Down To Earth
During the coronavirus pandemic, Skyrora joined the ranks of companies that changed tack to help the battle the virus. The company switched up their production line from satellite launchers to hand sanitiser and face masks. Using their state-of-the-art 3D printers they produced both life-saving necessities at amazing speed, rolling out 10,000 bottles of sanitiser a week! Skyrora chief executive officer Volodymyr Levykin said, “It’s during such times that businesses should step up and carry out a civic duty, setting aside normal commercial activity and standing side-by-side with government and the NHS for the greater good of our country.”
MITCHELL MUSEUM’S third album was never intended to be prescient. Frontman and lead songwriter Cammy Macfarlane’s original idea was to emulate the modern-day background noise of social media sharing. He wanted to cut up and warp samples from voice messages, Facebook Lives and Instagram posts into part of the backbeat of the record.
“I got a video from one of my friends with him talking to his kid and I thought it would be cool to start putting all my pals into the songs – without making it clear what they were actually saying,” says Cammy, over – what else? – a video call.
“The idea is that it’s there but it’s glitchy, because there’s so much going on, because everybody is screaming into the internet all the time.”
The audio experiment soon took on a new resonance during the album’s promotional cycle, which landed in the middle of the collective social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Every single song on the album has a clear story behind it, so I don’t think the meanings of them will change for me, but they might change for the audience, given everything that’s going on just now.
“I like to write lyrics that can be quite surreal, so I’ve always liked the idea of people making their own meaning out of our songs. Much of what I want listeners to get from our music is a feeling. If it moves somebody then that’s the main thing.”
Released in May on Glasgow micro-label Scottish Fiction, Skinny Tricks arrives three years after the trio’s second album, Everett Trap – not much of a gap when you consider the seven-year hiatus after their 2010 debut, while bassist Kris Ferguson was living overseas.
Besides, the lag is understandable given what goes into