Pitchfork

Photo by Katie Kaars

Mike Skinner blogs a lot. Thus, when given the opportunity to interview the Streets' point man earlier this week, we focused mostly on the contents of his recent blog posts, asking him about his forthcoming album Everything Is Borrowed, the fate of his collaborations with Robert Wyatt and Muse, walking through France for his video for "The Escapist", and the end of the Streets.

Over the course of our conversation, Skinner revealed that one of his primary motivations is simply a creative restlessness. "My brain is always working," he said, and he is intent on doing things on his own terms. It's fitting then that the feistiest he got was when discussing the business aspect of music: "It's great to feel like you're not part of this major record label bullshit."

Skinner hasn't abandoned all labels, however. Everything Is Borrowed comes out in the UK via 679 on September 15, and it has just been announced that Vice will give the album its U.S. release on October 7.

Pitchfork: You said on your blog that Everything Is Borrowed will be the second-to-last Streets album. Is that true?

Mike Skinner: Yeah, I want it to all fit into a nice tidy box. I don't want to repeat myself. I want it to stand as a body of work in its own right.

Pitchfork: Was there any specific moment or realization you had that made you feel like you would be repeating yourself after five records?

MS: No. I mean, I always had plans for it to feel quite consistent. I think the beginning of that was the CD artwork. Early on, I had a very clear idea that all the CD booklets were going to fall under a similar framework.

Pitchfork: Do you have any idea what you'll do after the final Streets album is released?

MS: I'd like to do a film, I think. That'll be the first thing I'll do. But I want to do it all on my own, not seek funding from anywhere else, because I'd rather it didn't end up being the by-committee type thing you get in the film industry.

Pitchfork: Would you like to direct, act, or do something else?

MS: I mean, all of it, really. Because we've always kind of done everything in our own way, with the "Beat Stevie" TV show and my albums as well. There's always been a feeling that we're making up our own rules. With the Streets, I write, I rap, I produce-- I even mastered the new album. They are different disciplines, but it's all just one vision.

Pitchfork: Do you expect to be involved with music at all after the Streets comes to an end?

MS: Totally, yeah. I can't do anything else!

Pitchfork: So it's not like the Streets will be the final music you ever put out.

MS: No, no, no. I've been asked this a lot. I didn't make this big announcement. It was just something that I kind of implied in a blog. It didn't really seem like a very big deal to me at the time, but I get asked about it a lot now. I get sick of it, because it seems like this high drama. It's not really like that to me.

Pitchfork: It's something you planned all along, that this was going to be a contained project with a beginning, middle, and end?

MS: Yeah, totally.

Pitchfork: You've also said some things about the potential Everything Is Borrowed follow-up, that it might be called Computers and Blues. Is that still the plan?

MS: Yeah, I mean, this album wasn't called Everything Is Borrowed until one of my fans got on my MySpace and said they can't wait for my new album, Everything Is Borrowed. So it was named by a fan, really. In a way, my actions are almost defined by the things I say in blogs in the middle of the night when I'm really tired. And then suddenly, it's reality. It's quite fun, really. But yeah, the next album's going to be futuristic, and I really like the idea of the sci-fi type of "what if." You know, "What if things turned out like this?" I think the future is a great way of leaving things.

Pitchfork: Are you still planning on using that new 909 drum machine you got for the next record?

MS: Yeah, I've got the 909, but what's even newer is the 303. I've got the 303 as well. I won that on eBay.

Pitchfork: Another thing you said in blog posts was that you intentionally crafted Everything Is Borrowed as a response to people who thought The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living was too self-absorbed or negative. Is this the first time you've ever made music so intentionally as a response to something like that?

MS: No, not at all. Every album was the same, really. I made the first album as a response to everything else that was out there. I made the second album as a response to who people thought I was, or what I thought I was turning into. I made the third album as a response to what people thought I was again. They're all rebellions, and they're all as simple as that.

Pitchfork: It seems like an interesting way to work, especially since so many musicians take a lot of pride in never reading their own press. It's like you're admitting you do read your own press and trying to engage people in a dialogue about it.

MS: I don't think it's so much like that, although there is an element of that. And I don't agree that anyone else doesn't do that. I think it's bollocks if they say they don't. But I don't think it's as simple as reacting to the press. It's more reacting to my own music, I think, and going off of reactions to what I've done before. But there are definitely elements of all of those things.

Pitchfork: For your upcoming tour, you've said you want people to bring things to the shows for you to borrow. Have you worked out any of the logistics for that?

MS: No, but it's not a massive tour, so I think it's just going to be down to us. I'm really excited about the idea of people coming and lending us things and us taking them to the next show. But we've got to organize it, and hopefully it's going to come off.

Pitchfork: And you're planning on bringing not just the things that people bring you, but the actual people with you, too?

MS: Yeah, not as many people. It's going to be a kind of competition. We're going to have a set amount of after-show parties, like mini-shows after our gigs, in certain places. We'll do one in Stockholm and maybe Paris or something. All around Europe, basically. But yeah, people will bring stuff to lend to us, and we'll choose one or two things and bring the kids to the next show.

