of the label Skull Disco, Ian Hicks of Mordant Music liked and released an early Shackleton track entitled Stalker. The track later appeared on Rough Trade's 'Best of 2004' compilation. Around this time Shackleton started thinking about forming a label to release "interesting bass music" and "interesting percussive stuff". Around the same time, Laurie 'Appleblim' Osborne was making similar bass heavy music with abstract beats. Shackleton was impressed with a track, Mystikal Warrior, and it hence appeared on the first Skull Disco release; a double A-side with Shackleton's I Am Animal. Shortly after, Shackleton began the (now defunct) Skull Disco nights in London. Attendees at the first Skull Disco night included Loefah and Mala.
Releases on the Skull Disco label are typically double A-sides featuring a track apiece from Shackleton and Appleblim, however the most recent release is a 2CD compilation, Soundboy Punishments, which includes all releases to date, as well as some early Mordant Music and Hotflush releases. Skull Disco releases often tend to use unusual sounds, atypical of the dubstep genre; they often eschew the familiar drum tropes of dubstep for African percussion and samples of ethnic vocals, combined with massive, wobbling sub-bass and sometimes elements of four to the floor, Basic Channel-esque drum patterns. Typical artwork on releases (by Zeke Clough) is also of an idiosyncratic nature, the penand-ink covers referencing egyptological symbols as well as displaying a decidedly metal influence.
Shackleton's music seems to have tapped into a wide range of genres with support for his music coming from djs as diverse as Kode 9, Ricardo Villalobos, Radio Slave and Mary Anne Hobbes while the Hardwax record shop and The Wire magazine are also very enthusiastic. Shackleton's releases have been record of the month in publications such as Mixmag and IDJ magazine on several occasions, whilst Mixmag also included Skull Disco and Shackleton in their Best Act of 2007 top ten list as well as being in the top five record labels and at number one in the remix chart. Shackleton has also been involved with remixing for Simian Mobile Disco and legendary dub techno pioneer, Pole. Shackleton's 'Soundboy's Suicide Note' mix was even made the official mix of the year on Mary Anne Hobbes' show on BBC radio.The Summer of 2007 saw Shackleton do two European tours whilst 2008 has already seen him play room one at the famous Fabric nightclub. Whilst Shackleton's music tends towards the idiosyncratic and intricate percussion in preference to the big, bass drop, his music is still geared towards the dancefloor and audiences respond in kind.
SHACKLETON review of 3EP’s on PERLON (courtesy of FACT magazine)
In Perlon, Shackleton seems to have found a home that suits him well. I must confess I haven't followed the Berlin-based label with much interest since about 2006, but it's one I will hold in eternal high regard - dogged in its no-mp3 policy, with a striking and confident visual identity, this is an imprint which over the years has brought us such game-changing records as Villalobos's The Au Harem D'Archimede and Narcotic Synthax's 'Ultravolta'. The emphasis has always been on rhythmic experimentalism, and it made perfect sense when Shackleton was invited to remix Villaloboos's 'Minimoonstar' for the Chilean's Vasco EP last year. That remix represented Shackleton's definitive break from the UK-oriented dubstep scene that had nurtured him, and its release also coincided with his relocation to Berlin. Of course, unlike your average "creative" chancer, previously London-based Shackleton didn't head to Germany to lose himself in the city's party culture; he did it to give himself more space - internal and external - to evolve and refine his art. And if Three EPs is anything to go by, the move has been a great success - though its unwaveringly bleak tone leads one to suspect that harshness of the German winter may have gotten to the Lancashireman.
As its title suggests, Three EPs was originally conceived as three separate releases, but Perlon's decision to release them together in a 12"-triple-pack means it's hard not to treat it as an album - album in the sense of long-form, "significant" artistic statement. Shackleton's sound, though more delicate and detailed than ever before, is still incredibly dark: and as we all know, the only way to properly engage with and enjoy the dark stuff is to immerse yourself in it. With nine labyrinthine tracks on offer here, it's easier to find your way in than it is to find your way out.
Opening with the cagey 'No More Negative Thoughts' - which samples what sounds like a self-help tape for combating depression - this record grips from the off. Right down to its title, 'Let Go' is an invitation to enter a forbidding dream-world: I don't know to what extent Shackleton's drums are synthesized and to what extent live recorded, but on this track he makes full use of a very real-sounding kit to craft a kind of freaky 21st century jam-music that boasts the hysterical energy of freeform improvisation and the auteurist bite of digital editing and arrangement. If Four Tet were any good, he might sound a bit like this.
"Freaky 21st century jam-music that boasts the hysterical energy of freeform improvisation and the auteurist bite of digital editing and arrangement."
'It's Time For Love' is a less demanding and ultimately more satisfying track; a nuanced update of the Skull Disco dread-step sound. As ever, the propulsive but fanatically complex drum patterns are the focus of one's attention - no one can make anxiety and dread sound so funky as Shackleton does - but there's also more emphasis than ever before on extraneous and atmospheric sounds; drones and tones straight out of a Nurse With Wound record swirl and lurch around the thickly-layered and lashing beats.
Mountains of Ashes' is a highlight, a stunningly composed and executed track that draws you into a dense, disturbing sound-world of scrapes and groans before unleashing the deadliest percussion and bass break you've ever heard - the most obvious "dancefloor" flourish of the whole release, with some intense tabla action up-top. 'Asha In The Tabernacle' also finds Shackleton going for the jugular, a murky-as-fuck tribal tattoo that calls to mind UK funky but has its origins in traditions altogether more ancient and heavy. The foggy but driving sound design brings to mind, of all things, Massive Attack's Mezzanine, but in both sheer sonic sophistication and fuck-you toughness these tunes are untold leagues ahead.
Throughout this record, it's impossible to know what's around the corner: 'There's A Slow Train Coming' is a truly twisted mood-piece, a dub-wise horror soundtrack that wouldn't have sounded out of place on Senking's classic Raster-Noton album List. The most obviously dubstep-derived track on here is the skippy 'Trembling Leaf' - rhythmically it's garage, but the kind of garage where a serial killer is lurking, waiting to cut you up. We finish with the corrosive drone-scape 'Something Has Got To Give', which actually appears to have fucked up my ears for the week.
The unrelenting, intimidating darkness of Three EPs is perhaps ultimately a weakness - after all, there only so many shades of black and grey available to even the most mercurial producer. But the fact is that tripped-out, experimental and psychedelic music just doesn't get any more powerful and inspirational than this. Three EPs combines the cutting edge of electronic music with a ritualistic intensity operating at the level of the unconscious; in this purely "shamanic" sense it's part of a lineage that includes voodoo tribes, William Burroughs, Psychic TV. It makes you feel anxious, it hurts your ears, it changes your physiology. It's a trip. If you're looking for music to DJ out or to brighten up your commute, then look elsewhere. You can't "use" this record - it uses you, it's uncompromising, and it doesn't meet you in the middle. It's a record to be loved, but also to be feared.
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