Synesthesia is a medical condition in which the brain perceives stimuli that correspond to one of the senses, so that they cross over and activate another sense simultaneously. So someone may hear smells or see sounds. Erik Sanko, the leader of the band Skeleton Key, sometimes experiences color and sound together in an intertwined relationship that factors heavily into the group’s music.
“If you’re going to have some kind of neurological malfunction,” Sanko says, “it’s a good one to have. Certain musical choices absolutely, absolutely make perfect sense when they may seem kind of arbitrary to some other people. Certain notes go together in the same way that certain colors go together. It’s a really wonderful way of experiencing the world.”
Along similar lines, Sanko first envisioned Skeleton Key as a thrilling musical convergence of excitement and fear. When he founded the band here in New York in 1996, his interest in incorporating junk percussion and a found-sound sensibility dovetailed perfectly with the creative aspirations of original percussionist Rick Lee (Enon, Cibo Matto). Though Skeleton Key has undergone successive personnel overhauls, the junk percussion—or “garbage,” as Sanko calls it—and the particular way in which the “garbage” locks in with the drums under the arc of Sanko’s herky-jerky rhythm sense, remains one of the band’s most distinguishing features.
“I had the name of the band and the idea of what it should sound like before there ever was a band,” he explains. “I knew that I wanted it to sound like this giant piece of machinery gone haywire. There’s something about the sensation of being really happy and really frightened at the same time that really turns me on. If you go on the Cyclone, it’s fun, but you’re also in fear that you’re going to be killed because it’s pretty rickety. Your senses are piqued and you feel really alive and kind of giddy and terrified at the same time. I love being in that place.”
“That place” is also where arty Downtown aesthetics meet Sanko’s “need to rock out.” An alumnus of John Lurie’s legendary art-jazz renegades the Lounge Lizards, Sanko has collaborated with renowned post-classical outfit Kronos Quartet and film score giant Danny Elfman outside of Skeleton Key and has also established himself as a puppeteer. One of his formative musical experiences involved listening to Mahavishnu Orchestra and delighting in the disorientation of not knowing whether or not what he was listening to was actually music in the sense that he understood the term. Mixing and matching then became second nature.
In the context of Skeleton Key, genres overlap in strange ways, but the band also weds Sanko’s experimental leanings with a populist approach. In short, the band sounds like confusion that you can groove or bang your head to. Its debut full-length album, 1997’s Fantastic Spikes Through Balloon, stands as both a relic of its era—when genre-bending arguably blossomed on a mass scale and underground attitudes began to encroach upon the mainstream with brilliant results—and a timeless classic.
Like offerings of the time from underground-emergent contemporaries, such as Sonic Youth, the Melvins, Helmet and others, Spikes continues to stoke the enthusiasm of a devoted cult following, and the attachment that fans still have for the album 10 years later essentially sustains the band.
For that, Sanko feels fortunate. Having endured problems on both the major label and independent level, long waits between albums that often forced the band to tour without a record in hand, and various other obstacles, Sanko wonders aloud how Skeleton Key has managed to survive at all.
“Yeah,” he chuckles, “I don’t think anything has happened with this band the way it’s supposed to.”
Dec. 15, Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St. (betw. B’way & Church St.), 212-219-3132; 7, $15/$18.
“If you’re going to have some kind of neurological malfunction,” Sanko says, “it’s a good one to have. Certain musical choices absolutely, absolutely make perfect sense when they may seem kind of arbitrary to some other people. Certain notes go together in the same way that certain colors go together. It’s a really wonderful way of experiencing the world.”
Along similar lines, Sanko first envisioned Skeleton Key as a thrilling musical convergence of excitement and fear. When he founded the band here in New York in 1996, his interest in incorporating junk percussion and a found-sound sensibility dovetailed perfectly with the creative aspirations of original percussionist Rick Lee (Enon, Cibo Matto). Though Skeleton Key has undergone successive personnel overhauls, the junk percussion—or “garbage,” as Sanko calls it—and the particular way in which the “garbage” locks in with the drums under the arc of Sanko’s herky-jerky rhythm sense, remains one of the band’s most distinguishing features.
“I had the name of the band and the idea of what it should sound like before there ever was a band,” he explains. “I knew that I wanted it to sound like this giant piece of machinery gone haywire. There’s something about the sensation of being really happy and really frightened at the same time that really turns me on. If you go on the Cyclone, it’s fun, but you’re also in fear that you’re going to be killed because it’s pretty rickety. Your senses are piqued and you feel really alive and kind of giddy and terrified at the same time. I love being in that place.”
“That place” is also where arty Downtown aesthetics meet Sanko’s “need to rock out.” An alumnus of John Lurie’s legendary art-jazz renegades the Lounge Lizards, Sanko has collaborated with renowned post-classical outfit Kronos Quartet and film score giant Danny Elfman outside of Skeleton Key and has also established himself as a puppeteer. One of his formative musical experiences involved listening to Mahavishnu Orchestra and delighting in the disorientation of not knowing whether or not what he was listening to was actually music in the sense that he understood the term. Mixing and matching then became second nature.
In the context of Skeleton Key, genres overlap in strange ways, but the band also weds Sanko’s experimental leanings with a populist approach. In short, the band sounds like confusion that you can groove or bang your head to. Its debut full-length album, 1997’s Fantastic Spikes Through Balloon, stands as both a relic of its era—when genre-bending arguably blossomed on a mass scale and underground attitudes began to encroach upon the mainstream with brilliant results—and a timeless classic.
Like offerings of the time from underground-emergent contemporaries, such as Sonic Youth, the Melvins, Helmet and others, Spikes continues to stoke the enthusiasm of a devoted cult following, and the attachment that fans still have for the album 10 years later essentially sustains the band.
For that, Sanko feels fortunate. Having endured problems on both the major label and independent level, long waits between albums that often forced the band to tour without a record in hand, and various other obstacles, Sanko wonders aloud how Skeleton Key has managed to survive at all.
“Yeah,” he chuckles, “I don’t think anything has happened with this band the way it’s supposed to.”
Dec. 15, Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St. (betw. B’way & Church St.), 212-219-3132; 7, $15/$18.
