Review Summary: Big pool → small bubble
Hot on the heels of an interim set of EPs and archival records, German producer-DJ Skee Mask has finally carved out space amidst his prolific rate of output to dish out the true follow-up to his 2021 opus
Pool. That LP remains one of the towering landmarks of current-decade electronic, its ambidextrous stylistic juggle matched only by the vastness of its overlapping layers of atmosphere — I've found the years since its release have been kind to most of its gargantuan tracklist, and, as far as insular beatwork as an institution goes, it is already about as unthinkable to imagine the '20s sans-Skee Mask as it is to imagine, say, the '00s without Boards of Canada, or the '10s without Flying Lotus. One of the major appeals to
Pool and, to a lesser degree, Skee Mask's overlooked debut
Shred was that they played as expansive grab-bags, eschewing the conventional wisdom of slick sequencing and making a dynamo out of the revolving door of every sub-genre within Skee Mask's mastery (breakbeat, techno, IDM, ambient, 2-step, dub, house, drum and bass, gabber, you name it). Those records did sustain an atmosphere, but half their delight lay in how they kept even returning listeners in suspense as to which hand Skee Mask would play next, the patchwork texture of their tracklists vindicated by a series of individually stunning highlights.
Resort plays a different game from the outset. It's very much an album's album: a tight-knit hour of one thing leading into another that aspires to much more than the sum of its parts and develops in a way more comparable to to
Compro than its other predecessors, though far less oblique. Anyone looking for a direct sequel to
Pool (my hand is up) will likely find several unscratched itches on the arse end of their first impression;
Resort's central appeal is understated to the point that you may well have to wait for these to subside before it fully manifests. Proceed with patience, not that
Resort gives you much of a choice from its opening moments: it opens patiently, the first two tracks wading into such contourless terrain with their gauzy, dub-descended ambient that by the time "Reminiscrmx" comes around with a smattering of tentative breakbeats, the effect is more akin to knocking on the inside of a giant, viscous bubble than the kinetic pangs we heard on
Pool-correlates "DJ Camo Bro" or "Rdvnedub".
It's steady going from there onwards, and it quickly becomes obvious that this record does less for an attention-starved audience and a whole lot more for the background than any past Skee Mask approaching LP length: at several points I am reminded by contrast of exactly how melodically generous
Pool was by comparison, and find that
Resort's overwhelming focus on beatwork and washed-out synth ripples rewards a steadier, passenger-minded headspace. The number of testimonials I've seen attesting this album's soporific potential are neither an exaggeration nor any real indictment — its cohesion is near faultless, and its immersion effortless. It's no small achievement to cushion an atmosphere so compactly that it can withstand a kick as pounding as "Element"'s or snare patterns as tactile as on "Daytime Gamer" as though these were nothing but distant echoes resonating against an unbreakable inner membrane; as a production showcase,
Resort finds Skee Mask at the peak of his powers.
This immersion is kept up seamlessly all the way to the crowning breakbeat mini-climax of "Schneiders Paradox" and "BB Care", wrapping up with the ambient wind-down of "Terminal Z". The album could just as easily have thrown in the towel there to relatively low dismay, but instead it awards itself an encore commencing with the sole showstopper "Hölzl Was a Dancer", a swaggering house banger that doesn't belong on this record at all stylistically, but makes for such an obvious standout that it would be missed from any repeated spins. It's the one point here where Skee Mask's jack-of-all-trades credentials amount to something arresting and adventurous, and although the closing pair of "7AM At The Rodeo" and "Vitamin 313" are perhaps a tad conservative in how quickly they default to the album's core palette, they make for a convincing reassertion of its central strengths.
Which leaves us where? After multiple weeks of listening, I still find myself short of the words to pin down exactly
what this all amounts to — a reflection, I think, of both the album's success in birthing and insulating its own impenetrable little world, and in its graceful aversion to dishing out another palpable revelation in the same manner as
Pool or even last year's excellent
ISS009 EP. This showcases Skee Mask's earnest dedication to his craft and perhaps a newfound devotion to the integrity of the album format, and if it's unlikely to have a major impact on anyone's established opinion of him or to offer much to playlist-oriented highlight scalpers, then there are a
lot of understated nuances here that will rewards patient returning listeners. I've latched onto a new layer or detail with practically every listen (on this present spin, it's the grooves midway through "Schneiders Paradox" that jump out), and suspect that I'll be uncovering fresh reasons to return to the album for some time to come. Whatever else you might say about it, it feels built to last — a rare quality for even a landmark record, however uncertain it is that
Resort will command quite that high a profile in years to come.
