“What do you reckon, black or white?” Mike Skinner asks, as we walk into an empty hall in East London, as he peers upwards, deciding what colour curtain to have as his backdrop ahead of some filming he had planned later that day. A seemingly innocuous, yet strikingly familiar introduction to this artist – as the man behind The Streets has always been renowned for his informal accessibility. His approachable, even intelligible tonality, the relatable lyricism, which manages to be so real, and yet so poetic at the same time. It’s a voice that defines a generation – and one that has never truly changed. Since the age of 21 when he created Original Pirate Material all the way up to the present day, and with his latest album ‘The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light’ and the connected feature film of the same name, it feels like truly, barely anything has changed at all – and I mean that as a compliment.
We sat down, on two wooden chairs in the middle of the empty hall – looking up at the stage, with a draped, black curtain (he went for the former) at the back. This is the location for a shoot in his film, a neo-noir set in the back rooms of venues amidst the underground world behind the decks, as Skinner writes, directs, edits and stars as the lead. This is very much his movie, and it’s what we were there to discuss….
What was the genesis for this film?
I got into screenwriting because I just wanted to write better Streets songs, and so I ended up getting really into country music, because between those two things, it felt like a Streets song. It’s between that and doing loads of music videos. If you look at my first album, the photos that we took, the idea is that it looked like it was a film, so I think all musicians really want to make a film, want to make their music into a film, but most of them aren’t as stupid as I am to actually try and do it.
It didn’t feel too far removed from your body of work, it felt like an extension of your work. You’ve always been a storyteller, A Grand Don’t Come For Free was a linear story throughout the album. So did this feel like a natural progression for you?
To me, yeah. I understand to other people it seems like I’m doing something new. Even though it seems like I’m doing a lot of stuff, that is all I do. So most people have a job and they have interests, but I just have interests and all of it is my job. I did think I was just going to do a normal film, but then gradually different ideas came together and actually in a weird way everything has come back to one thing. Because the film is the DJing, it is the song-writing, the music. When you do everything yourself you can’t help but it be like you, but hopefully that softens the blow to people who are wondering what the hell I am doing.
There is an affectionate seediness to the behind-the-scenes of the nightclub life, which is aligned to classic film noir films which are often set in that underbelly of society. Is that something you wanted to capture?
Yeah, totally. I thought it would be more overt, actually. But 100%, the story about Fabric getting closed down and it being a drug death and it feeling like maybe there was a property element to the story – that was a big Chinatown style story, where it’s not about the body it’s about the fact we’re redirecting all the water to LA. It started from wanting to make music that was the voiceover, a musical where the voiceover is the songs. Then once you start thinking about voiceovers, it’s got to be noir, really. Even noir spoofs have amazing voiceovers, like Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. Then that film Brick as well, which is a kind of a spoof, but not. At the beginning I thought it would be even more film school pastiche, but it’s got all the elements, including the femme fatale.
So are you a big fan of that genre?
The Big Sleep is my favourite book of all time. I was not much of a Dashiell Hammett fan, I was much more Raymond Chandler when it came to books. But for the films, I prefer The Maltese Falcon to The Big Sleep, because I think Raymond Chandler’s plots are pretty unfilmmable, I think. But yeah I’m a huge fan of that stuff. Then the neo-noirs, I mean The Usual Suspects is probably my favourite film.
Are you a big film buff?
No, I’m not a film buff, I‘m a film fan. I’m am amateur, at pretty much everything I do.
You mentioned the voice-overs, and the music works as a narrative purpose here, helping to drive the story forward – do you find it easier communicate story and your thoughts and emotions through songs and music than through dialogue and speech, give your background?
I guess I have definitely had a lot of practise at music. The dialogue was really good fun though, because it doesn’t have to rhyme, it doesn’t have to fit into a rhythm, you can just say whatever you want. It was quite freeing. But with music that limitation of everything having to hit the same rhythm, because rhyme is difficult, but the rhythm is also difficult. I think it forces you to end up with whatever you’re gonna end up with, rather than if you didn’t have those limitations, you’d probably end up repeating yourself quite a lot because you’re not forcing yourself into a new shape.
This feels a very London film – do you consider London your home now, you’ve been here quite a while now?