Pitchfork: It seems like you're always thinking of ways to keep your fans involved.

MS: Yeah, in a way. I'm very creative. My brain is always working. It's not the fans, necessarily. It's everything we do. You know, with the Beats [Skinner's record label, which he shuttered at the beginning of 2008), we could have gone on for a while, we could have carried on, but we just said, "Fuck it. Let's make a bit of noise and have a funeral and burn it." Ted Mayhem is kind of like my creative partner in everything that isn't music. We just kind of come up with these things. It's great to feel like you're not part of this major record label bullshit which we're surrounded with but that we're trying to break out of.

Pitchfork: One of the things that got cut from the final version of Everything Is Borrowed was a collaboration with Robert Wyatt.

MS: Yeah, the Robert Wyatt thing was "On the Edge of a Cliff". I went up there and recorded the song with him, and then I came back to London. The album took ages and ages. It got towards the end, and everything was coming together really quickly. I changed my lyrics a lot, so the song ended up getting changed and changed. Probably one of my biggest regrets, actually, was not going back up to see Robert and re-record his vocal with my new lyrics. But it got to be a week before I had to hand it all in, and I was just kind of lazy, really.

Pitchfork: What about "Who Knows Who", the rap-rock track with Muse that leaked? It seemed like sort of a lark, but are there any plans to continue with that?

MS: Well, the Muse thing was-- we just kind of did it. It was quite different than the kind of stuff I'm doing at the moment. It was fairly off-the-cuff, actually, very natural. Then my label got really-- I think it got played to the boss of Warner over here or something, or Atlantic, and suddenly it was all getting really corporate. More than ever now on Everything Is Borrowed, I'm really rebelling against all the shit, all the corporate shit, all the panicking that's going on in the music industry. "Oh, everyone's got to sell records, sell records." I'm really, really rebelling against all of that shit. So for me, it just became a part of all that crap, you know? And it wasn't us. Me and Muse were being musicians. We were acting on inspiration, and it felt authentic to me. And then it just became something else. This was before it got leaked. It was all done in private, and then it got leaked. So it's all good, man. I don't mind.

Pitchfork: How long was the walking trip you took for the "The Escapist" video? You announced the concept a while ago, and after seeing the finished product--

MS: It went on for ages. I wanted to do something that was getting away from the traditional setup. We were in the middle of recording. As far as the label is concerned, they don't really want to speak to you until they've got an album to promote. But I really wanted to do something that was genuine, so it was just the three of us that shot it. I think that's the reason why [it resonates with] people, because it didn't go through that kind of filtering process that you get in the music industry, when you've got to sing the words to [make it] work on MTV or whatever. I'm just really trying to do things that I feel.

Pitchfork: Have you considered releasing the album in a non-traditional way, like Radiohead did with In Rainbows or Trent Reznor did with some of the new Nine Inch Nails stuff?

MS: Yeah, I would love to, but I'm signed. Radiohead weren't signed. When you're signed to a label, you can't do anything you want to do, because the label has to try and sell CDs.

Pitchfork: Do any of your label frustrations have anything to do with ending the Streets, or are those things independent of each other?

MS: No. I mean, I've had a really great run of it. Everything has gone really well. I'm definitely going to get out on my own and do whatever I feel like doing. It's kind of mixed all in there. I think if I wanted to carry on making albums, I could see myself signing another record deal, if it was albums. But I don't think I want to do albums, really. I don't listen to albums. There are a few albums I've listened to lately, but largely, I buy albums and listen to songs. And you can't do a deal where you're just doing songs, because it all comes 'round to CDs at the end of the day at any label.

The Streets:

08-29 Paris, France - Rock en Seine
10-04 Glasgow, Scotland - Barrowlands
10-05 Manchester, England - Academy
10-06 Sheffield, England - Plug
10-09 Birmingham, England - Academy
10-10 Newcastle, England - Academy
10-11 Oxford, England - Academy
10-13 Southampton, England - Guildhall
10-14 Preston, England - 53 Degrees
10-16 Norwich, England - UEA
10-17 Bristol, England - Academy
10-18 Nottingham, England - Rock City
10-19 Leeds, England - Academy
10-25 Oslo, Norway - Rockefeller
10-27 Copenhagen, Denmark - KB Hall
10-28 Hamburg, Germany - Gross Freiheit
10-29 Bielefeld, Germany - Ringlokschuppen
10-10 Dresden, Germany - Strasse E
11-01 Duisburg, Germany - Kraftzentrale
11-02 Frankurt, Germany - Hugenottenhalle
11-03 Berlin, Germany - Huxleys
11-04 Warsaw, Poland - Stodola
11-06 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso
11-07 Luxembourg, Germany - Den Atler
11-09 Munich, Germany - Muffthalle
11-10 Stuttgart, Germany - Longhorn
11-11 Cologne, Germany - Live Music Hall
11-12 Zurich, Switzerland - Rota Fabric
11-13 Freiberg, Germany - Fri-son
11-15 Madrid, Spain - Joy Eslava
11-16 Barcelona, Spain - Razzmataz 2
11-18 Strasbourg, France - Laiterie