Sam Shackleton's music might sound like it's been beamed in from a dystopian future (or future-primitive past), but his career and the genesis of the Skull Disco label have their roots in London's dubstep scene. A regular at the Forward>> dubstep night run by Ammunition Promotions, Shackleton decided to team up with his friend Laurie Osborne, AKA Appleblim, and began releasing music.
Skull Disco's earliest releases were often double A sides, featuring a track apiece by Shackleton and Appleblim. What captured the imagination of the global bass community was how different these releases sounded from traditional dubstep.
There was a stark morbidity to Shackleton's music, with artwork depicting surreal arrangements of bones, and tracks titles taking dub's obsession with murder to humorous extremes.
There was a stark morbidity to Shackleton's music, with artwork depicting surreal arrangements of bones, and tracks titles taking dub's obsession with murder to humorous extremes - "Soundboy's Ashes Get Chopped Out And Snorted," "Soundboy's Bones Get Ground Up Proper." While many producers seemed to be interested in merging dubstep sounds with the sounds of techno, Shackleton's music took a different approach, bringing in primal, almost tribal sounds - organic drumming, eerie chants, and an all-pervading sense of darkness. At times, his productions brought to mind the experimental Middle Eastern sounds of Muslimgauze.
Shackleton's productions drew the attention of the techno community as well, with Ricardo Villalobos famously remixing his epic track "Blood On My Hands." With his 3 EPs release on minimal techno imprint Perlon in 2009, Shackleton charted new heights for the dubstep derived sound, creating a musical feel that drew as much from the past as the future.
