- The peerless German techno auteur's new surprise album leans on delicacy while facing down a wealth of recent DIY drops.
- In 2022, Skee Mask told Resident Advisor, "My life depends on music and I probably spend more time with it than anything else." It shows: the Bavarian producer born Bryan Müller has been officially releasing music since he was a teenager, and his prolific run of releases have demonstrated a prodigious instinct for dreamy, smoked-out headphone reveries with all the necessary rave physicality to work a soundsystem. Emerging from years working in total anonymity, Müller's initial public profile painted a picture of a hermetic producer. In a sticker-caked bedroom, he filled up ashtrays and hard drives while flipping all kinds of styles into a Germanic dub techno inversion of braindance.
Over the years, he's churned out giddy filter house funk, snaking drum mantras, and on 2018's standout LP, Compro, he fanned out masterful blooms of melancholic electronica. Since then, Müller has left us with plenty of music to chew on. The last official Skee Mask album, 2021's Pool, reached an apex of intense, needlepoint drum programming and expressive, accomplished sound design with a non-conformist streak. He's also self-released three volumes of archival tracks on Bandcamp—A, B and C—shining a light on unmastered ambient experiments and more introspective productions that never made it to full releases.
The mellow mood of those DIY collections set the tone for his latest surprise drop, Resort. But Müller's sense of calm shouldn't be mistaken for a lack of flair. The same way his harder, club-tilted firecrackers balance thrilling sequencing with spatial intrigue, Resort edges excitement, detail and movement into his deepest cuts. The album's opening double-dip of "Hedwig Transformation Group" and "Nostaglitch" revels in beatless exploration, using the methodology of ambient techno as a springboard for expressive tones and cosy harmonics. At the other end of the album, "Terminal Z" heaves with yearning chords and gnarled noise, finding kinesis without the conventional thrust of a beat.
When he does turn to rhythm, Müller's staggering programming is complex as ever while still landing with delicate poise. "Reminiscimix" captures the mood of Resort perfectly, feathering the drum loops to place more emphasis on soft-focus keys. Another album highlight, "Daytime Gamer," rides a crisp electro pattern, but not before wistful synth threads drift to the front of the mix. Even the sharpest teeth of breakbeat on "Schneider's Paradox" are tempered by daubs of melody. Given this overarching sense of restraint, the peppy, shuffling techno of "Hölzl Was a Dancer" has a jarring effect when it swerves into the album's final stretch. It's a great track in and of itself, but arriving when it does, it feels like a sketchbook afterthought.
Pacing aside, Resort, like all Skee Mask releases to date, is a brilliant record. The main trouble it runs into is that in the wake of three casual batches of studio offcuts, it's hard to ignore that its impact feels dulled. When it's all too easy for prolific artists to put out every vaguely interesting thread of studio exploration, the risk is that, as a listener, this sheer abundance dilutes the power of any one piece of music. Ten years and four albums deep into Müller's catalogue, there's increased potential for over-familiarity with every new Skee Mask release.
Abundance or not, Resort's masterful polish makes sure it supersedes the self-released bits and pieces. Combined with the album's softer approach, it allows the exquisite subtlety of Skee Mask's production to shine, landing somewhere between Compro's aqueous immersion and Pool's twitchy exuberance. For some, Resort might even be the perfect balance of his diverging energies. Even without the seismic shock of its predecessors, complaining about too much Skee Mask music feels like a fool's errand. He's still way out in front as an artist wrangling emotional weight and technical intrigue out of techno's well-worn tropes, operating with a startling originality most producers can only dream of.
Tracklist01. Hedwig Transformation Group
02. Nostaglitch
03. Reminiscrmx
04. Element
05. Waldmeister
06. Daytime Gamer
07. Schneiders Paradox
08. BB Care
09. Terminal Z
10. Hölzl Was A Dancer
11. 7AM At The Rodeo
12. Vitamin 313