Shackleton

Born in Lancashire, Sam Shackleton first played in punk bands and later formed a dancehall duo with Earl Fontainelle, before turning to electronic production in the early 2000s. Embedded in the environment of FWD>> nights and the London bass scene, Shackleton released his first track in 2004 and co-founded the label Skull Disco with Appleblim in 2005 — a venture on the margins of dubstep with a darker, more percussive and oblique approach than typical club formats. After Skull Disco ended in 2008, Shackleton moved to Berlin and broadened his language toward experimental electronic music that blends slow techno, post‑industrial, ambient, repetitive motifs and polyrhythms with often tribal or meditative resonances. His discography includes Three EPs (2009), Fabric 55 (2010), the album Pinch & Shackleton with Pinch (2011), Music for the Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ EPs (2012), followed by voice‑led and long‑form composition projects such as Devotional Songs with Ernesto Tomasini (2016), Sferic Ghost Transmits with Vengeance Tenfold (2017), Behind the Glass with Anika (2017), Primal Forms with Zimpel (2020), Departing Like Rivers (2021) and The Scandal of Time (2023). Shackleton also releases on his own label, Woe to the Septic Heart!, founded in 2010.