London-based drummer, composer, and producer Tom Skinner is directly associated with several genre-defying and boundary-pushing projects, regularly contributes to recording and live dates for significant artists, and releases records of his own where he leads his band down uncharted paths of exploratory jazz and other further-out sounds. Skinner plays alongside members of Radiohead in the Smile, was one of two drummers in London supergroup Sons of Kemet, and traverses both meditative grooves and spiritual expression on 2022's Voices of Bishara, his first album of material released under his own name.

Skinner got his start playing in London's experimental jazz scene in the mid-2000s. In the 2010s, along with drumming for punk-minded jazz group Melt Yourself Down, Skinner also began playing with eruptive avant-garde group Sons of Kemet and releasing solo music of his own under the alias Hello Skinny. Hello Skinny put out a few singles and two albums, 2012's self-titled debut and 2017's Watermelon Sun as Skinner continued working with his groups as well as with artists like Floating Points, Graham Coxon, Grace Jones, Zero 7, and many others across various genre lines. He left Melt Yourself Down in 2021 and signed on with Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood to form experimental rock group the Smile. The band released their debut album A Light for Attracting Attention in 2022. Also in 2022, Sons of Kemet decided to go on indefinite hiatus around the same time Skinner was readying his first solo album under his own name. Released on the International Anthem label in November of 2022, that album, Voices of Bishara, found Skinner leading cellist Kareem Dayes, bassist Tom Herbert, storied saxophonist and flutist Nubya Garcia, and Sons of Kemet bandmate and tenor sax/bass clarinet player Shabaka Hutchings through his adventurous tunes. ~ Fred Thomas, Rovi