23 SKIDOO
ltm catalogue

Initially active between 1979 and 1987, 23 Skidoo released a series of genre-defining records fusing post-punk, dub, industrial, world and hip-hop styles. Signature singles include Last Words, Tearing Up The Plans, Coup and Language. Albums include Seven Songs, The Culling Is Coming and Urban Gamelan. In 2000 the group returned with a self-titled album, 23 Skidoo, and remain hugely influential today. To read full sleevenote/group history click here. To purchase CDs click here.


SEVEN SONGS (LTMCD 2528) £10
Expanded digital remaster of the classic 1982 mini album that topped the indie charts, together with all tracks from associated Fetish label singles. Booklet features detailed band biography and archive images. 15 tracks, 70 minutes of music. Full tracklist: Kundalini, Vegas El Bandito, Mary's Operation, Lock Groove, New Testament, IY, Porno Base, Quiet Pillage, Untitled, Last Words (7"), The Gospel Comes To New Guinea, Tearing Up The Plans Pt 1, Tearing Up The Plans Pt 2, Just Like Everybody, Gregouka.

Reviews: 'Electrifying post-punk for the mind and body. The opening Kundalini, which sounds like Throbbing Gristle having a bash at early '70s Miles Davis, is dislocated dance at its best; and things get more funked up still on Vegas El Bandito. Just as you start to imagine The Pop Group in military fatigues, Skidoo hit the impressionist button with a series of sample-heavy soundscapes, such as the howling sonic hollow of Porno Base, a disturbing, Hitchcockian drills-and-bells drone piece set to a Mary Whitehouse-like 'nanny' railing against pop as a degenerate force. Seven bonus cuts flesh out the original mini-album magnificently. Four stars' (Mojo, 1/2009); "The shockingly loud burst of machine feedback which introduces Kundalini is still startling a quarter of a century on, and its ensuing throb of congas, fuzz violin and urgent chanting represents a pinnacle of voodoo funk-noir. From this extra ordinary opening track, Skidoo veer ambitiously between brittle Miles-style funk, tape look experimentation, sound-sound reportage and Martin Denny-inspired exotica. LTM's welcome reissue is bundled with The Gospel Comes to New Guinea, an obsessive, ocean-deep ten minute rhythm workout, and the baffling, brilliant EP Tearing Up The Plans" (The Wire, 01/09); 'One of the most exciting records I've heard since Unknown Pleasures. A variably energetic and stimulating addition to that collection of perceptions, hallucinations and associations brought into play by Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle and A Certain Ratio. It tears away deceptive dramatic or sentimental gloss and mixes a neutral type of documentary candour with thrilling regenerative abstraction. It's candid, obstinate, intimate, incomplete, uncommon… rather solitary. Very appropriate. Intoxicating' (NME (Paul Morley), 2/1982); '23 Skidoo conceived of funk as a sinister energy, and Seven Songs still sounds blood-curdlingly intense' (Simon Reynolds, Rip It Up & Start Again, 2005); 'Their sinister ethno-funk industrial-dub blueprint remains an essential listen and their suspicion of commercial success seems both quaint and prophetic. Since 1979 they have wed ancient Eastern and African interests to a restlessly modern tribal angst. The group took the opportunity to confound expectations whenever possible and created an uncompromising and seminal musical identity: check the extent of their imitators. In the process, 23 Skidoo illustrated how to retain relevance and integrity when threatened by hazardously close brushes with success in the music biz. Never a dance band their music has always resembled the neo-primitive urgings of a gang of aesthetics wandering a post-apocalyptic urban desert. Once again, LTM's fabulous liner notes would be worth the price of this set even if the discs were blank' (Brainwashed, 11/2008); 'Classic - sits in a wild area between Cabaret Voltaire and The Pop Group' (Record Collector, 1/2009)


URBAN GAMELAN (LTMCD 2530) £10
Expanded digital remaster of the 1984 album, now with bonus tracks including the 12" single versions of Coup and Language as well as flipside dub mixes. Booklet features detailed band biography and archive images. 14 tracks, 60 minutes of music. Full tracklist: F.U.G.I., Fire, Misr Wakening, Jalan Jalan, Urban Gamelan (Pt 1), Sirens, Helicopterz, Kongo-Do, Language (Dub), Drunken Reprisal, Untitled (Coup De Grace), Coup (12" version), Language (12" version), Language (12" dub), Coup (In The Palace).

