Today, drummer-composer Tom Skinner announces Kaleidoscopic Visions, his second solo album, out 26th September 2025 via Brownswood Recordings and International Anthem.
Available to stream from today, title track ‘Kaleidoscopic Visions’ is an intricate and beautifully realized expression of the album’s prism-like multitudes, where feather-light instrumental interplay and lush melodic flourishes are anchored by Skinner’s trance-like rhythm section. As he describes it:
“Kaleidoscopic Visions was the first piece I wrote for the album. Based around an intuitive piano improvisation, it set the tone for my approach and the sound I wanted to achieve in the creative process. Showcasing the conversational and collaborative dynamic of the music and my band, it foregrounds a moody, cinematic flow within a hazy, psychedelic backdrop”
The album unfolds across two distinct sonic landscapes. Side A presents entirely instrumental compositions performed by Skinner’s live Bishara band—bassist Tom Herbert, cellist Kareem Dayes, and Robert Stillman and Chelsea Carmichael on various woodwinds and reeds—with electric guitar on two tracks courtesy of Portishead‘s Adrian Utley. A drummer-composer bringing his wealth of experience to bear on the role of bandleader, Skinner composed primarily on guitar, embracing the freedom that came with writing on his secondary instrument.
These compositions include “Auster,” dedicated to late novelist Paul Auster, and “Margaret Anne,” which honours Skinner’s mother Anne Shasby, a former classical concert pianist prodigy who abandoned her own promising career in the face of systemic misogyny, only to impart on her son what Skinner calls “the gift of music.”
Skinner’s musical world opens further on Side B, where a collection of poised vocal collaborations stretch out from jazz and improvisation towards a more dream-like, soulful sound. The centerpiece is “The Maxim,” a ten-minute collaboration with Grammy Award-winning Meshell Ndegeocello, a dubby, spacious meditation on life and death, delivered with a free-spirited grace. For Skinner, working with Ndegeocello—whom he first saw at Glastonbury as a teenager in 1994—represents a full-circle moment, indicative of the indirect paths and inspirational detours that have shaped his life.
Kaleidoscopic Visions Tracklist:
- There’s Nothing To Be Scared Of
- Auster
- Margaret Anne
- Kaleidoscopic Visions
- MHA
- Still (Quiet)
- The Maxim (ft. Meshell Ndegeocello)
- Extensions 12
- Logue (ft. Contour)
- See How They Run (ft. Yaffra)
