Shackleton^UK

Crédit photo: Mario Bergmann

Producteur insaisissable et visionnaire, Shackleton s’impose comme l’une des figures les plus singulières de la musique électronique contemporaine. Cofondateur en 2005 de l’iconique label Skull Disco, il s’éloigne rapidement des codes du dubstep pour explorer des territoires sonores plus ésotériques, mêlant percussions polyrythmiques, pistes méditatives et atmosphères mystiques.

Originaire du Lancashire et installé à Berlin depuis 2008, Shackleton forge un langage musical instinctif, nourri d’échos africains, moyen-orientaux ou asiatiques, sans jamais verser dans le pastiche. Il signe des albums marquants (Three EPs, Music for the Quiet Hour) et multiplie les collaborations avec Pinch, Ernesto Tomasini, Anika ou encore Vengeance Tenfold.

Avec son projet Tunes of Negation, il élargit encore son spectre vers une transe psychédélique et introspective. En 2021, il revient en solo avec Departing Like Rivers, album contemplatif pensé pour les heures suspendues de l’après-nuit. Loin des projecteurs, Shackleton continue de bâtir une œuvre rare et immersive, où la musique électronique devient le vecteur d’une quête intérieure vibrante.

An enigmatic figure in European bass music circles, cutting-edge British producer Sam Shackleton has long sustained an under-the-radar industry profile. The Berlin-based experimental producer heeded his initial dubstep calling after many return trips to London’s aptly named, club FWD, which also served as Kode9’s late nineties sanctuary. This intuitive sub-bass maestro has always taken an oblique path to creative fulfillment, with his trademark meandering percussions, brooding atmospheres, and heady, mystical melodies. His genre-defining label Skull Disco, which he co-founded with Appleblim in 2005, had spawned many breakthroughs in the realm of dark, tribal, and hypnotic dubstep by the time it folded in 2008. While primarily known to administer dubwise damage, this esteemed iconoclast also dabbles in tension-laden techno, jungle, and sample-heavy collages of all shapes and sizes. Since 2010, he has released material with an increasingly polyrhythmic, psychedelic bent on his new imprint Woe To The Septic Heart, as well as one of the most significant works of 2011 in collaboration with British artist Pinch, for Honest Jon’s Records. Two years after his last tripped-out MUTEK performance, a 2012 festival highlight, Shackleton returns to Montréal for one of his rare North American stopovers.