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Skeleten's journey through being 'Mentalized'
Having just released his second LP, the Gadigal Land/Sydney has found himself just a little bit more.
Is a piece of art a reflection of the artist, or is it a means through which they understand who they are?
Gadigal Land/Sydney-based musician Skeleten, real name Russell Fitzgibbon, is an artist comfortable with never knowing which comes first. His latest record, ‘Mentalized’, is the highly anticipated follow-up to 2023’s ‘Under Utopia’, where the artist established themselves as an exciting and ever-refreshing voice among Australia’s musical community.
While ‘Under Utopia’ was Skeleten finding its feet, ‘Mentalized’ is the project finding its voice.
In a world ever consumed by influence: of politics, our lives online and a palpable distance between us and the people around us, ‘Mentalized’ sees Skeleten reacting to the way that influence interacts with how we define ourselves.
In an extended interview, Russell spoke with Mixmag ANZ at his home studio on Gadigal Land to. better understand how the project came to life and how he sees himself within it.
These are his words.
Listen to 'Mentalized' here.
Around the time I was making the album I started getting into people like Derren Brown and the '90s kind of TV, UK mentalists who would like, get out there and convince people to rob a bank just through the power of suggestion.
I kind of realised while I was writing a lot of the stuff that the kind of themes that I was writing about, all the stuff that I was thinking about at the time, it's like I feel like I'm being 'mentalized' 24/7 by my phone, the world around me, the forces of capital that act on us every day, social media, the attention economy. I found that that was kind of a lot of what I was going through in the process of writing it and so it just kind of came together when I started thinking about being 'Mentalized'.
After I finished 'Under Utopia', even before it had come out I was like, "let me get back in the studio now that I kind of understand what I may be about". I felt really solid and able to just be like, "what else can I do here?" Like, what else am I interested in, and how could that sound? How could I develop as a person and as an artist? The music is always a reflection of kind of where you're at as a person and so it's like, "okay, what experiences and what stuff am I drawn towards in a more kind of intentional way?"
I remember writing a note in my phone being 'industrial guitar, breakbeat, congers, bass' as this like concept of like, "oh imagine if I made some music that was this," and then that was kind of like, "I'll experiment with that and see what happens". It always just moved away from that.
Those kind of little jumping off points was a really fun way to do it. I think it showed I was excited about making music.
If I think too hard it immediately feels fake.
Which is this funny thing because, I find I need to separate what I'm creating from a vision of myself as an artist because otherwise it feels contrived. In order to get yourself into your art you need to kind of forget who you are for a second because in that way you discover what you're about.
Who you are just comes through.
One of the joys of making music in general for me is that you just start doing the thing and when you come out of whatever you're doing and you look back at it and you kind of can see it, then you're like "oh, this is, this is me."
I do find it super therapeutic. Obviously you still need actual therapy but there's a similarity there, but its own weird thing i'm addicted to, I guess.
I've always been bad at being like, "I want to make a tech house track that's in this certain vibe", and I try and I'm like, "oh, I don't like it, it doesn't feel real". In that way, you can't really control it that much. I just don't think that I have the agency to make exactly what I want at all times. You can push it in directions.
This is not a concept album where I sit down and be like, "I want to write about our relationship to technology," and like, "I want to write about this feeling I'm having where I like, hate social media or whatever", but in the process of doing it there's definitely these things which just kind of come up.
I think that's where, you know, that idea of 'mentalisation' kind of comes into it.
Every song seems to be working in the space of this relationship between myself and the outside world and how that's filtered through all the information and media that's coming at me.
I was reading a lot of philosophy, there's some people I really like who talk about 'panpsychism' and this idea of human consciousness not being this unique thing that's just, 'the mind, the body', and it being much more about kind of being surrounded by consciousness in all forms. It's very like ecologically minded.
I think that informed a lot of it as well, as this way of thinking that does pull me out of the kind of 'mentalized' framework.
That process of what I'm thinking about when I'm making music is kind of, in a lot of ways, antithetical to being a musician.
Musicians are kind of celebrated and marketed, you know, and music is a commodity to a certain extent, which is something I just like to struggle with constantly. I've struggled with it more and more throughout this record. You know, mulling on these themes just in my life and in the music. That's definitely been a little bit of a reckoning with how I present myself as an artist and how I interact with, like, the broader music ecosystem. The space that I find I'm always working in, or always like kind of fascinated with, is that zone between the listener and the artist.
I feel like I'm constantly just struggling with that.
Musically, the intention is definitely not to make the listener think about this thing. It's much less, prescriptive than that. How you meet and how you make authentic connections, that's the exciting part. The idea is like, when I'm making music I'm creating a space for myself as a listener to, you know, step out of your everyday analytical head.
From an audience point of view, you can feel people's energy on stage. People playing music together, it's kind of a demonstration. Sharing the same space emotionally, is definitely a really important thing for music in general, but definitely in what I do.
Expectation is a big enemy of satisfaction.
The world in which we hear music these days is so intangible, it's so disconnected.
You don't really have that moment of looking someone in the eye, understanding and feeling it. These days you kind of do need to figure out what does make you feel good, whether it's the moment where you can play these songs live, or running into people who you love who are listening to it, or just the feeling of like some kind of internal knowledge and 'zen satisfaction' with what you've put into the world.
Whatever it is, I guess is what music's always been about right?
Transcending. Transcending together?
