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Les Disques du Crepuscule present a new 76-minute CD edition of The Culling Is Coming by 23 Skidoo, originally released on vinyl by Crepuscule and sister imprint Operation Twilight in February 1983.
The Culling Is Coming signposted two radical new directions for Skidoo following the success of their indie chart-topping debut Seven Songs the previous year. Drawing from two extraordinary live performances, Culling combines a collaboration with the Balinese Gamelan Orchestra recorded at Dartington College of Music in October 1982 (subtitled A Winter Ritual), together with extracts from a more extreme improvised set performed at the first WOMAD festival in July 1982, using scrap metal and tape loops (A Summer Rite).
“The ambience remains one of menace rather than ethno-tourism” (Record Collector); “The perfect non-chemical cure for a headache” (The Wire); “Culling is densely-packed, closed and clenched fist of a record” (Sounds); “The mixes are diamond sharp… The Gamelan music drifts serenely across great canyons of nothingness, fairytale tinkling and enormous booming which disregards all forms of rhythm, ideas elongated into an immense drip-feed of sound” (NME); “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).
The original vinyl album is expanded on CD by the inclusion of a complete (and equally extreme) 26 minute loop performance (An Autumn Journey) at Tielt in Belgium on 8 October 1982, recorded as part of Crepuscule’s short Move Back-Bite Harder tour with Cabaret Voltaire, Tuxedomoon, Antena and The Pale Fountains.
The booklet features the original artwork, archive images and contextual notes by Alex Turnbull of 23 Skidoo.
Tracklist
1. G-2 Contemplation
2. S-Matrix
3. G-3 Insemination
4. Shrine
5. Mahakala
6. Banishing
7. Invocation
8. Flashing
9. Stifling
10. Healing (for the Strong)
11. Move Back – Bite Harder