THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1982 - Seven Songs by 23 Skidoo

 

The early 1980's, in the wide ranging movement that was post punk, there was one musical vein of exploration that eventually formed its own sub genre 'industrial.' The bastard off spring of many dissonant unclassifiable bands that clattered around the cataclysmic fringes of the punk phenomena. Of whom were - Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, A Certain Ratio, The Pop Group and This Heat. The second wave of bands that owed something in their origins to these bands -Test Department - Chaak - 23 Skidoo all beat out a singular path, one that was all their own.

23 Skidoo formed in 1979, with a much subtler and broader sweep of soundscapes than any of the bands that preceded them. Yes, there were shafts of avant garde jazz and funk in there, but also tribal styled percussion, dub, found sounds and voice recordings, over amplified slabs of sound coming down on you like crashing walls. The cumulative effect often creating a tone of total unease. 

23 Skidoo were probably one of the first bands that ventured into areas that 'post'rock' formats would develop and expand on in the early 1990's. Strong on mood, atmosphere and happy to shift time signatures abruptly, often veering off into an all out jam. Identifiable sources are few for what 23 Skidoo released in the early 1980's. 

Seven Songs was their 1982 debut album, which along with the earlier ten minute opus of The Gospel Comes To New Guinea and an EP Tearing Up The Plans, showed a band almost too assured in its adventurousness to survive for long. The most recent re-release of Seven Songs includes these EP's in their track listings. With The Culling Is Coming album, released the following year, the experimental, sonic abstraction side of the bands output took over precedence. An uneven release, part modern Gamelan style workout on one side and a live improvised recording on the other. The band fractured apart after this, and what was left made the altogether more accessible, but less challenging Urban Gamelan album in 1984. And though there have been brief bits of activity by former band members, and compilations, since then, the band as heard on Seven Songs was essentially never heard of again.

To give you a flavour of the spectrum of music they cover, here are three tracks by them. Kundalini opens the album, with a despairing squeal of a trumpet sound, before a galloping drum rhythm cranks up. Interspersed as it is by slashes of cross cutting sounds, this has a sparse groove, but a distinctly unnerving one filled with foreboding.

Opening with the thwack of an echoing bass, Porto Base has sounds and voices fade in and out of it. Mainly an older woman, sounding like it maybe one of the Mitford sisters, getting increasingly irate about the deleterious effects of effeminate hand gestures, which leads her to mention Hitler.

The track Gregouka, opens with the moaning of ephemeral chanting, over which a hard edged drum rhythm and a sour clarinet sound play in and out of each other. It possesses an other worldly character, alien, alluring and altogether unsettling.

Seven Songs is one of those albums. once heard, lives on in your imagination. A much over looked classic of the 1980's.