Musician Mike Skinner turns actor and director with The Darker the Shadow, the Brighter the Gentle

LONDON – Mike Skinner is doing all of it himself — even when it takes years.

He wrote, directed, edited and starred in a feature-length film, “The Darker the Shadow, the Brighter the Light.” It’s accompanied by an album of the identical identify launched final Friday — the primary album from The Streets in 12 years. Shaped in London within the early Nineteen Nineties, The Streets’ debut document “Original Pirate Material” was launched in 2002 and have become an instantaneous traditional. Their lyrics reference membership tradition, hangovers in cafes and courting celebrities, but in addition subjects like male fragility in “Dry Your Eyes” and battles with grief in “Never Went to Church.”

Skinner’s film “The Darker the Shadow, the Brighter the Light” is described as a “neo-noir detective film” however as an alternative of a personal eye fixing the case, it is a DJ. Although clearly nonfiction, it references Skinner’s life as a DJ in his mid-40s — happening in backstage rooms, on dance flooring and behind decks and within the backseats of vehicles because the solar comes up.

Skinner jokes that it didn’t actually really feel like he had “much choice” in taking up the entire roles within the filmmaking course of, as a result of “no one was going to give me any money to do it.” It took seven years.

As a result of the document was made on the similar time, it too is greater than seven years previous now. Skinner says it is a good factor as a result of it’s had “time to breathe,” as his focus was on the movie.

The film has been screened in a number of venues around the U.Ok. and Europe, with Skinner collaborating in question-and-answer classes afterward. He likens the movie tour to “DJing, but not in the middle of the night, which is great.”

“A film is almost designed as the perfect amount of time to have dinner. And then when you come back, everyone’s finished the film. I think I’d like to take that idea and put that back in to DJing, and just be like, introduce the DJ set, but then just sort of press play, go off and have dinner,” he says.

And after the album’s launch, The Streets are hitting the highway. Skinner says he’s wanting ahead to the tour — particularly after the “nightmare” of ending his film.

“When you’re on tour, despite what everyone says, you’ve only got an hour’s work to do a day, like you’re sleeping behind the venue in the tour bus, it’s really easy,” he says. “Don’t tell anyone I said that, but I’m looking forward to an easy life, put it that way.”

It possibly simpler, however Skinner describes the expertise as being “zero glamor.”

“Oh, yeah, no you’re parked in a car park the whole time. Don’t think it’s all, you know, limousines and after-show parties. It’s not, but it’s definitely relaxing,” he says.