Earlier this week and much of last week I had the opportunity to do something I’ve not done before (yay!). I reviewed Skin Tension’s latest…um, full length, which has a pretty daunting runtime of twenty-seven hours. You can read the review here. On the back of that I caught up with half of the duo responsible, (which naturally got me the whole lineup) to chat about the new album, the band’s influences and what’s next.

Hi guys, thanks for putting up with me this weird and wonderful afternoon, or is it a balmy breakfast time in Nashville?

Josh: Totally, kind of chilly here.
 
 
Cool. Cool. More to the point…who are you and what are your roles in Skin Tension?

Josh: I’m Josh Byrd, I play drums
Edward: I’m Edward Longo, I do guitar, vox, and keys.
Josh: Sometimes all three at once, no joke
 
 
Right. To the elephant in the room then. Or something just as big. Why an album with a runtime of 27 hours?

Josh: It’s a bit of a long story, fitting I guess.
 
 
We’ve got the time.

I bought a cheap mixer in September of 2020 to try out some no-input mixing and solo noise stuff, just for fun. I started recording it as an archival sort of thing at first, and after one month, I had about 30 hours of noise recorded. Around this time, I got really into “Metalvelodrome” by Merzbow. It’s this 4-cd box set from 93, 4 hours, but there’s not a dull track, it’s fire. I thought doing an eclectic album like that would be a fun thing to do for Skin Tension. We knew the next album was going to be a weirder one, we already covered the “double album” with Skin Vision, so we thought we could try something more long form. At first it was four hours, but we didn’t have enough duo Skin Tension on there, it was a lot of noise and electronic stuff. We thought about doing eight hours, but at that point we figured, why not double down? Why not 24? We had this inside joke about “The Skin Box”, a 24 hour mixtape where ST “does everything”, and suddenly this was actually what we decided on. At first it was just a joke, but after a while it sort of made sense to just go for it 1000%. We wanted to release physical copies at some point, so I thought it would be convenient to organize the material in 45 minute chunks, like a cassette side per chunk. I thought 27 was a notch cooler than 24, and it also gave us a bit of room so we didn’t have to completely cram the whole thing.

Edward: Yeah 27 hours is a ton of material, we thought we could release side projects at one point, but putting it all together in one thing is great. We’re always recording. We record every show and every practice, usually with multiple mics, but at the very least, one of us will have a phone recording. Around October 2020 I bought a Tascam porta-two for cheap, so along with our weekly meetup/practice, I was recording cassette mixes and sending them to Josh so he could cut them up and rearrange them. I was really inspired by the modularized compositions of Anthony Braxton, Qebrus, as well as classic stuff like the ring cycle etc, and a bunch of Siberian black metal bands, so with the tape mixes I wanted to throw all of that in but with a more free approach. Like improvising within an album structure and returning to themes so it sounds more composed.

Josh: On top of that, I had a ton of unused field recordings sitting on my hard drive. A bunch of weird environment/room sounds and random things I would record just for fun. I guess in total it was over 200 hours of “good stuff” to work with, so we got the best of that stuff together and that mix was 34 hours. We cut that down to 25.5, so we could have a clear intro and outro, so we recorded those two tracks last to wrap the whole thing up. As far as direct inspirations, I mean of course I knew about Bull of Heaven and The Caretaker, but honestly, I wanted an album experience somewhat similar to that, but with Skin Tension’s style. To be honest, I’m much more inspired by “Hojoue” or “Shred Earthship” than pretty much anything by BOH or The Caretaker. Nothing wrong with those bands, or ambient at all, I just want to play the fuck out of the drums hahaha. While working on Omni, I was heavily influenced by Boredoms, Les Rallizes Dénudés, My Bloody Valentine, Can, Merzbow, Natural Snow Buildings, CCCC, Orthrelm, and anything Zach Hill related.
 
 
On the album’s bandcamp page, the bio says there’s over 200 hours of music of material recorded? When will that be released? Or will that be the foundation for records to come?

Josh: A solid chunk of the early noise has been released on my other bandcamp page, imogenmortem. I think I’m on the October 2020 stuff for that, so that’ll be out at some point soon. The rest of the improvs and tape stuff either didn’t fit the time specifics, or they weren’t up to par. That being said, I think we have about 4-5 hours of b-sides for Omni, I’m thinking we could do it as an “ep” a couple of months down the road.

Edward: Yeah, some of the more lofi black metal/ noise didn’t make the cut, some of it’s fantastic, some is very obvious troubleshooting with four track business. I have an entire dungeon synth album I decided to cut from Omni, mostly because it sounded pretty different. I’m thinking I’ll put it out later this year, it’s mostly finished.

 
 
‘Omni’ as in Omnibus yes?

