“Even if I could have an elegant sound, I would reverse engineer it because it would sound false to me”: the Englishman Mike Skinner, alias The Streets, craftsman of a cleverly sabotaged electro hip-hop that appeared 20 years ago, is back.
Revealed in 2002 by Original pirate material – rap cobbled together with the scent of lukewarm beers and failed evenings at the back of seedy pubs – the musician had not released an album since his fifth opus, Computer and Blues, in 2011.
Met by AFP during a visit to Paris, the forty-year-old says he is “regenerated” with the release on Friday of The Darker The Shadow, The Brighter The Light, a record which is also the soundtrack to a film of the same name. A feature film that he made himself from A to Z, shown in certain independent cinemas in the United Kingdom and looking for a distributor for Europe. “It’s actually easier than you think to make a film, it’s the amount of work that’s the problem,” he says. He loved “every step, recording the sound, lighting the scenes. Even the special effects – which are terrible – are mine,” he adds, always as fond of self-depreciation, as in his records.
The plot of the film is inspired by his life, since it is about DJs and London’s underground clubs, all with a homemade label. “If it seems experimental, it’s because I did it all myself and I didn’t know exactly how to do it. But what I did best in the past was precisely when I didn’t know how it should be done.
And to deliver one of the punchlines that make his mark: “I sabotage myself. Even if I could make it sound elegant, I would reverse engineer it because it would sound fake to me. I can’t stand doing things well,” he smiles.
It is precisely his assumed amateurism in music that does not make him fear competition from artificial intelligence. “AI is going to make human creativity so much weirder. This is the only solution to avoid being copied: humans will have to be crazier and more avant-garde.”
When we point out to him that his last years as a DJ, away from The Streets project, allowed him to release an effective single like Troubled Waters, he can’t help but cringe, as usual. “I think we only have a few songs in us, to be honest. Bob Dylan said: “I never really wrote just one song, I just did it over and over.” That’s why I added this film to make it more interesting.”
The problem is that Mike Skinner is no longer in funds, as he was 20 years ago, in the wake of Original pirate material and A Grand Don’t Come for Free (2004). The musician can no longer tour concert halls in Europe in the wake of his new opus. “We no longer have the means to do a European tour because of Brexit”, leaving the European Union which makes everything more expensive and more complex for independent British artists. Although he hopes his new album can serve as a launching pad for summer festivals.
