Pink Skull

Genre-bending electronica outfit Green Skull are primarily the brainchild of DJ and manufacturer Julian Grefe, a longtime fixture of Philadelphia’s punk and dance music moments, plus a web host of close friends and collaborators, especially Justin “JG” Geller, and, eventually, a full-fledged music group. Through the past due ’90s and early 2000s, Grefe was an associate of emo-punkers the Trans Megetti as well as the arty S PRCSS (a music group whose name he also had taken as his DJ alias surname), while also functioning being a DJ and making downtempo and drum’n’bass monitors, sometimes beneath the moniker EDK. As electroclash and dance-punk surfaced in the first 2000s, assisting to integrate both previously emphatically disparate worlds of indie/punk and digital dance music, Grefe is at the forefront from the revolution, assisting to jump-start indie dance lifestyle in Philadelphia and curating the initial two volumes from the RVNG INTL combine series. He produced Pink Skull, as well as fellow DJs Ian Kelly (DJ Diabolic) and Geller (who was simply half of drum’n’bass duo GFS, and afterwards another of Moqita), in 2003; their initial discharge, the house-based Blast Yr AKK EP (having a Roxy Music cover), made an appearance in 2004 on Grefe’s Build Arm label. Another several years noticed a flurry of DJ activity from all included; production function for fellow Philadelphians Yah Mos Def, Amanda Empty, and V.We.P.; remixes for famous brands HEALTH, Structures in Helsinki, and David Gilmour Young ladies; and, in 2007, many single produces including an EP of reworked Chicago home classics. Over that point, Green Skull morphed right into a completely functional live music group like the two originals JGs and also a third (Jeremy Gewertz) on drums, Mike Hammel on bass, and Sam Murphy on electric guitar. They released their full-length debut in Apr of 2008, an edgy, psychedelic, and intermittently danceable collection cheekily entitled Zeppelin 3, which combined live instrumentation with digital studio function, including remixes of Icy Demons and Plastic material Little and efforts from Mirah and White Whale’s John Anderson. The non-album one “Drugs COULD KEEP Us Jointly,” a comparatively straight-ahead house monitor, also found its way to spring 2008.