Skeet - Simple Reality

Skeet were a short-lived trio formed in Coventry around the same time as The Specials/associated 2 Tone crew in the early 80s who, until very recently, were an anonymous part of the city's admittedly already fairly barren musical history. Having grown up there myself, I was surprised to only learn of their existence when Estonian label, Almost Unknown, released a short compilation of collected works called Park Road last year. Near-all digital trace of the audio that record contained has disappeared, which clears the path for this more extensive (only just) collection from Melbourne's Efficient Space, who had a further two tracks to the running order and expand the mythology a little further. How it ended up in the hands of these savvy Australians is in part due to Mikey Young, the famed mastering engineer/one time member of Total Control/Eddy Currant Suppression Ring, who in early 2023 had picked out Skeet's 'Brief Call' in a Bandcamp recommendations feature. He, in turn, has previously been made aware of its existence via its inclusion on a locally released comp CD in 2018 entitled Alternative Sounds Vol. 1. So that's why this record exists, but why should we care? Well, there aint too many secrets left in the now well-documented history of British post-punk & DIY. Coventry, as always has seemed the case, is a kind of last frontier. Unusually, so, actually, as this is the kind of pop-orientated, minimal synth DIY action that now garners huge appreciation, kissed with a similar melodic nous and charming simplicity as that of Young Marble Giants and the Marine Girls, while in Kay Booth they had a singer with the kind of personality-forward, self-determination that made stars of Dolly Mixture, The Raincoast, Girls At Our Best et al. If the wind had blown the other way, we'd have heard of her and brothers Gary and Nigel Meffen long before now and without such convoluted backstory. Sometimes bands are born in the wrong time, but right now sounds just right for Skeet.