Name: Skander Besbes aka SKNDR

Nationality: Tunisian-French
Occupation: Composer, producer, sound artist
Current release: SKNDR is one of the artists contributing to the new V/A - Place: Tunisia compilation curated by Azu Tiwaline and Shinigami San and to be released on Air Texture March 24th 2023.
Recommendations: The Mothers of Invention: One Size Fits All (1975); Unknown Mortal Orchestra: II (2013)

If you enjoyed this interview with SKNDR and would like to stay up to date with his work, visit him on Facebook or Soundcloud.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

As far as I can remember, I was always fascinated by music and I wanted to be as close as I could be to the idea of music. I grew up in Tunis in the 80s and the vinyl turntable was really the magic item of the appartement. In my earliest childhood memories, I am about two years old and we are standing with my parents in front of the turntable like it was a totem or something almost spiritual while listening to various records, from the Beatles to Vivaldi. It was a full commitment activity.

I actually started learning the guitar when I was 12, after having accidentally watched the Wembley Freddy Mercury Tribute on TV. Being in Tunisia I had never seen a real rock concert and I was mindblown. I already had some rock cassettes but for me it really was just sound, I mean music with no image. It was the first time I could see how this music was played and how an audience would react to it.

Despite my young age, it transcended my vision of life. It was like feeling home for the first time.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

When I was a kid, I would fall asleep listening to music with a portable cassette player, and when I closed my eyes I would see like rays of lights. I imagined back then that I was floating in the universe like an astronaut, and I was trying to adjust the speed at which I was traveling to match the tempo of the music I was listening to.

These early experiences shaped the way I've been listening to music since. I practice what we call deep listening two to six hours a day, which means I just sit, lay or walk for hours just surfing recorded music. So it would be difficult to translate my perception into language without writing an essay. But what I can say is, I learned to make what I listen mine.

Beyond the compositions, my listening experience is an active process of exploration of the details of the recording. It can be a hiss of modulation, the detail of a drum fill, the extreme loudness of a particular note compared to the other notes etc ... It can be accidental or intentional, I don’t try to know. I just make all these details mine, as if I discovered them, like a intimate secret between a song and me. Every time I listen to music I already know, I meet with those things and they trigger my mind. Sometimes it triggers memories, and sometimes it triggers visions of potential realities (present or future).

In my work - beyond the creativity, the intentions of expression, the composition, and aside of the main goal that is to make music - I try to be as aware as I can be to leave room to details like what I just explained. I don't do this for myself because I can’t discover something I made. I do it for people like me. I make music that I think someone like me would enjoy making his.   

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

I think that one of the hardest challenge for a musician in our time is to think about music beyond the industry. There’s a preconceived package of ideas related to development and success that really narrows the way one can find their own place or voice.

The way I understand how the industry works today, is that music is considered as a collection of genres or styles, each one having specific codes, and one is supposed to commit to one or eventually mix two of them in order to meet with a specific audience. I tried multiple contexts, but I never felt right in one scene, or with one genre. I had to try to find a good balance, the right way to answer to everything that music had triggered in me. There was no formula, no shortcut to what I was looking for.

And from passion, to job, it slowly became a life goal. I realized that it was not about meeting the right people at the right moment to help me find the right way to express myself into a form that would best translate to an audience. It was about a personal quest, to give existence a meaning.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

Culturally, being both Tunisian and French, I ended up being neither of them. So my identity as a musician and as a human being relies on the course of my life, people that are important to me, and the food I feed my thoughts with.

A British musician told me once that I was a mutant. It took me years to process the fact that I did not fit a particular cultural point of view. But when I got it, it liberated me in a way, and I distanced myself from the concept of foreign vs local to embrace a more universal vision that fitted my story and personality more accurately.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Over the years, I tried to build myself a palette of compositional tools that I combine to express myself.

On one side I work on what I call an intention. Intentions can be tension, resolution, mind stimulation, body stimulation, bliss, surprise, disturbance … and on another side I decorate.

For me it’s all about making a path of thought, a process, very mine, very personal while trying to be as sincere as I can in my artistic decisions.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

Isn’t making the “music of the future” the “continuation of a tradition”? I think that music mainly relies on the past and at best on the present. The key element of music is the people who make music. And most likely the “music of the future ” will be made by the people of the future.

Some pieces of music meet their time, others don’t. Some musicians are able to communicate a clear vision and some are confused. And it’s not a bad thing because a lot of these “confused” works will contribute to trigger more universal visions in the future. I mean all musicians benefit of the heritage of past music, and contribute to future music as a whole.

The best one can do is to aim at producing the most personal and unique music, to help widen the spectrum of what can be imagined tomorrow.  

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

I spent ten years as double duty musician playing both guitars and electronics with a laptop in a band (Speed Caravan). I also played drums in my teens and I think every musician should learn to play drums because it’s a life changing experience.

I would say that I consider the guitar my main instrument because it was the first I learned to play. Working with the guitar in hands is all about listening to yourself, to capture the right moment when your fingers dance in a pleasant way on the instrument's neck. When I plan to compose with the guitar, I try to avoid practicing for some days to minimize muscular memory and try to come up with fresh ideas that are not influenced by routine licks I would play on repeat when I practice.

