Psychedelic RnB Band SKILAA Unveil Highly-Anticipated Debut Album, Tiger In The River
Psychedelic RnB Band SKILAA Unveil Highly-Anticipated Debut Album, Tiger In The River
July 5th, 2024
SKILAA have had a busy couple of years, with it all culminating in the form of their debut album, Tiger In The River. This long anticipated debut record is out today both digitally and on vinyl via Holiday Records, available on Bandcamp, “set to be like nothing else you’ve heard this year” (Flying Out). A tour de force of psychedelic RnB that will have you grooving and reeling in equal measure!
Featuring the Student Radio and bFM Top 10 favourite ‘I Never Knew’, collaboration with a true Hip-hop Prince of Detroit rapper Guilty Simpson (of Dilla prodigy and Leonard Simpson Duo fame) on the scathing track ‘Money’, and the creative pairing of production team Night Watch (Jazz Dos Santos, Jaya Beach Robertson & Roo Reihana) for the humorous, surrealist fairytale of a music video for ‘Jenny Greenteeth’ supported through NZonAir’s Single Funding.
Tiger In The River enlisted the production and mixing expertise of Tāmaki Makaurau’s own Jeremy Toy (Open Souls, She’s so rad) and was mastered by New York based Grammy nominated Nate Wood (Kneebody, Tigran Hamasyan).
The eclectic full length LP features the multi layered melismatic singing that is a signature of Chelsea’s writing style, delicate to laser-like textures and chord progressions from guitar genius Michael, molten-flowing grooves laced with harmonics from Tom Dennison on bass, and the jaguar-like, rippling power of Adam Tobeck’s drumming to underpin the rest of this extraordinary body of work.
Thematically, the lyrics you’ll find here are not only an odyssey through the emotional mind of their singer, but an ode to her love for the musicians and the music itself, especially on tracks like ‘Straight Trippin’ and ‘Solos’.
Serving as the final single on the album, ‘Southern Gothic’ (supported by NZonAir), features a second collaboration with production team Night Watch, capturing SKILAA’s darkest and most humorously macabre offer yet. Chelsea wrote this song after watching a spate of horror films (a favourite genre of hers) and shared this about the experience:
“I’m a big fan of folk horror and the southern gothic horror genre in particular, so after watching Psycho, Texas Chainsaw, Undertow, Night of the Hunter, and listening to a lot of Cypress Hill, Peeping Tom, MF Doom and Madlib, I started noodling around on the piano and came up with this sinister 3 bar bass loop, and the rest of the harmonic content unfolded from there. There’s 3 tracks in particular that really inspired the harmonic palate; “Sucker” by Peeping Tom (feat. Norah Jones!?) “Rainbows” and “Meat Grinder” from the Madvillainy album.” Lyrically there’s a lot of feminine rage in this one. I was on this rather seedy vibe in my early to mid 20’s; smoking spliffs by myself in these little dark corners all over Krd and the CBD, and stubbornly (and in hindsight extremely inadvisably) walking home alone from gigs at 3am.”