Gather.ly's mission has always been to deliver the freshest opportunities for the emerging creative UK talents, but up until now our focus has been mainly around photography, illustration and film. For our next adventure, we are meandering our way through the rivers of creativity and dropping the anchor into the depths of music.
We have been stirring up the murky musical waters, trying to sieve out the flecks of gold and offer up the best in opportunities for our top home-grown musical talent. That first shiny nugget to surface is our new Gather.ly Crossovers series.
Gather.ly Crossovers are carefully curated collaborations that aim to shift your musical perspective and expand the horizons of your musical projects. Explore new layers and identify your stimulation by throwing in new ingredients to spice up that pre-existing recipe.
To ease you into our musical mystery adventures, we'd like to introduce the first of our Crossover collaborators, Corin Douieb aka...
The Last Skeptik
The Last Skeptik is a multi-talented beast who is truly defined by his music production. Only in his mid-twenties, Corin has already released an impressive discography, including Thanks For Trying, his first instrumental album, a series of remixes for huge names such as Asian Dub Foundation, and a wad of EPs and LPs all bridging multiple genres and styles.
I make music for people who want to walk along. For it to be stuck in their head or feel like they are in a fucking movie, just really soundtrack their lives. That is something that I always go for…
"It all started in school, I started to love hip hop when I was about 9, my brother really liked rap. He was really into The Pharcyde, Souls of Mischief which is brilliant, but you never really want to like what your brother likes. If your brother likes some shit, your are like, fuck that, I don’t want anything to do with that. In school my close friendship circle loved 2Pac and loved West Coast Hip hop. So that was my definite introduction to hip hop."
The Last Skeptik is not simply a UK hip hop producer - though you could be forgiven for jumping to that conclusions based on the wealth of acts Skeptik has worked with, all hailing from a hip hop background, including, Sway, Jehst, Illaman, Doc Brown and more. Yes, Skeptik sits within this circle, but he is running huge circles around it and stomping his unique hip hop infused delicacies deep into the craniums of his listeners.
"When I was about 11, I started to hang around with Sway, who I used to go to school with. We were in the music rooms, he was playing shit to me that he had produced and had rapped on, I was like 'I really want to do this', so he showed me how to make beats. I started to make beats, they were really fucking shit, but it was lucky to have someone around like Sway who could guide me."
Skeptik compositions bed themselves deeply with the fundamental hip hop charms that we know and love, but Skeptik creatively branches this off into the rays of seemingly contrasting genres, carving new grooves into the old oak that is today's hip hop to create something quite unique.
The typical Skeptik piece fuses a blend of early 90's classic beat patterns, corpse lifting baselines, vibrant orchestral melodies, a hand plucked selection of spine-chilling vocals and an ensemble of live instrumentation, all stemming from the freshest emerging talent in these fertile UK soils. Skeptik's musical prowess deliver an endless supply of cinematic brilliance that aim to send each listener on a vivid and personal journey from start to finish.
"It's honesty and emotion. Those are the two things I want to hear in my music. I realised that I don’t actually like going to watch live music… I don’t… I go and watch a couple of songs, “Fuck I love that song, it's brilliant” and then I am a bit bored, I don’t want to stand up anymore or I am hot. It’s taken me a long time to realise that I just don’t like it! I like to consume music in my own time, in my own way, which is walking along, sitting in my room and listening on my headphones or on a journey. Admitting that is the first explanation as to why I make the music that I do. Listening to, watching or making music like that has to be honest and full of heart, so it describes how you’re feeling yourself."
We spent some time with The Last Skeptik, discussing his music, record collection, history and current projects, all of which tailed off into further conversations about the scope and scale of his music projects. Corin's work space is a minimal set up, a laptop, a pair of speakers, some DJ decks and a microphone embedded in a cupboard full of Arsenal football shirts and memorabilia. A personal space that breathes character and creativity. A space where you can relax and ultimately, feel and create music.
It’s clear to see that there's so much more going on under the hood of this fashionable hip hop head. Skeptik oozes passion, ambition, depth, diversity and musicality - only a handful of elements that aid Skeptik in exceeding the quality of current releases that shelve the dusty, dilapidated high street record stores and over-saturated download market places. Both, a black hole for all emerging musical talent.
I had my first record out at 18 on vinyl, which was a big, big moment for me. I remember being so, so excited, and the moment I put the needle on the record, I realised that, this isn’t good enough. I have got to do something bigger. That’s definitely the mentality that I have when making music for my whole life. When I achieve a goal, it's not good enough, I need to do better…
This guy does not mess around, we have heard snippets from his next EP and wandered out of his bedroom studio with our minds shattered. It's more than simple rap beats, it is layered in confidence and wise music direction, cuddled with influences that thrust an element of nostalgia into the mix. It's a developed sound that has significantly matured since his last album, "Thanks For Trying".
"The biggest change, musically, is confidence, I have always had the ideas there, I have always known what I wanted to do, even from making my first beats. I know that the aesthetic is pretty similar, I always wanted to make really dramatic, cinematic music, but I never have had the means or confidence to do so. Even when I put my first album out with Verb-T in 2007 'Broken Window', that, production wise was really cinematic, but I didn’t have the confidence to release something without a rapper. I didn’t have the guts to go “my shit's good enough without a rapper on” and that's why it took so many years to put out “Thanks For Trying”. I think a lot of musicians go through a similar process. Not knowing where they stand. I think, my confidence is the evolution of my music."
The Last Skeptik is a matured steak, waiting to be served up at Michelin Star restaurants to the wealth of mouths all hungry for the next phase of modern hip hop. This slab of meat is smothered in melodic charm that rings back to the days of J-Dilla and Nujabes. Skeptik is one to watch.
"A good friend once told me, “Corin, things lead to other things”. It's so simple, but it's right. I can’t be planning a million miles ahead, I know there are things that I want to do. I want to tour the world with my band, playing my own music and learn the piano, shit like that. So, yeah, things will lead to other things, and you can’t really think too much about them, they’re just vague ideas."
We wouldn't be surprised if The Last Skeptik served up with some peppercorn sauce quicker than you can digest the amount of analogies in this article!
Check out The Last Skeptik on his SoundCloud, website and iTunes.
