Eora/Sydney-based artist Skeleten releases his second studio album, Mentalized, today via 2MR / Astral People Recordings, alongside his new video for focus track, “Raw”.
What does it mean to mentalize others? How might the world around us stick us to our seats? In the modern world, is it truly possible to mentalize yourself into being? These are questions more easily asked than answered.
Where Skeleten’s 2023 debut album Under Utopia celebrated a world of hope and beauty pushed upwards by us all, his follow-up posits that this push comes with a struggle. It’s less about the fantastical, and more about asking how we are mentalized, and taken away from ourselves everyday. To play in this world doesn’t come without working for it, and that struggle is best when shared.
Mentalized is an evolution in attitude, sound and style that sees Skeleten emerge as a unique chronicler of contemporary living. Industrial and nu-metal textures underpin dreamlike vocals and abstracted pop arrangements, while fuzzed out guitar, harking back to 2000s indie, punctuates deep house and trip-hop rhythms. Underlying it all is an innate inclination towards the dance music world that Skeleten comes from, and the sound of genuine love and reverence for his craft.
Skeleten’s world is both a sonic and visual one, conceptualising and creating every feeling from each piece of artwork, to music videos, to live visuals. His video for “Deep Scene” is an optical treat in which he dances through the excavated tunnels of the underground of Sydney. Opening with a vocalised exhalation “what the f*ck…”, it’s underpinned by a mantra “the real coming home” sung by a choir over and over again.
“Love Enemy” is a trip-hop inflected, guitar punctuated, and quietly ascendent track. It’s one of many songs where guitars make a more visible appearance on this record. “These People”, the opening track, is embellished by noodly and melodic guitar lines, “Bodys Chorus” pulls you in with hypnotic synth-bell chimes, and pushes you back with staccato overdrive guitar stabs, as if shaking you out of a daydream. Turntablist scratching both here and throughout the sonic texture of the rest of the album acts as a homage to nu-metal and trip hop and their humanistic approach to electronic music – an attention to detail that Skeleten relishes in, and which rewards deep listens.
Where the first half of the album is a cerebral meditation on the struggle of resisting being mentalized, things pivot on the emotionally expansive “Raw”. There’s more movement to Skeleten’s vocal melody, more foregrounding of his instrumentation, and lyrics pointing in every which direction. It’s a midpoint ballad that signals a shift in a journey to connection.
Reflecting on the track Skeleten said “‘Raw’ is one of the most personal songs on the record. I think often I’m making music in the space between myself and the world, but ‘Raw’ feels more like it’s just straight up from me. The first half of the album is kinda wading through some angst, trying to strip away noise to reveal a bit of truth and I think ‘Raw’ is one of the moments when that actually happens. Like when life hurts but you know it’s real?”
If “Raw” is the emotional outpouring of the album, “Let It Grow” is the dissociative surrender to pleasure that follows. Over a sensual synth line, Skeleten breathes life into the inexplicable weight of intimate connection.The song hangs heavy in the air, unmoving like the heat of an overpacked club, and the only way out is up.
“Viagra” is another step outside the pre-existing world of Skeleten, with vocals on full display, singing in his highest register – a hand extended out to catharsis, but perhaps just not reaching it. It’s a song that questions the ways in which we submit our bodies to the forces of capital. Album closer “Mindreader” is an exhalation of a different kind. An exhalation in being spent. It’s the result of navigating a relationship with oneself, with others, and with the world simultaneously. Of striving for goodness and pushing upwards, and always, inevitably, in some way falling short. The solace is in falling short together, and pushing anyway.
Driven by poignant mantras orchestrated to dance to, Skeleten’s Mentalized is a deeply personal offering, opening up to reveal not that Skeleten possesses all the answers, but that he’s asking the same questions as you. In resisting being mentalized, he shows how important it is to submit yourself.
