Them That Help
Palm Skin Productions
Released: 25 May 2023
Label: Tru Thoughts
Palm Skin Productions announces new album ‘A Swarm In July’ sharing ‘Them That Help’, featuring John Metcalfe
Palm Skin Productions – AKA versatile musician and producer Simon Richmond (whose CV includes Mo’ Wax, Depeche Mode, REM, Pulp, Neneh Cherry, and The Bays) – announces a new album ‘A Swarm In July’ a proverbial inspired record set for release Friday 18th August, sharing lead-single ‘Them That Help’, an orchestral almost neo-classical, texturised soundscape featuring the transcendent viola of John Metcalfe (Duke Quartet/The Durutti Column).
‘A Swarm In July’ is a concept record that offers an alternative set of hacked proverbs to mirror the movement of the music and its path from ambience to rhythm, from harmony to noise, from its closed-in intimacies to its soaring expansions. The album looks at what happens when you choose to shift the crop – when you find the story within the story. As Simon eloquently puts it:
“A proverb. A phrase. A saying. A Say-ing – the performance of that which has been said. A maxim. A truism. True-ism – the ideology or the myth of truth? Whose truth? Who puts you in the picture? What is the crop, the edit? When can you trust a truism in the world of deep fake? If every story is dependent on its beginning and end, how many stories are there, dormant, within the prescribed boundaries? Pre-Scribed – already written – typeset for us.”
‘Them That Help’ is taken from the false proverb “the Lord helps them that help themselves”, a phrase that originated in ancient Greece as “the Gods help those who help themselves” but has since been weaponised to accelerate neo-liberal agendas. Simon Palmskin subverts the fictitious biblical reference, turning heresy into class critique:
“Take a set of scales. At one end put the gold-plated pomp of high religion. The acquisition of wealth and people. The colonising forces that helped themselves to vast swathes of the world. At the other end of the scale are the carers, the helpers, the friends. The people. The heavyweights.”
