Blog posts
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Aug 28 2008, 05:07 AMSkinnerBlog 27.8.08 - Gentleprints and censorshipWhat is the purpose of art? Is it a way of visiting emotions most of us can't express?
I think it is.
Marcus Harvey's controversial portrait of Myra Hindley (the killer of children) in children's handprints has been shown in a video to promote London's thriving art scene. Was it sick? Or was it one of the most powerful pieces of art in recent years? Was it purposefully created to cause offense? The people who sent threatening letters and vandalized the Royal Academy were presumably thinking along these lines
For me it doesn't matter what the intention of a piece of art is. It's the result that matters. -
Aug 28 2008, 05:06 AMSkinnerBlog 26.8.08 - Parties and smartiesWe are planning deep partyage for the October tour. Me and Mayhem met up with this bloke yesterday evening about planning it all. Still not sure whether it will come off, but the idea is for people to bring items with them to 'borrow' to us (I'm aware of the error in this verb usage but my new album isn't called 'everything is lent')
Our favourite items will be borrowed along with their owners and taken to the following show. So, if you lend us something in Stockholm we would bring you to Copenhagen.
I'm not sure this has ever been done. The logistics could be very logistical. Either way this tour is gonna he overboom. Expect the unexpected... -
Aug 28 2008, 05:06 AMSkinner 20.08.08 - Bodies in the bathI fucking love Ibiza. Absolutely up for it based. The Ibiza Rocks hotel kind of reminded me of Johnny Cash at Folsom prison as I walked out to the baying crowd of prisoners. In fact no, it was gladiatorial. I was Russell Crowe. Blood thirsty. Claustrophobic. Hot. The perfect holiday crowd. Surrounded by balconies, 4 stories high. Tanned people stamping their feet to some inner house tune (and a few of mine). So many possibilities - the Go Low... tick. The Don't Know... tick. The Moses... Standard. All the time as toilet roll streams from the rooms like white carnival ribbons
And then there was the ending. There was a perfection to the way it ended. Suddenly it wasn't so much warriors in battle. It was renaissance art. It was a sculpture. It was ballet. The final Go Low is normally the peak but I created a beautiful child. I have to actually apologise to the venue for our flouting of the rules. Mayhem came up to me at the end after the final Go Low shouting, "GET THEM IN THE POOL!". I couldn't believe it. It was so simple.
Art sometimes happens in a split second. The flick of a brush. A chip off the block. "IN THE POOL!". If you can walk offstage while things are getting even more fucked than when you were onstage then you've done something right. My child went from toddler to fully grown angry lagered up lad in the space of the next cataclysmic 15 minutes. The police were called. It was a beautiful thing
THANK YOU IBIZA
I just found 4 people in my garden. I think they need tea and biscuits. -
Aug 28 2008, 05:05 AMSkinnerBlog 18.8.08 - Who knows who?I'm in Ibiza. As you should know by now it's one of my favourite places to get crunk. I am performing to the holiday rabble una mas tiempo. I have only ever DJ'd in Ibiza before as my backline tech's always insist it's too primitive stagewise. Last time I DJ'd here my stage was commandeered by the police and crime scene tape was wrapped round the gear. My tour manager wouldn't have liked that. Fingers crossed my stage tricks will be allowed to speak with the "hordes of lagered-up lads" as a national paper put so eloquently yesterday. I think we all hoard a lagered-up lad deep down inside somewhere. Some people don't like that, though.
We have 4 weeks to make 8 videos. I have really developed a lust for the lens since we've been doing Beat Stevie. We are entering our latest episode for various short film festival prizes which is why you no see it online. 8 streets videos in 4 weeks is not a joke though. You're in for a treat come 15th sept.
I thought I should tell you that I did a track with Muse. I wasn't going to mention it, but people keep asking me about it. It's not finished so don't hate on it like some Muse fans have been. I thought I'd won them all over at Wembley but the hatred apparently knows no bounds. I guess they just can't stand the lagered-up lad hoarded deep inside them.... -
Aug 28 2008, 05:05 AMSkinnerBlog 15.8.08 - Trees, green and teasI'm in Germany. I've been promoting my new album by talking to lots of Germanic journalists about the ideas behind 'everything is borrowed'.
I made a demand earlier this week that I wouldn't allow anyone to take my photo in front of anything incorporating modern life. I want the photos of me to look like the album. This is quite difficult to do in the centre of Hamburg.
We ended up standing by a tree right by a main road. It's going to look great. Like it could have been a million years ago.
My voice had cracked for some reason. It was randomly breaking like when you're 13. In order to combat this I decided to drink hot tea. The only tea they had was green tea which from the look of the tag, looked a bit like peppermint tea. No. Green tea contains the most amount of caffeine out of all hot beverages including strong black coffee.
Three green teas later my heart and mind started going really weird. I started shaking. I didn't know why but I was feeling the same feelings you feel when someone points a knife at you (I have experience of this). All this while I'm trying to tell the man that my album is an attempt to make something unquestionably positive since regretting so much that people felt the last album was negative and self-centred. My hands are twitching. I'm sweating. I'm fidgeting. I'm prangin out...
