Triggers
M. Jacobs | Harrow, Middlesex United Kingdom | 09/02/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Have you ever been walking along, when a street/office sound triggers a classic weird track in your head? I had "Mary's Operation" triggered, and, boy, this is a real weirdy! A woodwind and brass orchestrated effort, which conveys exactly the hollow futility of life 23 Skidoo wanted to put across, verging on the edge of whale song, but the exploration of the instruments is so penetrative, the lack of coherent structure becomes irrelevant to the cause. "Mary's Operation" just blows me away every time. But it wouldn't normally be so good, had its context not been so perfectly laid down by the preceding track "Vegas El Bandito", which is an upbeat twisted dance beat track, with montages of B-Movie Cowboy dialog sampled in. This EP. has a funky/weird feel to it. After many listenings, it becomes clear that 23 Skidoo have laid out a gorgeous rarity for all to witness. For open minds. That trigger certainly changed the tone of the rest of the day for me. Makes you look at life very differently from those you're looking at! Others that do it for me :-Fripp and Eno - Evening Star - An Index of Metals
23 Skidoo - Just Like Everybody - Shrine
Zoviet France - Digilogue - Alchemagenta"
At last a reissue of this great album
dan_s | israel | 06/19/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"and good quality soundwise.
in addition to what other reviewers wrote, in 1984 an issue of 7songs came out which contained 'the gospel comes to new guinea' 'last words' and 'just like everybody else' and did not contain 'IY'.
the three former songs are now on the new compilation album 'the gospel comes to new guinea'
anyway, great fun."
Difficult, Uncompromising & abrasive...but a fantastic album
fetish_2000 | U.K. | 11/18/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Labelled (slightly incorrectly) as an `Industrial Dance' band, 23 Skidoo's overview of music is far broader & experimental. First track "Kundalini" starts with a throbbing bass, expertly coupled with a gloomy drone, that produces a sublime sound, without necessarily being a traditionally structured song. "Vegas el Bandito" is where the band lose the Industrial tag, and venture into experimental funk with astonishing results, metallic & slightly abrasive in sound, it's not quite `Chilli Peppers or James brown' but has a various Horns, & a scratchy guitar line that show a leniency to accessible Avante garde, but the percussion & bass guitar are unquestionably funk-derived. "IY" is the nearest concession to a dance-oriented track on the album, and whilst you'll be had pressed to find a DJ willing to risk spinning this one, the conga drums, saxophones, cymbal crashes are the natural evolution from Punk-funk. A few of the tracks ("Mary's Operation", "Porno Bass") are stark bleak collages of metallic sounds, and fragmented drones & disembodied distorted mumblings, highly eerie & unsettling and prove to significantly divide the pace of the album to great effect (be warned, these are pseudo-industrial ambient sound collages, not fully formed songs). In Conclusion.....this is a bleak, difficult, uncompromising listen of an album, and possibly not for those without at least a fair idea of what to expect from this album (or at the least having a really broad sense of music), but unquestionably one of those fantastically underrated albums you hear about, but seemingly never come across."
Track Listings (8) - Disc #1