It seems that for their entire career Skylė, first without Aistė Smilgevičiūtė’s mesmerizing voice and later making full use of it, have been inventing their very own mythology. And they have been doing so predominantly through the expressive means of rock, though surely many more ingredients went into the cryptic musical/lyrical mix that’s impossible to confuse with anything else. While Aistė’s contribution undoubtedly resulted in a fair amount of Baltic folk elements being added to the group’s sound, Skylė never engaged in straight folk interpretation. Rather, they organically weave mythological inspirations into their own hard-to-pigeonhole musical story in a way that makes the latter a universal cosmology. However, the fact that the territories explored by Skylė aren’t exactly typical of popular music does not prevent them from being one of the best known and most admired bands in Lithuania; in 2008, the listeners of Lithuanian national radio selected Skylė’s Baltas Brolis as the most popular song of the year, while some earlier cassette albums are being reissued on CD.
Jurij Dobriakov
Website:www.skyle.lt
