Tank full of Oil: SKNAIL

SKNAIL

SKNAIL is a Swiss composer and music producer. In collaboration with 6 professional jazz and classical musicians, he has reinvented the jazz band by replacing the drummer with the sighs of broken printers, the creaking of worn out machinery, computer crashes and other sounds generated by mistreated machines. SKNAIL composes and arranges everything, and records the confrontations between musicians and machines. He will let both sides improvise and experiment with the cutting-edge. These unbridled fights, included in the first album, called “glitch jazz”, have lead to totally new and amazing sounds different from what we have heard until now, varying from jazz and free jazz to contemporary and minimal electro to glitch electronica music. All the musicians take part in a duel against a machine without ever meeting one another !

------------------
SKNAIL : producer, composer, electronics, programming
Nya : vocals
Patrice Moret / Alain Dessauges : double bass
Yannick Barman : trumpet
Philippe Ehinger : bass clarinet
Guy-François Leueunberger : piano
Design/Artwork : Efrain Becerra www.specgraphics.net/

------------------
Imagine an old-fashioned jazz club, dark and filled with smoke. A singer, five top notch musicians, breathtaking improvisations. Now transpose the same scene into the year 3147! SKNAIL, a Swiss composer and producer, has done just that and presents a 2nd album of visionary, organic jazz, some sort of a musical sci-fi novel, in which the « not-quite-humans-anymore » play the music of their ancestors, digging it up from some faraway place in their memory. The warmth of the acoustic instruments confronts cold electronics and takes the listener on a journey into the jazz of the distant future, delicate and pure. From their futuristic and ultra-technological world the Snail Charmers are transmitting an important message with the help of Nya’s voice.
------------------
This Mad Max journey of confrontation between man and machine.
The chilly, not-quite-human electronic glitches are woven with great craftmanship into the sinuey hues of voice, trumpet, bass clarinet, piano and double bass. The result is a silvery, thin blanket of sound that is far warmer and more welcoming than expected. ‘Snail Charmers’ and ‘Something’s got to give’ are probably my favourite tracks of the year so far. Rapper/narrator/singer, Nya, works wonders with his languid, lilting vocals, adding the needed human guidance along this Mad Max journey of confrontation between man and machine. This work is cleverly thought-out and studied from every angle: concept, sound and visuals. Glitch jazz is indeed a product of our digital times, proving that the conquering and innovative spirit of jazz can be merged with anything, even “the aesthetic of failure”.