Skins - Never Cursed

Debut outing from the exceptionally un-Googleable Skins, the product of an unnamed Tamil-Canadian producer now residing in London. That Never Cursed is released on 0___o?, the label responsible for that much-lauded Dawuna LP and with a taste for smoke and mirrors presentation, the attendant mystery should come as no surprise. There's substance enough here to justify the pretence. Skins make what is ostensibly very 2023 sounding music, a post-internet melange of hybrid forms that draws trap, dreampop and ambient tropes into its blackhole collage. This is what happens when so-called 'bedroom pop' goes goth and tunes into the debut albums of Huerco S and Yves Tumor - you don't open an album with a song as emo-verbose as 'my life, my soul, and all that i sacrifice' without a little soul to bear. If that sounds a touch teenage for some sensibilities, then also know that there's some skilled production at work here, at its best when it dials back the beats (i detect a trace of M83's influence here) and embraces Badalamenti/This Mortal Coil ethereal drift (see both the opener and closer for the best examples of this). There's a benefit to hiding your identity with music like this, functioning better in the imagination, free of grounding context and the cult personality. Still. Never Cursed is good enough that a fair few are gonna be very keen to find out just who's behind the wheel.