AT LONDON’S Institute of Contemporary Arts, Mike Skinner made a case for creative obsession. Presented with PATRÓN Tequila as Re-Mastered: Live, the evening paired a conversation with an exclusive DJ set, using Skinner’s catalogue to examine what happens before an idea becomes finished work.
Joined by longtime collaborator Murkage Dave and cultural critic Ellen E. Jones, Skinner resisted romanticising inspiration. “Process, to me, is the things you fixate on madly while you accidentally do something that’s good. Hopefully,” he said. One recent song had taken less than an hour to form; choosing the germanium fuzz pedal took around a month.
That imbalance was precisely the point. PATRÓN’s convincing talent partnerships are built around shared practice rather than celebrity proximity. Skinner’s fixation on the decisions behind a record finds a credible parallel in tequila still made in small batches, using brick ovens, copper stills and volcanic tahona stone mills. Both depend upon holding the work to a standard when expediency would be easier.
The conversation became strongest when process expanded beyond solitary perfectionism. “Collaborating is about confidence,” Skinner argued. “You can’t control what’s going to happen, but you can be confident enough in yourself that you might have some good ideas to share.” Murkage Dave, with whom he has run clubs, toured and made music, gave that theory a living history. Their shorthand revealed that collaboration is not the surrender of artistic identity, but the discovery of where two identities overlap.
Ellen E Jones, Mike Skinner and Murkage Dave. Photo by Jed Cullen/ Getty Images for PATRÓN
Skinner’s sharpest observation concerned the unproductive stretches surrounding creation: “All of the stuff that feels like you’re not doing any work is the work.” Conversation, distraction and time feed the subconscious until the work can announce itself.
Afterwards, theory gave way to Skinner’s one-off DJ set and a menu led by Mike’s Margarita, a spicy pineapple take on the PATRÓN Spicy Margarita made with PATRÓN Reposado. Crucially, the brand never overwhelmed the artist. Re-Mastered: Live worked because it gave Skinner room to be obsessive, funny and specific, while PATRÓN occupied the role any creative partner should: not the subject of the story, but the structure that allowed it to happen.
by Adina Ilie