Skin Area - Rothko Field

What I do love with the specific bands for the past 2-3 years, is the process of breaking boundaries between the sub-genres, refreshing and constant development of the sound without being stuck in some corner, producing each time the same material. As the proverb says, "He who would search for pearls must dive below", that's why I try to dive into the sea of averagism very often in order to collect those pearls that will entertain me in a routine life. One of them, which I recently came across of, is a new album from Sweden based resident under the code-name Skin Area and his new album 'Rothko Field'.

Surely, what can be discovered from this records? name is that it was inspired by the creations of Mark Rothko, one of the most significant painters of new generation who revealed his vision of myth as a replenishing resource for an era of spiritual void that had been set in motion through his paintings. They had been classified in the field of abstract expressionism and "mythomorphic" abstractionism, and put a standard for usage of multiforms in the art of surrealism. As for me, watching the reproductions of those paintings of Mark helped to set the connection between what is brought by Skin Area and the art behind the concept to create a journey full of deep and emotional atmosphere.

Drawing parallels between painting and music, I would like to notice the basics of simplicity and primitivism of Rothko's art, and those characteristics are successfully projected by Skin Area into the album structure. The opening track "Treshhold" is based on shouting slogans and protest sentences and presents a kind of intro for the things to come. The second "In the Skin" brings a viscid atmosphere of heavy droning guitars, where a very slow drumming session rules the rhythm, establishing the fundament for a special declaiming vocals part, creating hypnotic layers which remind me sometimes of the old-school industrial acts of late 80's. The next track under the significant name "Rothko Field" is a close representation of the abstract color bricks creating a special field that can be recognized in the art of Mark. The music is mostly monotonous rising and falling drilling noise, guided by the same declaiming vocals part, but not everything beautiful should be diverse. This drilling sound penetrates the inner world to bring the exact spirit of the primitivism while continuous scratching, clicking and distortion guide the process to add strength and depth to the whole process. The following three track come just in time to dilute the oppressive atmosphere. The first, "Hypnagoga", where a gentle rolling of a music box carrousel together with a hypnotizing signing, sometimes almost weeping, covers listener with a pale gamut of dying twilight to lay on a path for the next track ?Void?, a minimalistic, but still a deep drone composition, and as a conclusion comes "Hypnagoga 2", to put the end to a relaxation session with a shamanic, almost tribal drone mood created by a slow flowing melody and somnolent vocals.

"Rothko Field 2" (the imagination of Skin Area for the track names ends here) transforms once again into the same tempo of droning guitars, slow, spanning, gloomy, minimalistic, and full of different buzzing and cracking, garbled with seeds of desperation and hysteria. This track is followed by "In the Skin 2" rulled by bombastic drumming contributing to the rhythm, together with guitar's hypnotic drones and these significant vocals which became the trademark of Skin Area.

In my opinion, the conceptual success of Skin Area to describe the impulse, brought by the art of Mark Rothko, is based on the statement of understanding the background and the atmosphere of his creative process. According to Rothko, the work of modernists, influenced by primitive art, could be compared to that of children in that "child art transforms itself into primitivism, which is only the child producing a mimicry of himself." That's why the sound that is set by the Sweden comrade around constant droning and looping is that expressive towards landscapes, created by bricks of color to show to the society a gamut of surrealism. Jun 10 2012