SKIN LIES is the solo musical guise of multimedia artist Dustin Krcatovich, who has been performing under the name since 2014. The music of Skin Lies is aleatory and exploratory, a unique amalgam of kosmische dream-conjuring, pulsing industrial smear, and minimalist composition/repetition. Since starting the project, Krcatovich has toured healthy chunks of the United States with Willis Earl Beal a
nd Fred Thomas, and shared stages with Dragging an Ox Through Water, Fountainsun, The Tenses, and many others. Krcatovich's aesthetic sensibility was forged in the same mid-'00s Ann Arbor, Michigan milieu (specifically, the circle surrounding freeform college/community radio station WCBN) which simultaneously nurtured the nascent talents of Jib Kidder, Benoît Pioulard, Laurel Halo, and Julia Holter, as well as many other lesser-known sound alchemists. In that timeframe, Krcatovich collaborated extensively with some of the aforementioned (along with members of noted Michigan acts like Saturday Looks Good To Me, K9 Sniffies, Strange Brew, and Our Brother The Native) appearing often in one-off noise/improv ensembles along with more "conventional" bands. In perhaps the most surreal moment of this period, a home recording of Krcatovich's band Blood Necklace was utilized in the intro to a viral video of American Idol contestant Andrew Fenlon interviewing Noam Chomsky while under the effects of psychedelic mushrooms. In 2009, Krcatovich founded the underground label FM DUST, which has released limited-edition works by Jib Kidder, Benoît Pioulard, Campfires, Johnny Ill, Skate Laws, and many others, alongside Krcatovich projects such as Actual Birds and Mall Mutants. Krcatovich is also an active critic and cultural commentator, whose writings on music and film appear frequently in The Quietus, Tiny Mix Tapes, and Esquire. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon with his partner and occasional collaborator, Micah Vanderhoof.
