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Music

Nicole Moudaber and Skin of Skunk Anansie’s Ibizan Wo-mance Inspired Their Genre-Bending 'Breed' EP

Check their brand new video for “You Like This” and find out how a chance meeting at an airport led the two leading ladies on an unlikely collaboration.

Skunk Anansie was one of the most notable acts of the mid-nineties Britrock movement, described by their iconically shorn-headed lead singer Skin as "Clit-rock, an amalgam of heavy metal and blackfeministrage."

After the band entered an extended hiatus in 2001, Skin expanded her horizons by going solo, collabing with everyone from The Prodigy to Tony Iommi, entering a civil partnership with a conservative American billionaire's daughter, and even teaming up with Timo Maas and Martin Buttrich on a 2008-project named Format-3.

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As rangy as those achievements are, none are as surprising as her latest work, Breed, an EP written in collaboration with worldwide house and techno essential Nicole Moudaber. The provocative and challenging, but effortlessly groovable five-track EP, released September 18, was brought about by a stroke of chance on the Balearic Islands.

"We used to bump into each other in Ibiza. We both have houses there," explains Moudaber. "We used to wave and say hello, but not more than that. Two years ago, we met at the airport and shared a flight back from Portugal to London. We sat next to each other for two-and-a-half hours, and we just did not stop talking. We hit it off completely."

"It was then that I popped the famous question," says Moudaber wryly. "Will you sing on one of my records?"

As soon as the newfound wo-mance found itself on dry land, they hit the studio. "Skin wrote the songs from this EP there and then in front of me. It was incredible," gushes Moudaber. "This woman is so talented. She's an amazing songwriter. She wrote the two songs and recorded the vocals. 'Someone Like You' and 'Organic Love' were the first ones we did."

That's when things stopped being so easy. Merging Moudaber's house and techno with Skin's soulful angst may have sounded easy 20,000 miles in the air with a few cocktails in the rearview, but Moudaber did not find simple work in merging the two disparate aesthetics of its authors.

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"I didn't really wanna slash all the vocals Skin did, just to make it work on a techno track," says Moudaber. "It didn't give her justice. It took me six months to really nail the construction of this techno track, with a full vocal, without sounding cheesy."

Stepping outside of both artists' comfort zone came with a new set of challenges, the most major of which was finding convergence between Skin's structured-in-song vocals and the groove-based perspective of Moudaber's club music. "I've never worked with a full vocal, ever!" laughs Moudaber. "I do house and techno!"

Those six months spent perfecting the balance of aesthetic has paid off for the duo. Moudaber explains: "Having people like Carl Cox, Chris Liebing, Adam Beyer, Jamie Jones, all different sounding DJs playing the track, is very cool. These DJs don't compromise. If it doesn't fit in their sets, they're not gonna play the track."

We've got the premiere of the video for "You Like This," track two on the EP, to be released August 18 on Beatport. "It's a very sexy, dirty song," explains Moudaber. "We wanted a bit of a sexy, dirty video clip."

Moudaber and Skin directed the video, albeit remotely, and the contrasting visuals of posing models, papparazzi flashes, and barking rottweilers in starched black and white provides a fitting accompaniment for the tune. "It's quite poppy, and…not, in a way," says Moudaber. "The melody is catchy, but the track in itself is pretty edgy. The combination works."

On September 25 at Space Ibiza, Nicole Moudaber and Skin will lay claim to the venue's famed terrace, where they'll go b2b for three hours in celebration of Breed EP's release. "Skin is an amazing DJ as well," says Moudaber, before letting slip some names from the cabal of remixes who will take on rework duties of the EP cuts: Jamie Jones, Scuba, Pan-Pot, Carl Cox, Adam Beyer, and (maybe) Solomun are all signed up.

So the next time you consider chucking on your headphones when you nestle into an EasyJet seat, have a look at the person next to you. Chance may have helped turn the two acquaintances into fast friends and then into collaborators, but everything about the music on Breed is executed with precision.

Maybe just in this one instance, just because it feels good, makes it alright as well.