The Streets – None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive review

If you wanted to know where Mike Skinner has been for the last nine years, the answer eventually became simple: Margate.

Admittedly Skinner was only in the Kent seaside resort for a few hours, but much of the latter part of the last decade had been spent like that, not in retirement, but as a DJ on the UK’s bass scene, a job in which he had to re-learn what he thought he knew about club music at less than arm’s length from his audience, many of whom were too young to even remember who he was.

Rather than stand up at the front and sulkily yell “Do you know who I am? the creator of noughties classics Original Pirate Material and A Grand Don’t Come For Free translated his experiences into new music that anchored him a long way from the lad-hop which The Streets became unavoidably associated with. None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive is the first full length release under the banner for nine years, one Skinner says is a mixtape as opposed to an album, an all-collaboration project which rarely dwells in one genre for long.

An impressive DM’s list means that both Kevin Parker and Joe Talbot join him, but the real thrills are back in amongst those dance floor hedonists, with I Wish You Loved You As Much As You Loved Him featuring Donae’o and Green Tea Peng and The Poison I Take Hoping You Will Suffer arcing brilliantly underneath the strobe lights and low ceilings. Mike Skinner never really went away, he just changed the maps – and everything else.

You can read the full review here.