Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This one is just a classic, February 12, 2002
I've waited years for this to be re-released and I'm at last happy to say it has been. This has been deleted for a very long time, so you better get your hands on it now! But what is it all about? Oh right! 23 Skidoo were the main members, and best, of the second phase of the whole industrial-funk explosion that happened in England in the early eighties. Combining elements of industrial noise, guitars, drumbeats, tape-loops, Asian percussion (particularly Gamelan from Indonesia) to from a sometimes hard, but mainly highly rhythmic mix of percussive funk tracks. On some songs there are vocals but none of the group were really great singers so it was the instrumentation of the group that took charge and precedence. Don't be put off by the 'industrial' tag, this album has more in common with funk and dub. 23 Skidoo were innovators and have influenced a vast array of music groups, most notably Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers, who nicked the whole of Skidoo's bassline from 'Coup' to make their own hit single 'Block Rockin' Beats'. So for those that think they've never heard Skidoo, think again!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Triggers, September 1, 2002
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
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Difficult, Uncompromising & abrasive...but a fantastic album, November 18, 2003
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.
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by 23 Skidoo 