Yeah I’ve lived in London longer than I lived in Birmingham. Even though I went to school in Birmingham, and I do think that wherever you go to school totally shapes you, and those years from 14 to 20 or whatever, those are the years. If I think about The Usual Suspects, that was the biggest “fuck” moment in films for me. Then things like Trainspotting. Then if I think about music it’s Daft Punk, Dr. Dre. It all happened in about four years, and I have spent the rest of my life – we all spend the rest of our lives – just coming to terms with four years of everything being amazing. I remember moving to London and thinking that everyone was a bit rude. Well, not rude, but you’d be in a shop and it would be like ‘give me this, give me that’ but I can honestly say that’s normal to me now, completely normal. I never think ‘oh I’m in London’.
Do you still keep in touch with your friends from that four year period?
No, no. When I was at school my best friend stole my girlfriend towards the end of school, but they’re married now so that’s the best outcome.
Did you go to the wedding?
[Laughs] No. But it’s one of those things where, when I left school, I was like, I will never speak to any of these people again. Not in a bad way, but it was like, that was that bit of my life, now I’m gonna do something else.
Back to The Usual Suspects – did you guess the ending first time you saw it?
No, first time I saw it, it completely blew me away. I have to say that I really like twists, those 90s twists. Like in Se7en, I’m an absolute sucker for those. I think it’s because my mum was into murder mysteries, and I think it has a murder mystery vibe to it, an Agatha Christie ‘it’s the butler’ or whatever. The Sixth Sense, The Village, too.
I wanted to also ask about the editing, because the cuts were very creative. In the first five minutes it really took my by surprise, it was quite unconventional. Were you really involved in that side of things to?
Yeah I did it all myself. I mean I’ve done millions of music videos so I got to a point where I just don’t care. There was no process by which the film went through, it was just me doing it and then me finishing it. It was the only thing that really mattered was whether my instincts were right away about it. I wasn’t justifying it to anyone. If you’ve got an editor and then a client, or director and producer, the editor is not gonna do any weird shit and the director might ask for some weird shit but then the producer might not agree – but when that’s all one person, if I think it’s good, that’s it really.
Have you always been that way with your music as well?
Yeah. I think actually what really shaped the film more than anything was my first album Original Pirate Material, because when I did that album, people were telling me that I needed to get it professionally mixed and this is how we do things, and I was so young, and nobody expected it to be successful, so it was just like, let’s see what happens? Then it became popular after that, so there was a freeness to it, and after that you inevitably lose it, because all of a sudden everyone are like ‘well this is what this is’. So there’s a freeness to this film because no one really asked me to do it, and to be honest, it’s just a ‘let’s just get it done’ sort of thing. So it definitely felt like when I was doing the first Streets album, a sense of ‘what the hell’, really.
In terms of the acting, when I was at school I did a bit of acting in drama, and the idea of doing it now makes me tense up. You’re so vulnerable when you act, becoming someone else is a vulnerable act, I think. But for someone who has performed on stage you’ve had to build up a sense of confidence to go out there and perform. But did this feel like a different sort of nerves? How did you approach the acting?
It was nerves, but to honest I was nervous as the filmmaker, I wasn’t nervous as the actor. The acting was just ‘say the words’ and I almost just edited the film as I was saying the lines. But that feeling vulnerable thing, that is my whole life. DJing is incredibly vulnerable, because you don’t know what you’re walking into and it can be amazing and it can be realty excruciating, but I have made peace with the fact that I get paid to be embarrassed. Fundamentally, to make a fool of myself, that is what I get paid for. So when that feeling comes, it’s like, yep that’s the feeling, and it’s all just the same.
You’ve always been unique and innovative in what you do – there has never really been an artist or a sound quite like yours. Is that something that you can recognise? Are you able to recognise your own originality, or is that quite difficult to appreciate from within?
