and recorded and mixed the album entirely on Logic Pro, a digital audio workstation. Artwork The cover artwork depicts the south face of the Kestrel House tower block on City Road, London at night. The photo was taken in 1995 by German photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg using an eight-minute exposure. Critical reception Original Pirate Material was hailed by the British music press upon its release. NME said that the album "represents a brilliant break with cliché ... [Skinner is] one of the most original pop voices for years... By turns dark, funny and heartbreaking, the songs on Original Pirate Material are snapshots of ordinary life as a young Midlands resident, set to innovative two-step production: tales of love, going out, being skint, getting drunk, and eating chips. It's Streets by name, and streets by nature, and it's great." Q called Skinner a "vital new voice" and described Original Pirate Material as "starkly observed vignettes ... this debut wittily and wisely documents young lives spent in piss-poor pubs, estate bedrooms and kebab shops... It could easily, but somehow never does, degenerate into the kind of 'street poet' blather TV news editors think spices up election coverage." Mojo said that Skinner "favours a winningly downbeat brand of urban realism, set to minimal, pounding drums ... A lot of his urban vignettes fall somewhere between "The Message" and the Specials' "Ghost Town". But their very ordinariness and the brutish, unadorned simplicity of the music is part of their appeal, evoking the everyday tedium of real 'youth culture' ... A uniquely British voice." Spin said, "Mike Skinner ... could be the most gifted rapper London has ever produced, except that he doesn't really rap – he pontificates, spins spoken-word yarns, and kicks running commentary. Hip-hop – and Britain's equally bling-fixated 2-step-garage scene – has shaped Skinner's sound, but he's too earnest to reproduce their bluster. He's an observant, asphalt-level 'geezer' – Brit slang for everyman – set apart by the sharpness of his lens, not the force of his flow. On Original Pirate Material, Skinner nails the quiet desperation of the white working class like a pub-hooligan Marshall Mathers, with all of Slim Shady's good humor and none of his insanity." Contemporary reviews for the album commented on its DIY aesthetic and lyricism. Stylus Magazine said that the album "combines the boy-next-door DIY of US garage rock with the sound of UK garage and