Skee Mask - Pool 3xLP (Ilian Tape, 2021)
"Particularly in the case of dance music, a style predicated upon sweaty bodies swapping aerosols in close quarters, it’s hard not to read any given new release as a response to the pandemic year. But despite the timing of its completion, Pool isn't a report on the doldrums of 2020. Its 18 tracks, totaling an hour and 45 minutes, are drawn from the past four or five years of his daily studio regimen. Combined with its surprise release on Bandcamp, the record’s length and semi-archival nature—some of these songs predate the release of 2018’s Compro—might suggest that Pool is a clearinghouse of orphaned tracks meant to bide time before the next proper album. But Müller calls it “a fully conceived project,” the intended successor to Compro...
There’s a thrilling physicality to Pool. Skee Mask’s 808s run as hot as a laptop laid across your thighs; omnipresent dub delay gives the feeling of pushing through viscous liquid, actually swimming through the music. But even in its heaviest moments, what distinguishes Pool is not so much power as finesse. Müller says that many of these tracks have origins in live hardware jams, and that energy comes through. Though many songs are largely based on 16-bar loops, their elements are constantly morphing. Drum patterns never play quite the same way twice; shifting synth lines twist and turn with uncanny naturalism, less like programmed sequences than living things. Whether in the wanton G-funk portamento of “60681z,” the faux guitar solos of “Harrison Ford,” or the shape-shifting textures of “Pepper Boys,” you can feel Müller’s fingers on the knobs at every turn. It’s a virtuoso display of control made all the more remarkable for its seeming lack of calculation. Skee Mask gives the impression that his music is a flowing current, and he’s just the channel." - Philip Sherburne (Pitchfork)