Skin On Glass

Following his DIY instincts, Jorge Barrientos uses the moniker "Skin On Glass" to produce independent music in his hometown of San Salvador, El Salvador. He started writing and recording music while attending the University of Pennsylvania in the early 90's. He got his first Tascam 4-Track recorder and a cheap dynamic microphone from a pawn shop in Philadelphia. Inspired by the new wave of Latin rock music (Caifanes, Soda Stereo) and his lifelong obsession with psychedelic music from the UK (from The Soft Machine to The Spacemen 3), he produced 3 lo-fi cassette demos as "Amanita" (named after the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita Muscaria) from 1994 to 1997. The music ended up sounding like a Spanish-speaking Ween covering the Verve's first album after inhaling several cans of scotch guard. An acquired taste to say the least, but it lay the foundations of his skills to produce ambitious musical landscapes on a shoe-string budget. Following Amanita, Jorge went through what he refers to as his “folk phase”, writing acoustic songs inspired by Nick Drake and Neil Young, incorporating lyrical ideas from his favorite poets, including Yeats, Allen Ginsberg, and Michael McClure. Many of these songs were given an electric treatment and constitute the basis of several Skin On Glass songs. Named after the chilling scene in Blade Runner where a replicant (often referred to as a skin-job) is shot by Harrison Ford’s character while falling through several walls of glass, Skin On Glass is the dystopian sound of a multicultural urban landscape. The musical equivalent of globalization gone wrong; the sound of dazzling neon lights and promises of what's to come in a tech-savy future. The sound of stylish decay, thrilled by the sights but conscious of our emotions constantly being manipulated by the global media. The self-titled album owes debt to late 70’s/early 80’s post-punk (Joy Division, Wire) but its noirish, retro-future sound is complemented by Jorge’s trademark psychedelic flourishes. It was recorded using Ableton Live which took Jorge’s songwriting and arranging to new heights. The lyrics are mainly concerned with religious abuse, the bleak cultural void in developing countries and the bizarre works of Philip K. Dick.