Shackleton - Biography
It’s hard to call Sam Shackleton one of dubstep’s leading lights anymore. His productions have moved so far past the typical genre constraints of any strain of dance music it’s hard to say exactly where his sound falls. One gets the feeling that’s how Shackleton likes it. No matter how challenging this producer is to categorize, you can be certain his music ranks among the most progressive, future forward dance music around today.
Shackleton’s music started leaking out in 2004 with a release on Mordant Music, a label he continues to work with. But it was 2005’s I Am Animal / Mystikal Warrior, a split with fellow producer Appleblim that proved Shackleton to be a rising force in the fledging dubstep genre. Shackleton’s “I Am Animal” is a heavy slab of sub bass pressure and spiraling, stark beats. The 12” also marked the beginning of the Skull Disco label, an imprint run by Shackleton and Laurie Osborne aka Appleblim. Shackleton would go on to release the majority of his work on Skull Disco. The label’s overall aesthetic, with each release featuring cartoonish and gruesome artwork by Zeke Clough, continues to define Shackleton’s dark music.
Around this time Shackleton was attending the Forward>> and DMZ club nights, soaking up the dank, rough sounds of dubstep pioneers like Digital Mystikz and Loefah. Part of the genre’s second wave, Shackleton drew from the dark, heavy bass and slower syncopated rhythms of dubstep but took his sound in a very unique direction. Most of the Skull Disco releases are double A-sides featuring a track each from Shackleton and Appleblim. The music, especially Shackleton’s, features menacing, eerie atmosphere, swirling drones, stark African and Middle Eastern percussion, wailing vocal samples and massive bass. Over the course of nine 12”s on Skull Disco Shackleton developed his trademark sound, focusing on shifting layers of snaking tribal rhythms and incorporating elements of 4/4 minimal techno and the endless echo of dubwise effects gleaned from Basic Channel. Minimal techno visionary Ricardo Villalobos remixed the stunning dubstep lurch of “Blood On My Hands” into an eighteen-plus minute techno trance-out, drawing parallels between the two scenes. The Skull Disco 12” releases were collected on two compilations, 2007’s Soundboy Punishments and 2008’s Soundboy’s Gravestone Gets Desecrated By Vandals. The latter of the two features a bonus disc of remixes by the likes of T++, Pole, Peverelist and Badawi. These remixes further cement the link between Shackleton’s organic dubstep variations and minimal techno.
Aside from his own label Shackleton released music on Scuba’s Hotflush Recordings, Clandestine Cultivations and the super-hip Crosstown Rebels label. By the end of 2008 Shackleton’s dark, idiosyncratic sound had become both heavily in-demand and almost totally indefinable. By the end of the year Appleblim and Shackleton decided to end Skull Disco.
In 2009 Shackleton released his first proper full-length. Three EPs came out via the excellent Perlon label, an imprint closely associated with minimal techno. The producer has recently moved to Berlin and you can hear the element of that city’s techno scene further infiltrating his work on this album. While his production trademarks are still evident — industrial drones, super heavy bass, labyrinthine and organic percussive programming, disembodied vocals and heavy dub effects — the tempo has shifted from dubstep to classic techno speed. Each of these tracks is a sonic maze, boasting alien atmospheres and super complex rhythms with a deep sense of the spatial. Shackleton has essentially created his own genre somewhere between dubstep and minimal techno with Three EPs. This is bass music of the highest order and truly sounds like nothing else.
Through a focused aesthetic and subtle genre splicing Shackleton has created an utterly singular style over the last six years. His keen use of the best elements of techno and dubstep has filtered out any genre stagnancy and kept his work freshly at the vanguard of artistic dance music. That plus a signature, carefully selected sonic palette and deft understanding of dance music’s dynamics marks this producer as a genuine visionary in his field.
