TUMMY TOUCH REISSUES SKYLAB CLASSICS

In the 1990s, Skylab was thrown in with the trip hop lot. Their two albums, #1 (1994) and #2: 199 Large as Life and Twice as Natural, were dark and dusty and abstract, but they were in their own odd way magical, mysterious, and filled with a wide-eyed wonder at the sounds of the natural world. Their tracks, ambient jams better suited for the far end of the dial, were made using found sounds and by deliberately warping traditional instruments. The group included a young Howie B, Matt Ducasse, and hip hop dons Toshio Nakanishi and K.U.D.O. - aka Love TKO (Major Force /Mo Wax). Their aim was explicit. “When you use raw recognizable sounds everybody detects the whole sound. We want to make sounds unknown.” By 1999, Howie B had gone solo, famously producing Bjork, U2 and others, but the remaining trio were joined by vocalist Debbie Sanders who sings on the track we’re sharing today, Please. Whereas most of their songs are psychedelic shape-shifters, Please locks into a steady, slinky almost R&B groove.

Both albums were reissued digitally for the first time on June 9^th by Tummy Touch records, connoisseurs of left field beats. The rerelease brings things full circle for Tim "Love" Lee, Tummy Touch founder and former Skylab tour DJ. “The origins of our record label can be traced back to Skylab’s #1 album.  My business partner Matt Smith took his first job at a DJ promo company and his first project was to mail out vinyl of Skylab’s ‘Seashell’ single to me!”