Skee Mask & North Americans

Bryan Müller and Patrick McDermott met where all great musical partnerships begin: playing Call of Duty: Warzone. Müller, better known as Germany’s enigmatic electronic producer Skee Mask, and McDermott, the Los Angeles-based guitarist behind North Americans, were part of a loose group of musicians and producers who played the game together. Eventually Müller suggested they make some music.

There was no plan for what that music should be. Instead, Müller encouraged McDermott to send him strange things. Rough things. Unfinished things. Fragments that hadn’t found a home elsewhere.

What he sent included acoustic guitar recordings and other material accumulated across sessions between 2017 and 2023, much of it recorded at home in Los Angeles. Some of it was quite literally cutting-room-floor material: ideas McDermott had left behind, rather than pieces intended to become songs.

Skee Mask and North Americans arrive here from opposite directions: one associated with electronic music and the club, the other with acoustic guitar and American Primitive traditions. Reduce the distance between them, however, and those distinctions begin to matter less. The result is music of incredible depth that uses texture, space and repetition so instinctively and with such great ease, the two musicians allowing a piece of music to become something neither would have made alone.

FINAL CIRCLE started with a video game, a folder of unfinished recordings and a simple proposition: Send me the strange stuff.