Palm Skin Productions

Operating under the Palm Skin Productions alias, London native Simon Richmond has blended jazz, hip-hop, house, and dub as a producer, musician, and DJ since the early 1990s. An early fixture on the Mo Wax label, his initial quartet of EPs progressed from flute- and sax-driven acid jazz into darker breakbeat territory. The cinematic album Remilixir appeared in 1996, while its 2000 successor Künstruk merged playful left-field electro with psychedelic downtempo textures. Later that decade Richmond turned toward club-oriented work, later anthologized on the 2009 collection Selected Singles. Other ventures occupied him through the 2010s, among them partnerships with John Metcalfe and Sheema Mukherjee under his legal name, before Palm Skin Productions resumed activity with the instrumental hip-hop beat tape Other Times in 2022 and the resistance-themed Trickle Up EP in 2023.

Richmond began as a percussionist in the acid jazz outfit the K-Creative, whose debut album came out on Talkin' Loud in 1992, and performed with additional groups including the Big Cheese Allstars. Palm Skin Productions launched via the 1992 EP Getting Out of Hell, the third title issued on James Lavelle's influential Mo Wax imprint. The 1993 releases In a Silent Way and Time & Space both spotlighted saxophonist Chris Bowden; Richmond also issued a one-off Mo Wax single as Bubbatunes. The drum'n'bass-leaning The Beast surfaced in 1995, accompanied by a remix EP reworked by Autechre, Roni Size, and Global Communication. Throughout the decade he produced, remixed, or contributed to sessions by Neneh Cherry, Jhelisa, United Future Organization, and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Hut Recordings/Virgin released his debut album, 1996's Remilixir, which wove in fusion, spaghetti Western, Afro-Cuban, and classical elements.

From the late 1990s into the early 2000s Richmond collaborated with an equally broad roster that included R.E.M., Frente!, Gabrielle, and Youssou N'Dour. Following a remix for Howie B's Daddylonglegs project, Palm Skin Productions delivered its second album, Künstruk, on B's Pussyfoot label in 2000. He also performed with the improvisational electronic collective the Bays, whose sessions aired on John Peel's BBC program and whose live appearances topped several major festival bills. The 2005 So Bad EP on Freerange Records marked Palm Skin Productions' return with a markedly more dancefloor-focused fusion of house and disco. Subsequent EPs delved further into deep house and tech-house; Freerange issued the digital compilation Selected Singles in 2009, while Primaudial Records released Big Bear and Dark Energy Recordings released Done. Richmond joined the international folk supergroup the Imagined Village and its associated Fresh Handmade Collective. He appeared on Afro Celt Sound System's 2016 album The Source and issued the neo-classical Set in Stone alongside John Metcalfe. A further partnership with sitarist Sheema Mukherjee (Transglobal Underground, the Imagined Village) yielded the 2019 album Karma.

After more than a decade away, Palm Skin Productions resurfaced on Tru Thoughts in 2021 with the eleven-minute experimental track "The Sword Will Die." The instrumental hip-hop album Other Times followed in 2022, presented as twenty-six discrete tracks plus a continuous fifty-four-minute mix. Trickle Up, an EP shaped by political themes and drawing on acid house, Detroit techno, and dub, arrived in 2023.