Skin

If there’s one thing you learn from listening to a lot of prog/rock/fusion music, it’s that lightning-fast guitar players are a dime a dozen. Listeners are generally impressed the first couple of times they hear a nimble fingered axeman set their fretboard on fire, but after you realize that there’s a ton of similar guitarists out there cutting CDs you begin to get a bit jaded. This causes the listener to begin looking for traits other than speed to set guitar players apart. The reason I’m bring this up is because when I first fired up Jeff Kollman’s latest CD Shedding Skin I thought to myself “Great, another amphetamine-fingered guitarist with an entire hour to kill noodling pointlessly with his instrument.” However, after listening to the first few tracks I realized that Jeff Kollman is a shredder with “the difference” – that difference being that he can actually write a catchy tune and gets enough variance in his guitar sound to keep things interesting through most of Shedding Skin.

A surprise from this good fellow "RH-" from Poland, known more as a designer and artwork artist. This music can be described as ambient/electro with a minimalist approach, simple yet very effective. Cold minimal ambiental music, sometimes calm and sleepy, other times more moving and buzzing, also some electro influences and trippy drums here and there with keys chilling like the ocean's cold waves at dawn.

Nitin Sawhney's Beyond Skin works on at least two levels. First, it's a plea against racism and war, relating, as Sawhney writes in the liner notes, that one's identity is defined only by oneself – that identity is "beyond skin." Second, the music is an extremely accomplished blend of classical, drum'n'bass, jazz, hip-hop, and Indian elements. The album's political statements are seen most clearly in the samples imbedded in the beginning and ending of most tracks. Dealing with nuclear testing and identity, the samples are effective in setting the tone for the songs. The music is quite lush, featuring among other instruments, tablas, pianos, and cellos to equally beautiful effect. The production brings a crystal-clear polish to nearly every element in the mix, whether it's the passionate, intense vocals of the Rizwan Qawwali Group on "Homelands" or the stunning, impossibly gorgeous voice of Swati Natekar on "Nadia." The entire album is bathed in eclectic touches which never fail to maintain a poetic, accessible sense of charm and wonder. Rarely has electronic music been crafted with as much substance and style as it has on Beyond Skin. Sawhney travels back and forth between genres quite effortlessly. The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

It takes just one listen to Skin Alley's eponymous 1970 debut album to explain the band's popularity in Britain's underground college and club scenes. Here was a group who refused to play by the rules, a band whose diverse musical influences were given free rein, but who beautifully stitched together their eclectic stylings into a sound quite uniquely their own. Like most British acts of the day, Skin Alley were beholden to the blues, and the band paid off part of the debt with the barrelling "(Going Down The) Highway." But as passages in that song made just as clear, the group were equally enthralled by jazz, a style that would be explored more intimately on the atmospheric stunner of a track "All Alone."

Skin Deep is the debut album released by rapper, Solé. It was released on September 28, 1999 through DreamWorks Records and was produced by Christopher "Tricky" Stewart and Focus.
Skin Deep found mild success on the Billboard charts in the United States, peaking at #127 on the Billboard 200, #27 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, #24 on the Rhythmic Top 40, and #1 on the Top Heatseekers.