[Read in full on NHAM]Interview with sknobIn anticipation of the release of a brand new album NHAM’s @ethicalrevolution sat down to speak to (NHAM’s) @sknob!“She replied that I would always be able to count on her, which I wasn’t expecting, and melted my heart.”NHAM: Well hello there sknob! How exciting to be talking to you about a brand new album, offbeat, coming out very soon. sknob: Hi Sam, thanks for having me!NHAM: You’re not normally one for releasing albums per se. In fact on 1st November 2025 you put out the following toot on Mastodon stating you’d never released an album but that recent collaborations had allowed you to move in to a space where that might happen. Post by @sknob@mamot.fr View on Mastodon
It looked like you intended the toot to be the first of a 2-toot thread. However, as time went on and the album progressed over the ensuing months you kept updating the thread with new toots until it had became a 53-toot thread! The 53rd stated on 2nd April 2026 that the album had been completed. Can you tell us how and why this experienced and prolific artist has only now come about releasing his first album, and perhaps condense that thread for us in to a slightly shorter explanation of the process behind it?sknob: After the first two toots, it occurred to me that I enjoy following other musicians’ work in progress posts on the fediverse, so I figured I’d return the favor. As I wrote at some point in that endless thread, I’ve been making music for decades, and every single time I finish a song, I honestly think it might be the last, that I don’t have any songs left in me. So deciding to write an album required taking a leap of faith. And also some prodding and encouragement. Looking at you Sam! And in fact, while I had quite a few song ideas, the album stayed stuck at four new songs for a long while and was nearly released as a 4-song EP.NHAM: There is a definite theme running through the aptly named offbeat. Can you tell us what it is that binds these tracks together?sknob: I don’t really like to explain my lyrics, because I like the idea that people will read things into them that I didn’t necessarily anticipate. Let’s just say it’s about being different, not fitting in, deviating from the norm. And how over the decades, I’ve had several convincing theories for why I have always felt that way. Let me give you an example that’s not covered at all in the album: my parents moved a lot when I was a kid so I grew up in France, England and Belgium. My parents weren’t born in any of those countries. I spoke two languages. All that was a pretty convincing explanation for why I felt different from most of the people I met. I probably thought it made me interesting, although today, I think it probably made me seem like an annoying freak. Being on the fediverse, which is full of offbeat people, helped me comfort another pretty compelling and somewhat unexpected explanation for my offbeatness, and I’m very grateful for that, and that’s what the album is really about. The lovely people reading this will have to listen to it if they’re curious to know more NHAM: The album begins with Downfall, also released as part of the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave: Autumn Waves compilation album. It’s quite a sombre start to the album, before we head in the opposite direction for a very upbeat second track (Décalé). With such variance in tracks how did you decide upon the track listing?sknob: I wrote Downfall back in late October in a gloomy mood, for both personal and meteorological reasons. But the theme of the song is what gave me the idea for the album. I wasn’t sure I would include Downfall until the last moment, so Décalé, which means “offbeat”, “different”, “out of sync” or “out of phase” in French was the first song I consciously wrote for it, and I probably decided to make it more offbeat by using those odd meters—it alternates between 5/4, 6/4 and 4/4. I had ideas for several more songs, and the first few came quite easily, others resisted me til the very end, while others came unexpectedly out of nowhere, or from wherever songs come from. I documented all these stops and starts and left turns in real time in that Mastodon thread so I hesitate to rehash them here. The final track listing is simply chronological. The songs appear in the order I wrote them. I more or less consciously alternated between different moods and vibes and keys and meters to stay engaged and avoid boring myself, so hopefully it won’t bore my listeners. And maybe the fact that I wrote the songs in that particular order has some kind of meta significance, who knows?NHAM: Two of the eight tracks are sung in French, with the other six in English. Your native language is French. You’re fluent in English. I’m interested to know how and when in the song-writing process you come about deciding which language a song will be sung in?sknob: Good question. The short answer is it depends. Sometimes, I’m subbing someone I know IRL who is English or French-speaking, sometimes I write about things that are more topical in a certain country, sometimes, a verse pops into my head in English or in French. In this instance, I’ve been describing myself in French-speaking circles as “décalé” pretty much my entire life, so I guess I had to write that one in French. As for the other French song, I don’t think I could have written it in English, because it harks back to my childhood in a mostly francophone context, and a francophone person actually gave me the idea for that one. Thanks Emma! Generally speaking, it’s much easier to write lyrics in English than in French, which is a much stricter, inflexible, unforgiving language. English is much more malleable and easy to mangle and squeeze into different musical straitjackets.NHAM: You enlisted the help of another prominent Fedi artist, @ordosmarkzero, to master this album. Tell us how that came about and what Ordos Mk.0 brought to the album.sknob: I’ve been involved with the bonkwave collective for a while. Imagine dozens and dozens of musicians from all over submitting tracks that may or may not be bonkwave, i.e. extremely musically diverse, and imagine one of these talented musicians saying hey, I’ll gladly master the double or triple albums, and doing a fantastic job of it. That says to me that person is (a bit crazy and) extremely open-minded musically. So I asked Ordos Mk.0 with some trepidation if he’d master my album, and he agreed immediately and enthusiastically. The process went swimmingly and he was an absolute delight to collaborate with. Another anecdote I’d like to share: When the mastering was done, I asked him if he’d mind telling me in general terms how he went about his magic, and he answered in a lot of technical detail, explaining