Hello Skinny, aka London-based drummer and composer Tom Skinner, releases his self-titled debut album today via Slowfoot Records. It’s Skinner’s first solo studio LP – following on from a mixtape released for free earlier this year entitled Smash & Grab – but he’s a prolific collaborator, having worked as a drummer with the likes of Mulatu Astatke, Matthew Herbert and The Owiny Sigoma Band, among others.
Hello Skinny finds him taking a collage-ish approach to composition, drawing elements of jazz, electronica and dub into a deep and psychedelic brew. As well as his own work, Hello Skinny also features a number of guest musicians, including London-based clarinetist and member of Zed-U Shabaka Hutchings and The Invisible’s Tom Herbert. We’re pleased to be able to offer you a stream of the entire album, which you can listen to below.
We interviewed Skinner back in July around the release of Smash & Grab, and he discussed the origins of the project. "My first studio set up was an old Apple Mac and an Akai S1000 sampler that my friend lent me, that was it," he said. "But I was really into the idea of sampling and at the time was listening to a lot of hip-hop. I made some good tunes but it was only when I started working on the Hello Skinny stuff a few years ago that I felt I had something that was coherent enough to release. I didn’t really have any pre-conceived idea about the shape of the music when I first started working on it, but I soon realized that I had a body of work that seemed to fit together sonically and was coming from the same place emotionally." To read the full interview, and listen to Smash & Grab, click here.
