Mike Skinner Walks The Streets

Mahatma Gandhi walked nearly 400 kilometres from Ahmedabad, India to Dandhi, on the coast of the Arabian Sea, to protest against British rule in India in 1930. Mike Skinner of The Streets is currently on an ambitious walk of his own. But instead of staging a protest, he’s making a music video.

Skinner is walking from England to the south of France and shooting the video for "The Escapist," a track he originally wrote for the soundtrack to the upcoming Joseph Fiennes film of the same name. The song, which Skinner told NME.com is about "how it feels to be in prison," was rejected by the filmmakers, but Skinner says he doesn’t hold a grudge over it (even though a Coldplay track of the same name was used instead).

"The film is really good, even though I’m in a mood with its director," he wrote in a MySpace blog entry on Thursday before detailing plans for his journey.

Instead of moping about it, Skinner is heading from England to southern France on foot. He launched the journey on Thursday with three friends who work with him on his Beat Stevie TV show that airs on the U.K.’s Channel 4. His pals have it easy, though. They’re following him in a car.

You can also see photos of Skinner’s walk and read about his journey on the Beat Stevie website. According to the latest post, the weather isn’t the greatest, but in true stiff upper lip British style, Skinner is still walking. (Gandhi would be proud.) His friends have apparently been playing Connect 4 to entertain themselves.

The Streets' fourth album still doesn’t have a title or release date, but in a May 1 MySpace blog entry, Skinner wrote that it was almost done. He'll begin mastering the album on June 19, according to the Beat Stevie website.

"This album started off life as parables but then I realized that it might get a bit cheesy so I got rid of the alien song and the devil song and replaced them with more straight up songs," Skinner writes on his MySpace page. "I’ve pretty much kept my promise that I made to myself not to reference modern life on any of them though which is hard to do and keep things personal at the same time."