The Expanding Shackleton Universe
a.k.a. An attempt to track the reclusive UK artist's many, many musical endeavors during the past decade or so.
Sam Shackleton has always preferred to let his music do the talking. Even when Skull Disco, the iconic label he ran alongside fellow UK bass alchemist Appleblim, was at the height of its powers in the mid-to-late 2000s, he largely stayed away from the spotlight, refusing to become the poster boy of what was then being touted as a new breed of dubstep-techno hybrids. In the years that followed, Shackleton continued to dodge the press—my 2021 interview with him for Pitchfork was his first on-the-record chat with a journalist in more than a decade—but he never stopped making music, or pushing his sound into new territory. Although Skull Disco was shuttered in 2008 (the same year he moved to Berlin), he’s since dropped a slew of records, both solo and collaborative. Many of them have been informed by the hardcore continuum, but thanks to his unorthodox rhythmic sensibility, they’ve also drawn comparisons to sounds coming out of Africa, the Middle East, India, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia.
But what does Shackleton’s music actually sound like? That’s a difficult question. Back in the Skull Disco era, words like “dark,” “organic” and “ritualistic” were often used, as were references to the early days of dubstep and the haunted echoes of English folk traditions. Over time though, Shackleton has increasingly diverged from that template, playing with light and melody while frequently abandoning the usual tropes and demands of the dancefloor altogether, even on his most propulsive tunes. Some of that can probably be chalked up to aging—“I’m not going to the clubs and dancing as much as I used to,” he told me in that Pitchfork interview—but that’s only a partial explanation. The guy has always been an explorer, and considering the dizzying number of collaborations he’s participated in during the past decade-plus, it would be foolish to discount how much simply working with other artists has influenced his musical outlook.
Later this month, AD 93 will be releasing The Tumbling Psychic Joy of Now, a new album that’s credited to Holy Tongue Meets Shackleton. Born out of a chance encounter at a Swedish festival where the two acts were both on the lineup, the record might be the freakiest thing that Shackleton’s ever been involved in, which isn’t entirely surprising given that Holy Tongue (a.k.a. the trio of Al Wootton, Valentina Magaletti and Zongamin) routinely hangs out on electronic’s music psychedelic fringe. Shackleton’s own predilection for weirdness, however, is not to be discounted, and while those who still primarily associate him with “Blood on My Hands”—or the Villalobos remix of it—might be surprised by what they hear, anyone who’s been closely following his output in recent years knows that this new record is simply the latest detour on what’s quietly become a rather unpredictable creative journey.
With the new LP slated to arrive next week, now seems like a good time to look back at that journey and, more specifically, to take stock of the other collaborative projects Shackleton has undertaken along the way.