About this item

Known respectively for their independent work as Botany and Lushlife, Spencer Stephenson and Raj Haldar selected their collaborative mantle, The Skull Eclipses, when the album became more than just a one-plus-one combination of their individual sounds. The odd title was originally given to a demo beat that Stephenson sent Haldar back in 2014, but it quickly became apt for the subject matter and emotional tone that the album and group took on during creation. “The Skull Eclipses” refers to the philosophy of Solipsism, that nothing veri¬ably exists outside of the human mind, and dually to the idea that knowledge of one’s own mortality makes inner peace unachievable.

Happiness is “eclipsed” by the image of death, classically represented as a “skull”. Accordingly, Haldar’s lyrics are a free-associative discourse on the value of life amid a growing population, Islamophobia misdirected at non-muslims via racist assumption, poverty, pharmaceutical abuse, mortality, mental illness, international conflict, political unrest, police shootings, and the continual failure of the drug-war that began when the album’s creators were just children. Stephenson’s trademark fractalline production, noticeably more grim and aggressive than the tie-dyed psychedelia of his Botany project, provides ample space for Haldar’s shadow-self to break through. Aside from displaying a wider tempo variation than any of Stephenson’s work to date The Skull Eclipses is spun from sonic threads dark enough to border on horror. Songs are glued together with interstitial bad-trip creep-ups: melting choirs, doomsday evangelists, and the Judica-Cordiglia recordings that are purported to have captured the sounds of Russian kosmonauts burning up on reentry.

Broadly, The Skull Eclipses is a post-hip hop album that harmonizes tropes of mid 90's electronic genres-- ambient, downtempo, jungle, & trip-hop-- under a hauntological umbrella. It is the first offering from a project that's as much indebted to Broadcast & The Focus Group as it is to Pete Rock & CL Smooth, but obligated to neither. Up close however, the album is a peer into the shadows by two figures uncontent with blending into the tapestry of modern music, wholly committed to creating experiences over mere content, which is pouring in from all corners of a frustrated and distracted world. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A brilliantly effervescent mix of underground hip-hop, electronic beats, ambient interludes and thumping weirdo drone. It's a beautiful and varied beast, and one that demands your attention.

TRACK LISTING

1. Yearn In¬nite I 1:31,
2. All Fall (ft. Def Rain) 4:34,
3. Angels Don't Mind 2:41,
4. Pillars (ft. Baba Maraire & Felicia Douglass) 4:58,
5. Take My 2:44,
6. Encyclopedia 4:38,
7. Gone (ft. Open Mike Eagle) 4:10,
8. Gun Glitters (ft. Lojii) 4:00,
9. Pushing Up The Hills 3:37,
10. Yearn In¬nite II (ft. Laraaji) 1:31,
11. Spacecrafts In Rajasthan 4:22