Hardly The Same Snake is Skinny Pelembe’s sophomore album, but his first fully embracing his artistic self. Visceral yet inherently soulful, Hardly The Same Snake is the sound of the Johannesburg-born, Doncaster-raised artist finally finding his voice – both literally and figuratively. In practical terms, that involved finding the courage to foreground his gravelly baritone in these gloriously genre-agnostic productions. But it also meant branching out beyond the safety net of his former label – Gilles’ Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings – to figure out the artist he truly wanted to be. As Skinny puts it today, in his soft South Yorkshire drawl, “This album is what I would have created, first time round had I rated my own voice.”Determined that the album shouldn’t sound like a band record, but equally mustn’t feel “too button push-y”, Skinny assembled songs by sampling instrumentation originally recorded live, including chopped and looped versions of the brilliantly complex beats played by Malcolm Catto of The Heliocentrics. It was a painstaking process that paid off, resulting in an album fathoms ahead of its promising predecessor, and one that honestly reflects Skinny’s creative evolution.The idea of forging your own path – and shedding skin, so to speak – is integral to Hardly The Same Snake. It’s a defiantly outward-looking record contemplating family, religion and major life milestones, from parenthood to death.
