Collins - Skins (2022)

’Skins’ unveils a fascinating, if slightly unnerving, crepuscular world. This is a land of slow motion, beautifully poised electro-ballads comprising vintage synths, drum machines and a scintillating cinematic palette of found sound.

Gary is an award-winning DJ (incl. Turnmills and Mixmag), having played extensively on the club circuit across Europe and Brazil since the mid 1990’s. He began experimenting with music production around 2005, as he became increasingly interested in making his own musical mark. This eventually led to a string of well-received releases on a variety of labels, including Giallo Disco, Spun Out Of Control, Dark Leader and Telefuture Records.

Technically speaking, Gary’s creative process combines a digital workstation and analogue hardware, intriguingly crafting soundscapes with a myriad of recorded matter:

“I like to create quite a layered mix, some sounds or noise are buried deep, barely perceptible but add to the ambience. I love to use recordings of real places, of real moments in time. On one track for example there’s a sample of me rattling an iron gate in the catacombs of Paris. On another, recorded on the Cliffs Of Moher here in Ireland, there's the sound of an electric fence being struck with a branch whilst the wind whips around me."

“I can take inspiration from anywhere. Can be a turn of phrase, a scene from a movie or even a conversation with a friend that gives me the initial idea for a track or the concept for an album.
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“This new album is definitely my most personal work to date. I started work on it in 2016. I was going through a break-up, it was quite a sad time so I started to make some really sad music. A bit cliche I know, but it helped. I remember thinking that as life goes by, inevitably we lose people who are very special and close to us, who’ve played a massive role in our lives. Be it through death, break-ups or just through the natural diverging of paths over time. From there I started to write tracks, to dedicate to friends, to capture memories, to reference special moments. And even though they’re not with me anymore, I just want these old friends to know that I look fondly on our time together.“

We can see how this re-examination of the themes of loss and regret create an apparent paradox at the heart of ’Skins’. Indeed, its very fabric is drafted with an almost wistful positivity:

“The suffering is obvious yet there's hope. Belief that all is not lost - the memories live on at least. I consciously wrote a few of the songs in D Dorian, a melancholic yet optimistic key signature.”

“People's interpretations could vary as the messages are often quite cryptic and abstract. But by watching the video clips on my YouTube channel the audience can pick up overt visual clues. I’d love it though if they could just put the needle on the record, sit back, switch off the lights and go on their own journey. A journey that took me 5 years to complete.”