- Audio CD (22 Oct 2001)
- Number of Discs: 1
- Label: Ronin
- ASIN: B00004WHRY
- Other Editions: Audio CD | Vinyl
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 412,541 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
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Product details |
Track Listings
| 1. Kundalini |
| 2. Vegas el bandito |
| 3. Mary's operation |
| 4. Lock groove |
| 5. New testament |
| 6. IY |
| 7. Porno bass |
| 8. Quiet pillage |
Product Description
Review
Now available for the first time in over a decade, Seven Songs is still as rare as hen's teeth in one sense - as an album which actually lives up to the claim of having been 'hugely influential'. These eight tracks trailblazed much of what we take for granted now: a cut'n'paste sample culture audibly eating itself; white boys playing global funk rhythms; liberal application of metallic white noise and industrial ambience; sophisticated media-savvy imagery and political consciousness - it's all here.
Recorded in two and a half days at the end of 1981, and produced (under a pseudonym) by Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson of Throbbing Gristle, this was 23 Skidoo's first album and arguably their best. In turn, the influence of that year's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts can be clearly heard. Eno and Byrne ploughed a futurist furrow of Asian/American culture though - this is as homegrown as a tatty roll-up discarded on the Old Kent Road.
That this album sounds as strikingly contemporary as Bush of Ghosts still does (and that Neville Brody's original cover art still arrests) is certainly testament to the fervent currents circulating in post-punk Britain at that time. It's also perhaps partly due to the recent reappraisal of the early 80s (ESG, PiL, Grandmaster Flash, The Raincoats) and also 23 Skidoo's use as sample fodder by the likes of Future Sound of London.(The Chemical Brothers also infamously 'appropriated' Skidoo's "Coup" for their "Block Rockin' Beats").
Yet what this "I Love the 1980s" approach glosses over, and what this album studiously wallows in (to its immense credit) is the sheer grime of this period in Britain's history, as Thatcherism began to bite ('Withnail and I' without the glamour, basically). It's a dark, brooding noise ... the sound of cities whose streets are blocked with uncollected rubbish; of doomed strikes, anti-nuclear rallies, squat parties, and inner-city riots fierce in the face of police brutality and mainstream complacency; an industrial heritage cruelly dismembered; a popular media mind-numbingly banal and all the more dangerous for that; grudgingly remembered skies unusually leaden. If anybody fancies filming Alan Moore's stunning graphic novel V for Vendetta, they've found their soundtrack right here.
The Fela Kuti-meets-Cabaret Voltaire percussion of kung-fu obsessed brothers Johnny & Alex Turnbull creates an irresistible junkyard funk; a dole-office gamelan, grooves loping all over the place. It sounds sampled, but the off-kilter propulsion betrays its more primitive origins. Likewise "Quiet Pillage" (oh-ho), which seems Bali-high on something, anyway.
Yet make no mistake, this is an angry album. The sampling of Rightwing moral crusader Unity Mitford on "Porno Bass" is the only overt political statement, but the sound itself is magnificently defiant in the face of incipient Reaganomics and 'the death of society'. The supreme middle section, as "Mary's Operation" proceeds through "Lock Groove" to "New Testament" is wordless, yet speaks eloquently of times a-changing, with Fritz Catlin's bass on the latter frighteningly foreboding and dread-ful, even at this distance.
So, whilst the sound of Kate Thornton 'remembering' how great Spangles were may be vaguely amusing for, oh, all of 4 nanoseconds, Seven Songs provides a necessary antidote to those who would try to rewrite history. I love the 1980s indeed. --Dan Hill
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This one is just a classic,
By A Customer
This review is from: Seven Songs (Audio CD)
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.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Trigger Points,
By
This review is from: Seven Songs (Audio CD)
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
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews) 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This one is just a classic,
By Jay M "jay_mc" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Seven Songs (Audio CD)
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! 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Triggers,
By M. Jacobs "Mark Jacobs" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Seven Songs (Audio CD)
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 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Difficult, Uncompromising & abrasive...but a fantastic album,
By fetish_2000 - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Seven Songs (Audio CD)
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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