Sydney producer and vocalist Skeleten has announced his debut full-length album, Under Utopia, will arrive on July 28 via 2MR (Kedr Livanskiy) (NA) / Astral People Recordings (ROW). Ahead of the album’s arrival, Skeleten has shared lead-single “Sharing The Fire”.

On his debut album, Skeleten dares to imagine new ways of being that are not characterised by doom or despair – a challenge in an era defined more by feelings of futility, isolation and precarity. Across eleven tracks of free-flowing, transcendent, and often euphoric electronic music, he plays spiritual guide to a musical journey which is wonderfully in touch with realms beyond our own. Praising the power of comradery and community, dreaming of a future that is joyously boundless, Skeleten’s singular debut LP is, to borrow from one of his own lines, music for dancing “any way your body turns.”

“We’re more familiar with the idea of a dystopia in the modern world – that’s more close to our consciousness,” shares Russell Fitzgibbon, “I think on this album I wanted to explore the importance of imaging and embodying a new world.”

Ideals of connectivity come to the fore on lead single “Sharing The Fire”, a song that crackles with optimism. A sprawling dance track with pulsating synths and Skeleten’s gentle, warm vocals, “Sharing The Fire” imagines a future that is full of brightness and bliss. Born from an “almost frustrated desire to connect with more people and feel that sense of community through shared goals,” it’s a track animated by the promise articulated in the track’s chorus: For all you know, summer could be around the corner. The accompanying video clip, shot on 35mm, is similarly invested in ideas of companionship and gathering. Shot in a clinical, drab office space, friends and revellers fill the space with warmth and energy.

Written before and during the pandemic, Under Utopia was born out of a desire to connect with others and to shake the mantle of introspection that had been placed on his previous works. As the project has evolved, the artist has gained clarity on what he hopes his music will achieve: bringing people together, and creating an atmosphere of elation.

Russell Fitzgibbon cut his teeth in Sydney’s tight-knit electronic community just as the city itself was forging its own identity. Debuting under his solo moniker in late 2020, Skeleten is Fitzgibbon’s most personal project to date, the sound of him unfiltered for the first time as both a vocalist and producer. At once intimate and otherworldly, at the core of the project lies a strong sense of uncomplicated openness and a deeply rhythmic, meditative ambience. Strikingly unplaceable, the result is a curious yet alluring amalgam of far-flung influences and emotive atmospheres that invites you to get repeatedly lost in.

Skeleten
Under Utopia
Track Listing
2MR

01. Generator
02. Mirrored
03. Walking On Your Name
04. Heart Full Of Tenderness
05. Territory Day
06. No Drones In The Afterlife
07. Under Utopia
08. Colour Room
09. Right Here It’s Only Love
10. Sharing The Fire
11. Everything We Need In The World

Pre-order Under Utopia by Skeleten HERE