Reviews: "1984 saw Skidoo gamely attempting a slightly more conventional funk direction alongside their experimental percussion work, Urban Gamelan reflecting this awkwardly schizophrenic but rewarding period. Bonus tracks on this reissue include not only the irresistible 'commercial' single Coup, but also it's excellent (and long sought-after) follow-up Language (The Wire, 01/09); 'A mighty 45, Coup is a vinyl TV cop show car chase driven by Sketch Martin's bass, with Aswad's horn section blazing away in hot pursuit' (NME, 08/1984); "A more muscular production then Seven Songs, and a pull-back from the sonic tribal barrage of Culling, Urban Gamelan edged a little closer to commercial music. Brilliant, slippery single Coup was perhaps the most obvious contender for 23 Skidoo's one chance at an absolute chart smash. What a track. CD also comes with a beautiful and copious booklet" (Brainwashed, 11/2008); 'The producer-led 12" revolution remains in evidence with extended versions of Coup and Language, as well as essential dub mixes' (Record Collector, 1/2009)


JUST LIKE EVERYBODY (LTMCD 2532) (2xCD) £12
Digitally remastered best of set comprising singles, key album tracks and alternative mixes 1980-1987, including both sides of the rare debut 7" on Pineapple. Bonus disc Just Like Everybody (Part Two) comprises material recorded by the group during the 1990s, all of which is unavailable elsewhere. 32 tracks on 2 CDs, 120 minutes of music. Full tracklist: disc one: Kundalini, Vegas El Bandito, IY, Last Words (12"), Coup (Mix), Kongo-Do, Language (dub), Shrine, Assassin (Shugyosha Step), Mahgrebi, Last Dub, Ooze, Ethics, Another Baby's Face, Celestial Flutes; disc two: Roninstep, Meltdown, What Y'All Gon' Do, Eye Spy, 23 Break, 100 Dark, Lightening Beats, Cushite, The Best, Suspense, Mr. Lee Are You Ready?, Clan Break, Elephants, Reachin' Break, Liquid Noise, Return of the Dragon, Recoup.

Reviews: '23 Skidoo were unique among the crowd of early 80s post-punk and industrial innovators. Unlike the cold, harsh music of their peers, the ever-fluctuating line-up remained just as confrontational but incorporated warmer elements of funk, world music and, later, hip-hop. Up-tempo dance numbers would share bed with eerie experimental sound collages, the band being influenced by everything from Gregorian chant to Jeet Kune Do martial arts. And then there's the trifling matter of a little something called Coup, which went on to inform the Chemical Brothers' smash Block Rockin' Beats. This reissue, together with Seven Songs and Urban Gamelan, collects the work of one of the most diverse and influential bands of the era' (Clash, 1/2009); 'The rhythm and sheer energy here have, if anything, intensified over the years' (Record Collector, 1/2009); "JLE bundles together two earlier compilations in expanded form, and with some crucial additions, among them the superior dub mix of Last Words, and their last great piece, the slinky Ooze from 1986" (The Wire, 01/09); "This newest version of the band's original singles collection couples most of the tracks from the original vinyl issue, as well as the separate Just Like Everybody (Part Two) from the late 1990s to create a definitive anthology of material. Most will be happy with one superb disc and one adequate one compared to the mediocrity of many releases this day and age, and LTM once again have put together a package that celebrates the legacy of a band that has somewhat been forgotten in lieu of their contemporaries" (Brainwashed, 11/2008)


THE CULLING IS COMING (BOUCD 6604) £10
Originally released by Operation Twilight/Crepuscule in 1983, The Culling is Coming flagged two radical new directions for Skidoo. Drawn from two live performances, Culling combined a collaboration with the Balinese Gamelan Orchestra recorded at Dartington College of Music in October 1982, together with extracts from a more extreme, improvised set at the first Womad festival in July 1982, using scrap metal and tape loops. Both sides of the album were exactly 23 minutes long, and side one signed off with a stylus-hostile lock groove. A radical and widely misunderstood album, it has now been digitally remastered and expanded by the inclusion of a complete 26 minute loop performance at Tielt, Belgium, on 8 October 1982. The extended CD runs for 76 minutes. The booklet features the original artwork and contextual notes by Skidoo's Alex Turnbull. Full tracklist: G-2 Contemplation, S-Matrix, G-3 Insemination, Shrine, Mahakala, Banishing, Invocation, Flashing, Stifling, Healing (For the Strong), Move Back/Bite Harder.

Reviews: 'A damn fine piece of work, the perfect non-chemical cure for a headache' (The Wire, 11/2003); 'A genuinely esoteric and intriguing reissue. The ambience remains one of menace rather than ethno-tourism' (Record Collector, 12/2003); 'The mixes are diamond sharp. The Gamelan music drifts serenely across great canyons of nothingness, fairybell tinkling and enormous booming which disregards all forms of rhythm, ideas elongated into an immense drip-feed of sound' (NME, 02/1983); 'Culling is a densely packed, closed and clenched fist of a record' (Sounds, 02/1983); 'The Womad side offers tape-looped phrases segueing in and out of focus, electronic twitterings and squalling ethnic wind instruments all clawing at each other like an orgy in an abattoir' (Melody Maker, 02/1983); 'Twenty years on, TCIC remains dislocated and disconnected from anything remotely like western rock n' roll, and remains one of the strangest stylistic U-turns out there. Best approached with a similar zeal to finally seeing A Clockwork Orange at the cinema for the first time' (Whisperin' & Hollerin', 09/2003)

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