that he felt it was only fair to pass along the knowledge others had been kind enough to impart to him. The spirit of bonkwave in a nutshell! So to all you musicians out there, if you need mastering, you know who to ask! One last thing though: Whatever anyone might find wrong with the sound of the album is in the mix, i.e. entirely my fault. Ordos added subtle polish and grit or shine to the mixes he had to work with.NHAM: The beautiful Mirror Image sounds like it’s specifically about a family member / loved one or perhaps even yourself. Can you let us in to the story of who it was written about? sknob: Thank you. I’m not going to go into much detail, because the song is a love-letter to my daughter, and I don’t want to reveal more than what I reveal in the song without her consent. I will say this though: At the end of the song, I tell her that she’ll always be able to count on me, and when I sent it to her, she replied that I would always be able to count on her, which I wasn’t expecting, and melted my heart.NHAM: I think it’s a marvellous album. Your work is so original and captivating. Within that originality you do drop hints and vibes here and there of an act I’ve always loved in Super Furry Animals. Specifically in some of the vocal harmonisation and chord progressions. Meanwhile your vocals can at times evoke Nick Cave, Neil Hannon and Brian Ferry. Who would you say have been the musicians to most influence your musical output?sknob: Thanks for the compliments, I’m blushing! It’s funny because I don’t know or listen to these groups or artists, apart from Neil Hannon whom I admire immensely, but whom I can’t really call an influence because I discovered the Divine Comedy rather late in my music-making life. But thank you for the very flattering comparison! It’s also funny that you mostly mention singers, because honestly, I don’t think of myself as much of a singer. I write songs, and I just happen to be the only singer-adjacent person I have handy to sing them. I would gladly delegate the singing to someone more capable and competent! I could list my influences, but that might be long and boring and weird, since they are all over the place, from the Beatles to Zappa, from Kurt Weill to Carla Bley, from French singer-songwriters to Nilsson’s The Point (a story about being different, what a coincidence!). Instead, I’m going to tell you a story: when I was in elementary school in France, I had an eccentric music teacher who taught us a series of simple children’s songs he had written, each one about a different animal, and which he assigned to different groups of kids. And one day, once we all knew our respective songs really well, he had us sing them all at the same time, as a choir, and they all fit together perfectly, forming counterpoint and harmonies and call and responses and canons, and my head exploded! I think that influenced me more than anything else. In fact, I still remember the melody and lyrics to my appointed song—the hippopotamus—to this day, and I still get goosebumps thinking about it, some 50 years later!NHAM: Do Something is wonderfully inspiring. Creativity is an act of resistance, and it is indeed something that everybody should aim to practice in some form or another. It feels like the one track on the album that’s more instructive and less reflective perhaps. Would that be a right?sknob: The lyrics to that one came out in one go, pretty much as is. And at one point, I thought maybe I shouldn’t include it on the album. But actually, allowing yourself to create stuff, to make stuff, to do stuff, requires channeling your idiosyncratic inner child, which requires freeing yourself to some extent from the gaze and judgement of others and society, and maybe that is a hard sell for people who crave acceptance from society or their peer-group above all else, whatever the cost to themselves, others, the planet, etc. So in a way, the song is about allowing yourself to be more or less offbeat! How’s that for a rationalization? Plus as you said, in these dark and stupid times, especially in the age of slop-machines, doing something is more than ever an act of resistance or at least an act of rebellion. As Emily Bender (@emilymbender) put it, “writing is thinking, reading is thinking”, to which I would add “making and experiencing art is feeling”, and we need more thinking and feeling in these anti-intellectual, cold and heartless times, instead of delegating that to unthinking, unfeeling computer programs. I actually do believe we could change the world if we really wanted to, but maybe it’s easier to believe in such a seemingly preposterous idea if you’ve actually tried it. Also, I would listen to what Annie has to say in Take Three…NHAM: Take Three feels like a beautiful way to close out what is a truly triumphant album. I somehow feel I can now see everything through sknob’s eyes, and the world makes a lot more sense. Does the world make any more sense to you now you’ve finally managed to release an album?sknob: The basic idea for what became Take Three was the first idea I had for the album. I wrote three different songs based on that idea, hundreds of lines, and threw them all away for various reasons. I just couldn’t quite nail it down to my satisfaction. And when I least expected it, it finally resurfaced and coalesced into what you hear on the album, and I immediately knew that the album was finished. I don’t know if the album is a triumph, but it is a new accomplishment for me. And yes, the world does make more sense than it used to believe it or not. I guess I need to have a working model in my mind of how and why things work or don’t work the way they do, and therefore how they could work differently, and that model keeps evolving or changing based on new events and facts and evidence and personal experiences and creative input from others, and I hope it keeps evolving until my last breath.NHAM: Thank you for chatting with us today. One more question before we go. Can we expect any more of your wonderful music videos to be made for any of the tracks on the new album?sknob: Releasing one single, writing the seven new songs for this album plus a bonkwave collaboration, plus making three videos all in the space of 3 or 4 months was as unexpected and exciting as it was exhausting. So no, no new video in the pipeline I’m afraid. I need a break! Then again, The Indie Beat Television is chock full of fantastic videos, and I encourage everyone who hasn’t done so yet to take the leap and dip their toes into the wonderful world of indie fedimusic, and to join the offbeat rebellion!sknob’s new album offbeat will be getting its exclusive first play at our NHAM Release Party live on TIBtv.More from sknobFollow sknob in The Fediverse (@sknob)MusicWebsiteVideos