I think we’ve all got that originality in us. But the only thing that separates me from other people, from everyone else, is that I put the thing out there, really. But there’s nothing to be afraid of, there really isn’t. Copying other people is what we do as artists. Because we’re insecure and we want to be loved, so that’s why certain generations sound the way they sound, because subtly everyone is copying everyone else. But you’re not in danger, you’re just embarrassed. It’s just embarrassment that you risk, because that is ultimately what it comes down to. When you do your own thing, in any creative realm, you risk looking really silly, so we grab onto things, psychologically, we run to the edges, but my greatest and the best things I’ve ever done are when I’ve said, no, this is what I’m doing. So I guess I’ve got the confidence from looking back at a career in music and thinking, actually all of the times I got a bit scared and ran to the edges, that was the good stuff. It’s a bigger risk not taking a risk. When you take a risk actually that’s when it works.
I think Bowie said that that feeling when you’re in a swimming pool and you just keep walking until it gets deep, and you can’t quite stand up – creatively, that’s when his best work came.
Yeah, totally.
This was all self-financed. How was that experience? Was it stressful at times? I mean just the words ‘self-financed’ when put together are generally quite stressful.
The day that we shot in here was unbelievable, we started at about 9 in the morning and were shooting in one of the offices around the back, and then we had an event where I was DJing here, and I was DJing and directing, and ultimately when you self-finance you just have way more to do. But that’s the only way you end up with a film like this, is by doing everything yourself. Because every little job becomes part of the vision. You know, the sound mixing becomes part of the vision, the editing becomes part of the vision, it’s all one thing. But it’s a lot of work, it is a lot of work doing everything.
Is there a sense of relief that it’s over? Sometimes when finishing a big project I feel relief but also the hole in my schedule creates a void that I get frustrated when I can’t fill. How has it been for you?
There is absolutely no void inside me. Nothing went badly – I can’t remember raising my voice while making this film, or ever feeling like I needed to raise my voice, nothing was ever that hard. But there was a constant sense of ‘what the fuck am I doing?’ for years and years. I couldn’t go for a walk with my family without that thing being there, it was there all the time, and I don’t miss that one bit. It left me, the day that we finished. I think it was 5am my manager left with the film on a hard-drive on a Monday morning, and that weekend I literally didn’t sleep, for a whole weekend. Not sure if you’ve ever done that before? Well, we’ve all tried to do it. But as soon as it went, I’ve never had anything like that in my life where it was like a surgeon had gone in and taken that bit out of my brain and it was like, oh my God. I don’t miss that feeling. Then we had a McDonalds breakfast.
I’d love a McDonalds breakfast. But anyway – is that all enough to put you off doing it again?
A McDonalds breakfast?
No more McMuffins.
No actually, weirdly, I can only really see myself doing it again, really. But it would be much easier. There’s so many bits of the film where if I did it again, I would incorporate the music more into the actual plot, but I didn’t know how that would work when I was doing it. When I did this film I knew what the story was, and then I wrote the album and then I put the album and finished the script, whereas I think if I did it again I would know now. Another obvious thing which wasn’t obvious back then is that the only bit of the song which ends up in the film is the first verse. So I’d written three-minute songs and actually you only use a minute of each, so just knowing that, having the experience in having edited the film, I would know next time that actually you’re only going to use one minute of the song, but that minute could be so much more a part of the action. So yeah even though it has been a horrendous seven years, it wouldn’t take seven years to do it again. That’s probably the only thing I am trained to do now.
So looking back, we’re in this period now where there are milestone anniversaries, so last year was 20 years since Original Pirate Material, next year will be the same since A Grand Don’t Come For Free. Are you a nostalgic person, do you look back? And also because you’ve grown 20 years in that time – do you recognise yourself & the thoughts in the voice we hear on those first albums?
Yeah, I don’t look back ever. And I feel like exactly the same person, really. I am definitely more mature in a sense that I can make a film now, there is no way I’d have been able to make a film then. I barely left my house when I was 21 making my first album, barely left my house. Organising something like a film takes much more maturity, so in that sense I am totally different. I think that’s why musicians get quite boring when they get older, because they don’t really change. I am still those four years, those four teenage years.
This project was so all-encompassing, do you have a process across your career for a post-project relaxation? A holiday you go on? A house you visit? Playing FIFA?
Yeah I go on holiday, definitely a holiday. But to be honest the holiday is just not doing the thing. We’re doing loads of promo at the moment but my mind is completely empty, I am basically on a beach right now.
But you’re touring soon?
Yes, but that’s even more relaxing because there’s only an hour’s work to do a day.
The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light album is out now with the film set to be released later this year.
