Skeleten: ‘I Don't Know If I'll Ever Truly Reach That Point Of Nirvana… But I Think I'm Getting There’

It was early 2021, when seeking out some sense of normalcy amid the slow-progressing stillness of the COVID-19 pandemic (and its peak we had yet to experience in Sydney), did I first hear of electronic artist Skeleten’s music. During a morning producer shift at the community radio station FBi Radio, Skeleten’s bellowing vocal harmonies on the track Walking On Your Name rang through the producer booth speakers. Denying his intrinsic ability to conjure up a groove is impossible – the body never lies. With shoulders swaying and head bopping side-to-side, I knew the praises that Skeleten was receiving from the on-air presenter were beyond justifiable. 

Skeleten has been a staple in Sydney’s tight-knit electronic community for years. His music feels almost foundational in identifying the sonic essence of Sydney; drum patterns akin to the rumble of the city’s bustle, layered synths adjacent to the screech of trains at Central Station – his music was, and still maintains to be, all encompassing of an artist that toys with a fantastical perspective on reality. When we talk to the artist prior to the release of his sophomore album Mentalized, the grey area between fantasy and reality, unknown and understanding is still something that rings prevalent to his music thought processes, although never intentionally.

“I guess there is a method to the madness to a degree,” he said. “I know the kind of headspace and the kind of situation I need to be in in order to put myself in a position where I might make something that I connect with and feels resonant to me. But beyond that, there's no actual methodical process.”

The dialogue and sounds of Mentalized came to Skeleten in as organic a manner as his music always has. The album always finds ways to complete itself as demos turned into full length songs and scribbles of lyrics turned into meaningful commentary on the technological world around us. Even still, Skeleten “never set out to write this album about this stuff”. 

“I don't feel like any of my songs are ever about anything. I think the actual process of making the music often comes first, and through doing that, I realise what I'm thinking about. And after a few months of making demos and chucking around ideas, they could contain a few little snippets of feelings and new sounds in there,” he said.

“Then there comes a point where you're like, oh, it seems like everything I'm making is coming from a place of struggling with feeling disconnected and out of control in my own brain, and looking for the source of that. Or this tension between carving out your own mental space for yourself and feeling honest in your body and honest in your life, while also trying to connect through this web of global crazy technology, and feeling very out of sorts in that process. That's kind of where it came from,”

“At the same time as I was partway through making the first few songs, I think I was  starting to recognise that I'm feeling a bit out of sorts with my relationship to social media and information coming in. And then I was with a friend and we started to talk about old TV mentalists, like Darren Brown and people like that. I think we got obsessed in the early 2000s with people who could use mind tricks to convince people to do certain things or act a certain way without them kind of realizing it. And then we kind of just started joking about how "I'll mentalize you, I'm so mentalized right now",”

“I feel like I've been mentalized 24/7 for the past 10 years, the whole time I've been an adult human in this late capitalist, techno world of social media and attention economy. That's when I was like, oh, I think this is what the album is.”

Over the past three decades, we’ve witnessed the digital world morph itself into the physical. With the inescapable uprising of social media platforms, AI technology and subliminal, visual propaganda, our brains are at its most heightened vulnerable state, losing its susceptibility to authentic, human thought with each tap of a phone screen. Finding ways to remove oneself from the daunting repercussions of the digital-physical space we now exist in is difficult, even for the most remote individuals. For Skeleten, music is and always has been the keyholder.

“That's the space that I can get away from and kind of carve out a little bubble of centeredness,” he said. “And I think that's why the actual music, not just the lyrics, but the music comes out the way it does,”

“Apart from that, I struggle to self preserve, I struggle to disconnect. But I try to by being in nature, being with friends. Something I've been doing a lot recently is getting super deep into old fantasy book series. That's something I've been doing the whole time that I was writing this album,”

“There's this long, kind of beautiful world building fantasy series that I find really soothing, calming and philosophical. It's fantasy, but it's talking about these weird eco and pan-psychist philosophies within these fantasy worldviews, which has been something that's been a great source of calm for me. It's kind of offering a moment outside of your normal reality. It's just kind of like an alternate option of what life is like with these systems of thinking about the world, which are often so similar,”

“They all have this view that there’s something within humans that connects us to all of the world and all of nature that can transcend time and space, which is such an ecological narrative a lot of the time, and this very broad, non dualistic perspective on the human brain and the human consciousness. So I end up gravitating towards that stuff and find it really reflects back on what I do in music.”

Mentalized plays out almost like an existentialism-fuelled shroom trip, though, without the intensity of an ego death. Instead, Skeleten’s shamanic deliberation and soothing tone guide you through the “how” and “why” of mentalization. While you may feel compelled to look deeper within and outside of yourself as the album progresses, you also may find your body distractedly convulsing to the beat. By the end of it all, you just want your mind to come back to itself freely and honestly. On tracks like Deep Scene, a sense of longing for freedom is soaked into the choral repetition of the lyrics “the real coming home”. While “the real coming home” can be interpreted to mean many different things to everyone, for Skeleten, it comes back to losing yourself to information overload and influences from the outside world.

“That lyric is definitely me thinking about feeling caught up in this morass of uncertainty and information coming from the outside world, and struggling to peel back to who you are as a person, and find your own sense of self and solidity in that torrent of information,” he said.

“I just want to be very deeply into coming back to myself 100% honestly, and be one to one, truthful with myself and understanding of myself in order to connect more authentically with the people around me that I love. That's kind of what I'm getting at when I'm talking about “the real coming home”. It's like coming home to yourself, and it's kind of aspirational. I think it's like imagining the perfect singularity of being fully at one with yourself and your world. Which is why I think it's got to be kind of celebratory.”

Coming home to yourself is easier said than done. Even after making a meditative, complex and still blatantly honest full length project diving into concepts like this, the journey to unhindered bliss is undoubtedly filled with struggle, turmoil and a constant push – one that Skeleten himself is at peace with.

“It's always a work in progress. I don't know if there is really a real true coming home, but it's great to think about,” he said.

“Imagine what it would feel like to do that. Making this music really pushes you, it pushes me along to get more understanding of myself and more understanding of how I connect with others. I don't know if I'll ever truly reach that point of nirvana, pure understanding and acceptance. But I think I'm getting there. And I think music, my own and other people's, and making music and playing music is really the biggest driving force in that personal journey.”

Mentalized by Skeleten is out now via all streaming platforms.