Twenty years in the music industry is no mean feat, and if you began your time as did Skam Records by discovering Boards of Canada and Autechre you have even more excuse to be celebrating.
Yep, this August Skam are twenty years old and if that doesn’t scare you then have a think back to what you were doing when you first heard a Boards of Canada or Autechre track.
True to form Skam are still releasing abstract electronica, the latest of which comes in the nostalgic form of VHS Head’s Persistence of Vision. Using samples from old skool VHS tapes as a sole sound source, it’s incredible to think of the amount of work that’s gone into this release. Packed full of tape compressed hiss, it tweaks the old synapses with snippets culled from another era, somehow coalescing it all into a variety of styles from IDM to glitch funk.
At times nightmarish at others really rather strangely alluring, VHS Head reaches into the darkest recesses of hazy 80s audio and pulls it through a twisted prism of hyper edited manic plunderphonics on amphetamines. Would we expect anything less from Skam as they approach their twentieth anniversary?
Persistence of Vision is available on Skam.
