William Dorey has been accumulating a growing and dedicated fanbase with his worldly psych/dub project that is Skinshape. The sweet, lo-fi music matches the man behind the mask: chill, complex and effortlessly personal.
With his new album Umoja coming out June 19th, Dorey, unconcerned with press or fame, offers some insight into what is seemingly an elusive creative process. Being comfortable with yourself and focusing on your passion sounds like the lockdown story we wish we could tell, but for William Dorey, the one-man-band behind Skinshape, this is how he thrives, joking that his routine hasn’t changed all that much since lockdown began.
How has lockdown affected your creative process?
I mean, I pretty much wrote a new album during lockdown, so it’s been pretty awesome, haha. I felt quite inspired and I wrote a lot of music, I’m basically all the way to finishing the album after Umoja already so it all managed to come together in like twelve weeks.
The “world music” focus of Umoja is something you’ve touched on before but haven’t delved into fully until this album. Would you say that’s something you’ve gravitated towards?
Yeah, definitely. But also I feel like a lot of artists move too far away from what got them recognised in the first place, so I’m actively trying to not do that. I want to maintain my sound no matter what – that has to flow through every album. I want fans of my earlier music to keep liking the new stuff I bring out, so I’m always thinking of how to retain that feeling. Some things have changed, but mainly it’s just getting new equipment. Like this album after Umoja sounds more professional in a way because of what I’ve learnt since my earlier days, and because of new microphones it’s going to sound ‘technically’ better, but I’m still trying to keep it in that old-school sound.
Do you ever find that maintaining your signature sound can be a bit restrictive?
I mean, I’m a fan of Bonobo but it’s his earlier stuff that I like; his recent releases have strayed quite far from where he came from originally. I think it’s good to experiment with your music in new ways but personally I just don’t want to do that. For me, I like to stay in that original feeling as long as there’s enough material to work with; I’m just basically keeping the sound and bringing in different themes. With this new album I’ve been working on the past couple months I’ve been incorporating film music influences. Not too much, but very specific film influences like Singapore and Malaysian film from the ‘60s, which is seriously random. I’ve brought in some South-East Asian instruments but also included some classic hip-hop breaks: each album has a lot of variety from the last but not too much so that fans of my first album can still find some enjoyment out of it.
How did you form the relationships with the international artists featuring on Umoja?
The original idea for Umoja was basically to make some songs and fly out to various African countries to try and find some singers. This would’ve been really cool, but then I realised “Hang on a second, I live in London, there’s got to be some people here that I can find”. So I did a bit of hunting around and I found Modou Touré – he’s from Senegal but he lives in London – and we got in touch and soon after he was round my house performing it, and he absolutely nailed it straight away. D’Alma is from Portugal originally but I once heard her singing in my studio for some guests and thought “Wow, she’s got a good voice” – we’re actually talking about doing an EP together.
Idd Aziz lives in southern Norway and he’s fully settled there with a family. I was recommended him by a couple of English guys who have a project called ‘Beating Heart’, where they have all these archived tapes from Hugh Tracy, a guy who travelled to a lot of African countries in the ‘50s and recorded some traditional music, and were reissuing and commissioning music and remixes for all of this old stuff. They met Idd Aziz somewhere in Kenya and recommended I contact him and eventually I flew out to Norway and recorded his vocals in this setup we had above a Norwegian pub. There were other people I contacted who were too big in a way – they weren’t really interested or they didn’t have time. In the end, I just decided to put together everything we had and that became the album. Actually the album art for Umoja and all the singles from it were designed by a Japanese artist I found on Instagram, who also happened to be a fan of my music, so it was super chill sorting it out with him.
So how are you so familiar with all of this music from all around the world?
Well I’ve got Horus Records which is a record label that I started in 2013 with a friend from school. It’s purely reggae, like roots reggae and stuff from Jamaica. Some of these records are really rare and deserve to be heard again so we’ll license it from the original producer and get it distributed. We also record some of our own reggae. It’s not for profit really it’s more just a passion that we have. I also do sell second hand records.
Even with how much time I’m spending on making music, I feel like I do this more now than I used to do. I’ve got contacts around Africa, Europe and Asia. It’s kind of a hobby/money-maker and it just means I have first-hand access to music from that era from all around the world. I’ll receive 100 records from Nigeria, Ghana and Benin and to sell all of them I have to listen to all of them. It’s really a great source for inspiration. Another week it’ll be Arabic records and then Tanzanian records and then Kenyan records. It’s great because it’s such obscure music, a lot of it I imagine you won’t be able to find online.
What does making music mean to you? Do you ever use music to introspectively seek out some part of yourself you don’t understand as much?
On some levels you can say: imagine if you’re confused about life and you’re suffering, take those feelings and permanently put them somewhere else. In the past, not so much anymore, you can definitely hear in some of my older lyrics that there is suffering. It’s just a way of getting those emotions out of you and putting them into something positive. I’m much happier now than I was a few years ago so I wouldn’t say I’m channelling my suffering into my music anymore. But it’s still just pure emotion really. When I sit down and play and record it’s just as if I’m transcribing my emotions into another format. It’s hard to say why I make music, it’s just an urge. When I hear something I like I want to recreate it my own way, it’s as simple as having that basic urge to create.
That’s interesting you think of it simply when your music doesn’t sound simple at all.
But you know as an artist you want to explore and you always want to improve your music and be happy with it. It’s nice to make simple stuff too but a lot of the music I love is complex so if I’m trying to recreate that then, by its nature, it has to be complex. Like film music needs to be complex, in a way that I can’t explain, to convey that much emotion. When the tyrannosaurus is chasing you in Jurassic World and you’ve just got someone strumming one note on a guitar it’s gonna sound rubbish.
Do you think your personal relationship with your music is a big reason as to why you’re so focused on making music for yourself, rather than for a label for monetary success?
I mean, it’s been going on for a hundred years where record labels will tell the artists how to create so that they can sell lots of copies. I think that’s why it’s so ingrained in a lot of artists’ minds today, because “the label knows better”. Newsflash for me is: you’re the one making the music, you know better. Does a painter let some publisher come in and change how he’s going to paint something? That’s a principle I stand by: I can’t be told by anyone what the music should sound like. I don’t mind suggestions, I ask people’s opinions a lot of the time – but stuff like: “add another chorus on the end for marketability” – it makes me angry. I don’t want to hear it.
It’s nice to hear that man. I’d love to be able to imagine a musical landscape where artists were just able to create freely.
I really strongly believe that people should just stick to what they do and do it how they want to do it, why shouldn’t it be like that? Ultimately it’s the labels that are afraid that if they allow the artists to do whatever they want, it’s not going to make any money. That’s what it comes down to and that’s fucking sad. Imagine how many artists didn’t make the album they wanted to make because they allowed the label to choose the producer and the studio, and decide on which songs make it into the album. Maybe a couple of the most unique songs were left out and the ones that were still good in the album were changed so that original feeling was lost. They’ve basically changed the artist totally. The beautiful, natural parts of the music are left out and dumbed down for market success.
One last question: Which direction would you point someone in who’s looking to get into the music that influences you?
Basically they should go to reissue labels like Soundway, they have a bandcamp. Strut Records is another one. Analog Africa. Those three are the best starting point, they have all these high-quality reissues – the best music from all of Africa, South America and even some of Asia. I’m actually going to do a playlist on Spotify fairly soon of Skinshape’s influences, so look out for that.
Umoja is released on June 19
By Dan Fauzi
Feature Image Credit: Three Pin PR