MIKE SKINNER: BEHIND THE LENS

Mike Skinner has always been interested in storytelling. From the release of his first albums as The Streets at the turn of the Millennium, the Birmingham-born, London based musician wrote songs that transformed images and moments of everyday British nightlife and experience into dramatic movements that captured the essence of the kitchen sink dramas of Mike Leigh or Ken Loach. From the perils of finding love in the big city to petty crime and recreational drug taking, Skinner’s everyman drawl became a voice of a generation, as the promise that the millennium brought became less and less of a reality.

Embodying this sense of narrative from the off with The Streets’ first album, Original Pirate Material, it was their sophomore record that delved even deeper into the mode of storytelling. 2004’s A Grand Don’t Come For Free saw Skinner place his character as the centre of, what was commonly termed in the music press at the time, a “rap opera”, with his wry and potent lyricism taking us through a twisting story as old as time, recontextualised for the current era. As the album’s lead traversed the perils of modern-day life, losing money, losing love and achieving eventual reconciliation, or something somewhat resembling it, Skinner became further embroiled in the art of storytelling. It was around this time that he began to dip his toes into the world of music video direction, testing the water for what would later come into fruition. Continuing to develop his musical output throughout the latter half of the ‘00s, Skinner eventually tired of the album grind, stating that The Streets would be on hiatus after the release of 2011’s Computers and Blues. Delving further into music video direction, a series of club nights and film composing, it wasn’t clear as to whether The Streets would ever resurface. With many waiting with bated breath for a return that may have never come, in late 2023, however, their prayers were answered.

Two decades on since Skinner’s first foray into rap musical territory, and the 45-year-old musician has returned to that arena, this time with a feature length film titled The Darker the Shadow, the Brighter the Light under his belt and a new studio album that serves as the film’s official soundtrack. A labour of love, Skinner’s directorial debut was underpinned by well over a decade of directing music videos for The Streets and other music acts, with the artist directing, editing, composing, colour grading, lighting, and starring in the film. No mean feat, the self-funded film has taken Skinner ten years to complete, with the process of filmmaking serving as the catalyst to propel him back into the arms of music-making. Described by Skinner as a neo-noir crime movie, reflective of the American ‘90s neo-noir films he watched in adolescence, and his penchant for the works of hard-boiled detective novelist Raymond Chandler, the film sees Skinner in the role of Mike, a DJ who becomes embroiled in a drug deal gone wrong and ends up investigating a murder in a nightclub.

Sitting down with the British music legend ahead of the launch of his collaboration with Reebok and END., we discuss all things cinema with The Streets’ Mike Skinner.

You released your first feature film last year, The Darker the Shadow, the Brighter the Light, with you directing, starring, editing and composing the soundtrack. Had it always been a dream of yours to move into filmmaking?

I think everyone who’s ever written a song has imagined it as a movie. I think as I got older though, I kind of thought it was the only progression for me, so it didn’t feel like a dream, more a logical difficult step! 

Centring around club culture, and the perils that can come with that territory, why was the club environment such fertile inspiration for the film? 

Well, I didn’t know what sort of film I wanted to make for years, really; nothing really stuck. It was a horrible feeling. Until one day, I had the thought that you could do a great film noir about a DJ because a DJ is a bit like a 1940’s private detective! It morphed into its own thing though, which was great but that was the starting point and after that my life, which felt like it had kind of shattered apart, started to come back to being one thing again.

How did the experience of filmmaking compare to the creative process of writing and recording an album?

Well, it’s much, much more about people and planning. That’s basically it. You have to get good with people and you have to get good at planning, and both of those things have really stuck with me. Maybe not the people so much but the planning has really changed me, I think. You can achieve so much if you just think about what you are doing ahead of time. It’s also made me really enjoy music again though for the opposite reason!

Having spent ten years working on the project, it must’ve felt quite bittersweet, in a way, to let it go into the world. Was it difficult to know when exactly the film was finished?

Not bittersweet at all. Honestly, it was so difficult that the moment we finished it was honestly one of the best moments of my life. It was in the top 5 moments of my life. Amazing feeling. So much respect for anyone who has made a film.

You had directed several music videos, both for yourself and for other artists, throughout the 2010s. Did this experience compel you to delve into feature length direction?

Yes, music videos are a fantastic gateway drug. I’ve been so blessed to be a musician with a need for music videos because I’ve been able to live out my hobbies with it having a purpose to sell the music. There’s a lot you learn about filmmaking from music videos but there’s also a lot you have to put aside when you make a film, because a film has to make sense and the making sense bit is much harder than it looks. I comforted myself at the beginning of shooting the film with the idea that it was simply going to be 30 music videos in a row, but it’s actually harder than that because in music videos you kind of find the story in the edit but you cannot do that with a film, or it makes no sense.

Your enjoyment of film noir and hardboiled detective stories is well documented, and has been cited as one of your core inspirations behind The Darker the Shadow, the Brighter the Light; what is it about this form of storytelling that you specifically connect with?

Firstly, I think Raymond Chandler is my favourite writer, so that goes a long way, but I just love simple stories that have deeper elements to them rather than ‘literature’, which can be trying to be deep too hard. I’m also a child of the ‘90s which was the great era of neo-noir films like The Usual Suspects, Devil in a Blue Dress and LA Confidential. 

Operating as a form of musical, the film uses its soundtrack as means of storytelling. What was the inspiration behind incorporating this narrative device into the film?

Well, I could have not done it as a “The Streets” thing and just done a film noir about a DJ, but I don’t know, it just felt like music was gonna be a thing obviously and, in a way, my second album, A Grand Don’t Come For Free was a kind of film noir anyway. There was a narration and there was a suspense element in there, so I just thought, "well, what if my character from that album had gotten old and ended up stuck again but as a middle-aged DJ". It kind of worked in many different ways at the same time. 

Having been pulled back to making music after more than a decade since your last studio album, how did the experience of creating an album differ this time around?

The music was easy really compared to everything else I had to do. There’s a lightness to the music because there wasn’t any pressure on it apart from to serve the film in the way it needed to. It was fun making the music.

Your affinity for the Reebok Classic Leather is well documented – what is it about the shoe that has caused it to remain an enduring part of your wardrobe for over three decades?

My first memories consciously of it [Reebok Classic Leather] were at raves in London. There was a certain hippy sensibility to the happy hardcore guys in maybe ‘95 and then obviously it’s always been a staple on the terraces. I actually used to wear Workouts  myself and my brother wore Classics, but as time has gone on, they just work in many situations and have many different ways of presenting themselves. They are truly in the canon of, dare I say it, ‘classics’. I wish I’d had the courage to call my best work classic! 

Having successfully completed your first feature film and returned to music in one fell swoop, what is next for you?

I think I’ll just keep doing the same really. I have to get my film onto streaming services, so there’s a bit of work to do for that, but yes, I’m sure after that there will be another. It would be nice, now that I know how I like to do things, to do them in a way that is a little bit easier!