[Read our Brad Allen Williams feature about the guitar]
[Read our Marisa Anderson interview about the guitar]
[Read our Oliver Darling feature about the guitar]

Considering the electronic instruments I use in my studio, with the exception of the Roland SH101 that I really know how to use, I try to know as little I can about how they work so I can only rely on my ears when using them while I tweak them.

Generally, I think while it’s important to master every instrument or equipment you bring on stage for live performances, it’s refreshing to leave room for randomness in the studio using instruments you barely know to explore new territories.   

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

It depends if I’m in a composition / production phase or not. If I am, I like to wake up to a coffee while listening to what I have recorded or arranged the previous day. Then I would make a break to step back for a shower, get rid of necessary things to take care of admin, phone calls etc to get back to work the sooner to feel that I have the most time and energy.

If I’m not working on a specific project, I like to start my day listening to new music or music I have never listened to before, just to give myself a chance to have a unique or unexpected way of  thinking for the day. I spend some hours listening and then I go where it takes me. It can be technical questions that I try to solve with some internet searches, or musical scales that I would look for on the guitar. If it also makes me think of some friend, I would call or write to them. Then I switch to the usual practice of the guitar, some readings, work planning and some hours in my studio space if I have some work to do.

My sacred daily ritual is cooking dinner. I do it everyday, put a lot of creativity into it and it feeds back a lot of inspiration to my artistic life.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

For the track that I submitted to the Air Texture compilation, what I did was inspired by an experience I had many years ago spending time at an artist friend’s home while he was painting.

I was fascinated how he would fill his painting with colors, and slowly add more colors on top until he had ”balanced  masses”. From there, he started crafting details, and while doing so, it was like the initial profusion of colors had disappeared to delicately uncover an expressive young man’s face I hadn’t guessed until the end.

So I wrote and recorded lots of melodies. For each new one I was recording I would only hear the last one I just did and react to it. I ended up with something like 12 tracks. Playing all 12 at the same time was completely unmusical but I took some time to play everything in loop and found the good accidents of harmonies, notes were meeting the way I wanted and started to erase everything else.

I came back to it multiple days, each time trying to erase or mute more elements, until I was happy with it. Then it was just about some technical process to emphasize the mood of the music. I used some filters, reverbs and delays, and that was it.

So to summarize, it was mainly about semi-blindly filling the spectrum, and then taking decisions to craft frequencies in time, and uncover some emotions.     

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I would say, that I like listening to music with other people, but I also need to listen to music on my own, it’s my intimacy.

Collaborative music creation is great, it’s like playing football. When it works well you benefit from the cumulative confidence and mindset of all the people involved. It’s one of the most rewarding aspect of life, enjoying the experience of sharing that moment. Regardless of the output, you learn a lot from the others, and it’s most often worth it.

It took me ages to enjoy working alone. Today I mainly work on my own and it fits me well. I have found a kind of serenity looking at it differently, more like a martial discipline, where I’m less obsessed with the idea of composing or producing a piece of music, than investing time on myself. By practicing this approach I learned to deal with the multiple role I have to play (composer, interpret, arranger, engineer …), and becoming more independent.

I have much more to give when working with others.  

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

In our modern world, music tends to be perceived as a consumption good, and some people may consider it as an option in their life, or for example just the soundtrack to party. I think it’s sad and that it’s a big issue with the world today. I wouldn’t assign a specific role to music in society, but like Nietzsche wrote “Without music, life would be a mistake”.

Music makes people “feel together”, it emphasize empathy and helps individuals resonate in communities. In my life, even the absence of music is related to music in a way. There is always music playing in my head, in consequence of what, it constitutes the timeline of my memories.

Music can make joyful moments more enjoyable and sad moments more intensely painful, but ultimately it heals your soul.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

Music and science are simultaneously very close and very different. Science as I understand it, relies heavily on mathematics, while music is the most harmonious, human scaled practical application of mathematics.

I believe composers and scientists have a lot in common, they inspire each others in some cases, but they have different ways of reasoning, different ways of  considering the world in their practice.

Science is about explaining and understanding the universe. Music is about the poetry of man in the universe.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

The most mundane tasks are about one thing at a time. You can execute these tasks while thinking of something else, watching a video, listening to a podcast etc … Making music requires a complete commitment of senses.

Creativity is just one aspect of making music but maybe not the most important one in my point of view. I can be creative when I cook in a way, but at the end, I cook to have something to eat. In the musician's way of life there are other dimensions to the discipline. You don’t make music only to produce pieces of music. Writing or performing also gives a meaning to life, and to our perception of time.

Traditional or classical musicians practicing the same pieces of music for twenty years to master it is a good example of that. That amount of dedication is not just about learning to play a song, it’s also about learning to know yourself.

On an individual level, I like to compare the practice of music to the practice of martial arts. When you start learning and practicing, you’re on your own, and learn about what you are and what you’re up to. Then you can perform and be creative. But even a master never stops learning.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

I do my best to prevent myself from understanding or deconstructing the magic. It makes me anxious.