Vinyl LP pressing. 2023 release. Hardly The Same Snake is Skinny Pelembe's sophomore album, but his first fully embracing his artistic self. Visceral yet inherently soulful, Hardly The Same Snake is the sound of the Johannesburg-born, Doncaster-raised artist finally finding his voice - both literally and figuratively. In practical terms, that involved finding the courage to foreground his gravelly baritone in these gloriously genre-agnostic productions. But it also meant branching out beyond the safety net of his former label - Gilles' Peterson's Brownswood Recordings - to figure out the artist he truly wanted to be. As Skinny puts it today, in his soft South Yorkshire drawl, "This album is what I would have created, first time round had I rated my own voice." Determined that the album shouldn't sound like a band record, but equally mustn't feel "too button push-y", Skinny assembled songs by sampling instrumentation originally recorded live, including chopped and looped versions of the brilliantly complex beats played by Malcolm Catto of The Heliocentrics. It was a painstaking process that paid off, resulting in an album fathoms ahead of it's promising predecessor, and one that honestly reflects Skinny's creative evolution. The idea of forging your own path - and shedding skin, so to speak - is integral to Hardly The Same Snake. It's a defiantly outward-looking record contemplating family, religion and major life milestones, from parenthood to death.

As described in our Privacy Policy, we collect personal information from your interactions with us and our website, including through cookies and similar technologies. We may also share this personal information with third parties, including advertising partners. We do this in order to show you ads on other websites that are more relevant to your interests and for other reasons outlined in our privacy policy.

Sharing of personal information for targeted advertising based on your interaction on different websites may be considered "sales", "sharing", or "targeted advertising" under certain U.S. state privacy laws. Depending on where you live, you may have the right to opt out of these activities. If you would like to exercise this opt-out right, please follow the instructions below.

If you visit our website with the Global Privacy Control opt-out preference signal enabled, depending on where you are, we will treat this as a request to opt-out of activity that may be considered a “sale” or “sharing” of personal information or other uses that may be considered targeted advertising for the device and browser you used to visit our website.