SKARKREEM’s artform was developed on the sound systems of the Scumtek freeparty collective, where organisers and performers alike were forced to be as brutally efficient as possible whilst making the very most out of their scant resources; deploying parties for thousands of people in the bankrupt commercial spaces of post-financial-crash London, always with the shortest possible notice.
The hard work on the free party scene didn’t go un-noticed with the manufacturer of SKARKREEM’s favoured instrument: the KORG Electribe MX 1 inviting him to work on the next generation in the product line – KORG Electribe 2 – which is still in production to this day.
Amongst the user base of these instruments, he is recognised as the foremost virtuoso player of them; able to produce anything from soundtrack scores for horror movies to tearout drum and bass, and everything in between, squeezing every last drop of sonic juice from the hardware’s architecture.
The sound he produces is devastating: that of a seasoned industrial metal band in a pro-studio setting, but performed using only a single drum-synth. What is heard on record is exactly what is heard in a live setting, with no post-production editing, just a direct recording in one take.
Where many of his peers struggle to translate their carefully crafted studio masterpieces into a live-setting – often just relying on DJ’ing or a backline of thousands of dollars worth of pro-audio and personnel – SKARKREEM is able to deploy as a live instrumentalist with nothing more than a single power-supply, a stereo-jack and a microphone.
Recorded entirely on the KORG Electribe EMX1, the sounds of Dubstep, Riddim, Industrial Metal and Indie vocals collide on Skarkreem’s powerful ’Syn EP’…