Josh: Sure
Ed: The Necronomicon
 
 
On the back of that, can we expect a…more modest run-time, next time?

Josh: Actually the next one is going to be 28 hours Hahahaha
Ed: We’re shooting for a short and sweet one next time, around 30 minutes.
 
 
Let’s talk about some of these guest musicians on the album. Personally I’m pretty dubious when I see saxophone features, especially in regards to bands known for their death metal-ness. Why collaborate with these guys in particular and how do they expand the band’s sound?

Josh: I love adding another instrument into the mix, if we’re all in the same room, the energy changes completely. We practice the “core skin tension” style pretty often, but adding one sax or guitar etc completely changes the dynamics. We play completely differently and that’s always cool to explore.

Edward: Yeah Jv is amazing. I played my first show in Nashville with Jv and Josh in 2019 and it was seriously mind-blowing. We play with him pretty frequently, but it’s always wild. He’s a legend.

Josh: Seriously Jv is one of my favorite musicians. Whenever I play a set with him it’s like I learn 100 new things. It’s like we’re connected telepathically when we’re playing, nothing we play is too “out” or too much, it always has this fluid momentum to it. When people ask me my favorite Nashville artist, I have to go with him.

Edward: We also got Colin Fisher on sax as well. He’s a mutual friend from Canada, killer all around musician.

Josh: Colin’s features were interesting. He sent me two sax bits with no context and so I found two solo drum tracks that happened to be about the same length and they synced up effortlessly. We even had some stops that sound coordinated, but it was all free.

Edward: Scott Mattingly as well. He’s a Nashville multi-instrumentalist who plays with all sorts of people, but we’ve been talking for a while and we sent some tracks to him so he could fill them out with more textures. He sent Josh a ton of stuff, definitely a lot of unused stuff as well. Also, we got Ryan Clackner on one song. I play in multiple bands with him, mostly Primeval Well and Spintria, as well as a new Stravinsky-inspired black metal project called SkyThala. Ryan’s a killer guitarist. Whenever he plays with Skin Tension, I play keys, but it becomes this super intense free jazz sound but with black metal dynamics.

Josh: My friend Alex sent me some samples of cicadas and owls that we’re wilding out in his backyard. I never use someone else’s samples but these sounds were too good to pass up. I dedicated a bit to them on R1. Then Will, Spencer, and Neil are some close friends and we were hanging out one night and we started jamming on some hand percussion stuff, just for fun. I got into this djembe loop and I thought “ah shit I’m not recording this!!”. We got back together a couple days later and we recorded another djembe jamboree that made it on the album. Lastly, I met Lucy on instagram through our shared love of Merzbow. She’s a noise/ambient musician from the UK. I heard her bandcamp stuff (Anesthetised Culture Club) and really enjoyed it, so I asked if she wanted to throw some noise on a track.
 
 
If you’ve followed the deeper regions of Sputnikmusic recently you might have stumbled on the staff team interviewing each other. While I can’t take credit for the next segment I can continue its tradition. Quick-fire responses to each of the following please:

Guitars with more than 8 strings
Ed: Yes
Josh: Aw yea

Fried Chicken
Ed: sure why not
Josh: I don’t eat meat, so no for me.

Honky-tonk
Ed: hell yeah brother
Josh: I’m still a honky tonk skeptic

Album of the year lists
Josh: Why not?
Ed: Of course

The Chris Barnes vs. George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher saga
Josh: Corpsegrinder no contest.
Ed: I’ve only heard the first cannibal corpse album, I have no idea how they sound after that.
 
 
You guys released your album pretty early in the year. What’s your plans moving forwards? Maybe you’ll put your feet up, sip on some fancy iced teas?

Ed: Actually, we just recorded the new Spintria album with Ryan earlier today.
 
 
As in you recorded it in a day?

Josh: Once Spintria 2 is done, we’ll finish writing the new Skin Tension album. It’ll be another short one, so we’re trying to get it out by the end of the year, maybe early next year at the latest.
 
 
What band’s music are you anticipating in 2022?

Ed: A lot of my favorite albums of the year are ones that take me by surprise. I get on these weird specific genre kicks then I find some new stuff and change it up.
Josh: I’m always late to the party with newer albums, there’s so much good older stuff I’ve yet to check out so I feel like I’m always playing catch up, or looking at other people’s AOTY lists for recs.
 
 
We’re at the end of this little endeavor. Is there anything you’d like to add? Any parting thoughts?

Josh: I wouldn’t have made this album if I didn’t absolutely love every second of it. Everything on Omni is there for a reason. Thanks for listening.
 
 

You can hear the new album via the band’s bandcamp page: Omni | Skin Tension (bandcamp.com) where the album is on sale for a sum of $6.66 (USD). That’s a whopping $0.05083969 per track. Wow!