I’ve mentioned it a few times on this site that I have a love/hate relationship with the sheer volume of music on the internet. It’s wonderful that every day I’m discovering something new, yet it sucks that every day thousands of artists go undiscovered. Well, undiscovered by me. Usually by the time I do find someone dope, they’ve racked up thousands of plays and have a deep catalogue for me to discover. Skinniez is one of these artists. I’ve just been put on to him and I’m just like “Why did nobody tell me about this sooner?”
While I’m yet to dig into his whole catalogue, with the release of ‘[TAPE #1] カセット’ this Joburg based Capetonian has my attention. It’s a tape he put together that uses old Japanese radio station recordings with a gorgeous arrangement of samples, beats, and vocal features, that Skinniez describes as having a “classic boom bap rhythm, with a bit of lo-fi waves.” It’s an absolute treat to listen to. While the boom-bap and lo-fi vibes are most certainly there, there’s also an undercurrent of jazz guiding the project. Skinniez isn’t shy to chop shit up and layer it all together with a divergent groove that’ll have ya head boppin’ real nice. I also found myself reminded of days gone by as it’s got a bit of a nostalgic feel to it (as many lo-fi boom-bap projects do).
Now that I know about Skinniez, I’m going to be taking a deeper listen to his catalogue. I’ve seen that he put out a double EP called ‘Inhale/Exhale’ last year which you can find on the major streaming platforms, and his bandcamp and soundcloud pages are both troves of his music. While he may be new on my radar, and maybe even yours, there’s no doubt the dude has been putting in work for years, so it makes sense that ‘[TAPE #1] カセット’ is so damn well put together. Give it a listen below, and if you dig it, there’s plenty more where that came from.
