In terms of mythical status, 23 SKIDOO'S legendary 'lost' album "The Culling Is Coming" is up there with Neil Young's "Time Fades Away": i.e a critic and fan divider which is viewed by some as a brave, if wilful departure, but by others as career ruination writ large - and probably in the participants' own blood.
Your reviewer never actually heard the original vinyl version (relased by Crepuscule's Operation Twilight sub-label in Febrary 1983), but as an avid "Sounds" reader from the early '80s, he's acutely aware of its' contents and approached it with a similar zeal to finally seeing "A Clockwork Orange" at the cinema for the first time.
So, let's establish a few facts right now. Of chief importance is the fact that "The Culling..." bears absolutely bugger all relation to the 23 SKIDOO you might know and love: i.e the one who fit snugly into the exciting crop of post-punk funkers who prevailed in the late 70s and very early 80s (most of whom are celebrated on the Rough Trade shops "Post Punk 01" CD) and who committed the slippery, rhythmic delights of "Seven Songs" and "Fuck You GI" et al to tape and then took them to the top of the then-Independent Charts.
Indeed, few could have expected this fashionably boho outfit to have forsaken their typically funky rhythms for experiments with traditional Balinese Gamelan instruments (gongs, kendang drums, flutes and gamelans) for what was at the time an important, hotly-anticipated release. We'll come to the studio side in a minute, but "The Culling Is Coming" also features the full 23 minutes of Skidoo's performance at the 1982 WOMAD Festival, which is the one that really sorted the wheat from the chaff.
Bearing in mind that this havoc was wreaked upon an audience at 11.00 AM, with Alex and Johnny Turnbull (plus metal percussionist Fritz Catlin) choosing to eschew the funky sounds of their back catalogue - and most of the goodwill afforded them by a potentially adoring audience - by unleashing this wilful, shrieking set full of weird headaches, grinding FX and metal percussion. Whether it's brave or obnoxious depends on your standpoint, but suffice it to say the escalating drama of tracks like "Banishing" and "Flashing" were too much for all but the truly stout-hearted and by the time the extreme noise'n' gamelan gong fest that is "Healing (For The Strong)" (the last movement of what was termed "A Summer Rite") heads for that notorious and extremely unpleasant lock groove, most expectations were reduced to shattered fragments.
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As if we needed it ramming home, this expanded version of the album also includes an equally uncompromising 26-minute live exploration called "An Autumn Journey" recorded live at Crepuscule's Move Back/ Bite Harder tour from October 1982. The feedback, tape FX montages etc here are quite possibly migraine-inducing and try the patience of even the most tolerant Skidoo head. The Emperor's new clothes were never so shamefully exposed.
Thankfully, the studio side of "The Culling is Coming" claws back a few points. Unlike the extreme metal percussion and abrasive tape loops, this 23-minute movement in five parts ("A Winter Ritual") found the Turnbulls heading for Dartington college in Devon to improvise rhythms and really get to grips with the nuances of the Gamelan instruments. The resulting piece is far more comtemplative and (relatively) musical, with the tinkling gongs sending out the most hypnotic of serenades across the set pieces and the closing track, "Mahakala" especially featuring distant, pensive booming echoes that are every bit as evocative as the weird ambient rumblings previously incorporated by Krautrock notables such as Tangerine Dream. Actually, this track is almost like an Oriental companion piece to their landmark album "Zeit."
It would be easy to execute Skidoo in public for something as perverse and difficult as "The Culling Is Coming" and indeed the press had a field day when the album was initially released in 1983. To be fair, Skidoo seem(ed) serious about the experiment and were willing to suffer for it, which they did with both prospective audiences and labels acutely wary of them after news the WOMAD performance became public domain. Twenty years on, "The Culling is Coming" remains dislocated and disconnected from anything remotely like western rock'n'roll and remains one of the strangest sudden stylistic U-turns out there. The 1980s very own "Metal Machine Music," anyone?
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