Tiger In The River (LP)

A tour de force of Psychedelic RnB that will have you grooving and reeling in equal measure! SKILAA enlisted the production and mixing expertise of Tāmaki Makaurau's own Jeremy Toy (Open Souls, She's so rad) and the record was mastered by New York-based Grammy nominated Nate Wood (Kneebody, Tigran Hamasyan).

The eclectic full length LP features the multi layered melismatic singing that is a signature of Chelsea's writing style, delicate to laser-like textures and chord progressions from guitar genius Michael, molten-flowing grooves laced with harmonics from Tom Dennison on Bass, and the jaguar-like, rippling power of Adam Tobeck's drumming to underpin the rest of this extraordinary body of work.

Thematically, the lyrics you'll find here are not only an odyssey through the emotional mind of their singer, but an ode to her love for the musicians and the music itself, especially on tracks like 'Straight Trippin' and 'Solos'.

The single 'Southern Gothic' features a second collaboration with production team Night Watch, capturing SKILAA's darkest and most humorously macabre offer yet. Chelsea wrote this song after watching a spate of horror films (a favourite genre of hers) and shared this about the experience:

"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"