It’s been more than a decade since Sam Shackleton has done a proper press interview, and even back then, he was reluctant to talk. The influential producer once described himself as a “miserable curmudgeon” and has admitted, “I try to avoid interviews as I do not want the world to know anything about me.”
The Berlin-based Englishman’s feelings about interviews haven’t necessarily changed, but he certainly doesn’t come off as a dour grump on the phone. Among fans of dubstep and other bass-heavy strains of electronic music, Shackleton has been something of an exalted figure since the mid 2000s, and with his first solo album in nine years, Departing Like Rivers, on the way, he agreed (after a fair bit of prodding) to subject himself to a fresh round of questioning. Despite his intensely shy nature, he seemed almost happy to have a chat, eager to dispel some of the myths that have crept up around him and his music.
Shackleton co-founded the Skull Disco label alongside fellow UK producer Appleblim in 2005, during the early days of dubstep. Adorning their releases with distinctively whimsical, skeleton-based artwork, they quickly diverged from genre’s increasingly aggressive, bass-wobbling mainstream, offering something deeper, weirder, and more experimental. Tracks like Shackleton’s “Blood on My Hands”—which was famously remixed in 2007 by minimal techno pioneer Ricardo Villalobos—pushed things even further, and inadvertently laid the groundwork for the countless dubstep-techno hybrids that began to pop up in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Skull Disco called it quits in 2008, and by then Shackleton was already charting his own path, crafting highly percussive tunes that frequently drew comparisons to the rhythms of Africa, the Middle East, India, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. He moved to Berlin and released 2009’s Three EPs album on Perlon, a label best known for minimal techno. His next solo full-length, 2012’s Music For The Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ EPs, was a massive, 137-minute effort that propelled his complex rhythms and dubby explorations even further into the cosmos.
Over the past decade, he’s continued to develop his own unique sound world, straddling the electronic and experimental spheres as he dropped a series of collaborative LPs, including efforts with Bristol bass don Pinch, avant-garde Italian performer Ernesto Tomasini, spoken-word artist Vengeance Tenfold, velvety Berlin vocalist Anika, and experimental Polish composer Waclaw Zimpel. In recent years, he’s also launched Tunes of Negation, a psychedelic, almost proggy collaborative project with musicians Takumi Motokawa and Raphael Meinhart.
With Departing Like Rivers, Shackleton is once again working on his own. Though he’s always previously described his solo output as dance music, this new LP was specifically created for a post-clubbing atmosphere—those early-morning hours when you’re milling about at a friend’s place after a long night of partying. It’s a hypnotic listen, tinged with Shackleton’s trademark percussion and haunting vocal bits that evoke the spirit of traditional English folk. Despite the record’s somewhat subdued nature, Shackleton still sees it as an extension of his “core sound,” though he’s still not quite ready to delve into how it relates to his life outside the studio. “I think you need some mystery in life, and the ambiguities are important,” he says. “With my music, I’m trying to reach some sort of unconscious, something that taps a bit deeper than the here and now.”
Shackleton: There are two aspects to it. One is that I like to do my own thing and, as much as possible, I hope to create my own musical cosmos. But you never make music in a vacuum. When we were going to the early dubstep nights—pre-dubstep nights, really—of course that was all a massive influence, and it would be rude to pretend otherwise. Artists from that scene, like Benny Ill, were such pioneers, and they probably don’t get the kudos that they deserve, so it seems a bit distasteful to try and jump on that dubstep train or exploit it too much. So I’m trying to do my own thing but I’m also trying to respect other people who’ve perhaps been much more influential and are much more deserving.
Nothing could be further from the truth actually. There was some talk in the press about a dubstep-techno crossover, but it wasn’t something that I could relate to, and it wasn’t something that I saw as a vision for Skull Disco at all. That’s actually one of the reasons I stopped it, because I didn’t like this framing of the label as a dubstep-techno crossover thing. It certainly wasn’t my intention to fuse dubstep and techno, so when people say, “These guys were the pioneers,” I really don’t see it that way. I just wanted it to be idiosyncratic music that you could dance to.
Yeah, I guess so. I’m not going to the clubs and dancing as much as I used to. That might be due to the pandemic, but maybe it’s an age thing. That said, when you listen to the album, I don’t think I’m making wishy-washy coffee table music. I hope not! People might interpret it as that, but I hope it’s demanding in its own way. I hope it’s got its own dissonant elements and aggression, the light and shadow.
It’s stuff I’ve made recently. I was working on this template for a more atmospheric, beatless live set, and I started thinking that it was really the basis for a new record. When you listen to the album, that’s why there’s a consistency of sound all the way through, which I’m pleased about. I used this template and did a lot of takes, and then I built around that.
Yes, but because of COVID, I haven’t been able to play it. It will get out there eventually, but thankfully it’s inspired me to take on a bit of a different approach to making music.
I do a little bit, but it’s difficult to say. Again, nobody exists in a vacuum. When someone says that they’re just doing their own thing, it’s like, “Well, did you invent the software? Did you invent your own instruments? Did you invent your own tuning system?” Obviously not. We’re all parts of a bigger process and subject to our history and our influences. I listened to a lot of Moroccan Gnawa music when I was younger, and I’ve always really liked the pattern of it, but I don’t think it’s something that I’ve tried to copy. It’s the same with gamelan. I hear these gong sounds, and there’s a repetitive, hypnotic element, but it’s dissonant at the same time. It’s not like I try to copy that directly, but that effect is something I’d like to achieve in my music. These things just become ingrained, and they’re part of a musical language that’s not exclusive to any one place. My music ultimately comes down to sounds that stimulate me and how they sound right in my head.
Let’s say I’m using synthesis to create some percussion. I like tonal sounds and I like percussion to have a melodic aspect to it—I can’t really explain why, but the standard kick-and-snare thing has just never done it for me. So it can end up sounding like African percussion, because there’s a lot of African percussion that’s tonal. But is that a direct influence, or are they just sounds that I, and a lot of other people, like? It’s difficult to say where the influence starts or whether there’s just a coincidental nature of people who like similar sounds.
Yeah, actually I do. When I was a teenager, I developed a very strong emotional attachment to the countryside around me, and when I’m walking there now, I still feel the same. I find it very vital, and though it is beautiful to look at, it’s not the kind of countryside that you might see on a postcard. It’s much more rugged, and a bit merciless. That’s probably a big influence on the music. It’s not a case where I want to say that I feel really English and have a St. George’s cross, but it’s not nothing either; the place where I come from has definitely influenced me and left its mark.
Yes. It’s interesting, because 10 years ago, we didn’t have this amount of exposure. Back then, I don’t think it was a required thing for new artists to have an internet presence. There was MySpace and Facebook, but it didn’t seem so widespread. But even then, I had a reflex against it. Why should you inflict all your tastes, your opinions, and your likes and dislikes on other people? And now, we live in a time where this has become really magnified.
Definitely. When I was younger and I’d go to the record shop, I didn’t really know anything about the artists. You’d see the sleeve, and maybe you’d read something somewhere or hear something through word of mouth, and all that added to the mystery. Now, everything is so instantaneous, and the substance of a release is perhaps not the main thing. It seems to be much more about the hype behind it.
When I started buying records, there were all kinds of crazy myths that went on. Talking about a particular band, I remember a friend of mine said, “You know, when you hear them, you will literally poo in your pants.” It’s a silly example, but when I listened to it, I did think, I’ve got to have the right trousers on, and that myth added to the intensity of the experience.
