Listen To Skilaa's New Single 'Southern Gothic'

Elevating Aotearoa's airwaves over our past half decade with such emotionally frank winners as 'I Never Knew', 'Jenny Greenteeth' and 'Bluffin', Skilaa are sharing their debut album Tiger In The River with the world this coming Friday — recorded by Callum Passells (Hans Pucket) and sporting vibrant colourful artwork by leader Chelsea Prastiti. The genre-defying Tāmaki Makaurau neo-soul / RnB / hip-hop collective have gifted us one last tune before the whole shebang finally drops in full. They worked with production team Night Watch (Jaya Beach-Robertson and Jazz Dos Santos) on 'Southern Gothic', mainlining an array of folk-gothic / horror-core inspirations (and late night experiences) to conjure a tense and tight, splattered funk vision. Read our chat with Prastiti about Skilaa a couple of year's back HERE and look forward to Friday's accompanying video for the single, the new record and release show details, we'll keep you in the loop...

"I’m a big fan of folk horror and the southern gothic horror genre in particular, so after watching Psycho, Texas Chainsaw, Undertow, Night of the Hunter, and listening to a lot of Cypress Hill, Peeping Tom, MF Doom and Madlib, I started noodling around on the piano and came up with this sinister 3 bar bass loop, and the rest of the harmonic content unfolded from there. There’s 3 tracks in particular that really inspired the harmonic palate; “Sucker” by Peeping Tom (feat. Norah Jones!?) “Rainbows” and “Meat Grinder” from the Madvillainy album.” Lyrically there’s a lot of feminine rage in this one. I was on this rather seedy vibe in my early to mid 20’s; smoking spliffs by myself in these little dark corners all over Krd and the CBD, and stubbornly (and in hindsight extremely inadvisably) walking home alone from gigs at 3am" - Chelsea Prastiti

'Southern Gothic' is out now on major streaming platforms.