Summer Song 2012: Loreen’s “Euphoria”

Last year, I wrote about the importance of the summer song. Identifying a song with the summertime is part of growing up and follows us into adulthood. Hearing that one jam brings back specific memories of a time, a place, a person. You can taste, see, hear and almost feel everything around you in that place and time just by a couple of bars of that song. Think of what happens whenever you hear any of the following summer hits and see if they conjure memories: 

1986: “Venus” by Bananarama
1987: “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” by Whitney Houston
1991: “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)” by Bryan Adams
1996: “Killing Me Softly” by Fugees
1998: “Ray of Light” by Madonna
1999: “I Want It That Way” by Backstreet Boys
2002: “ Complicated” by Avril Lavigne
2003:  “Crazy in Love” by Beyoncé

2007: "Umbrella" by Rihanna
2008: “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay
2011: “The Edge of Glory” by Lady Gaga

One cannot predict what makes a summer jam or what will stick in the memory long after you pack away the beach umbrellas for the winter. But my choice for one of this year’s summer jams is a rarity, as it could also be crossover hit from the Eurovision Song Contest: Loreen’s “Euphoria”.

Originally a contestant on the Swedish version of Pop Idol in 2004, Loreen was born Loren Talhaoui and went on to forge a successful career as a TV presenter without releasing a proper music album. That’s about to change, as her Swedish chart-topper “Euphoria” won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest ahead of the heavily-favoured novelty track by the Buranova Babushkas.

Within hours of winning, the song blasted to the top of the UK iTunes chart. Within a week, it had topped over a dozen other music charts across Europe and was poised to make its mark on the official UK chart in the top five, giving Loreen an instant blockbuster smash single. That’s not surprising given that “Euphoria” received first-place votes from a record 18 of 42 voting countries in the contest, and only two of the 40 did not award it any points at all (and that’s only because Sweden couldn’t vote for itself).

And remember what other Swedish Eurovision champion went on to conquer worldwide charts? A little group known as ABBA, in 1974, with “Waterloo”.

Let’s examine what’s so great about “Euphoria”. It’s a trance-inspired dance track that, at first blush, sounds like just like everything else in vogue on contemporary hit radio. But listen again a little more closely, and you can see that it’s constructed so that it opens with minimal instrumentation to showcase Loreen’s vocals. She’s quietly whispering, questioning why a simple moment of joy is fleeting. But as the chorus builds, the beats kick in and the full vibrato of her glorious voice comes through loud and clear. There is no guest rap, no name-checking, no self-referencing. There is only a voice and a beat.

Cinematically Inclined: “The Turning Point”

If there’s one thing I learned from Black Swan, it’s that ballerinas are batshit crazy. One friend called it “Ballerina Fight Club”. From other films with ballet or dance, I learn only about some nondescript aspiring young Midwest girl hoping to learn about life and love and the big city. The dancing, in all of the stories, appears secondary to the life journey the often milquetoast, heterosexual white female undertakes to find herself, or some such nonsense. (See further: Center Stage, The Company.)

This is what makes Herbert Ross’s 1977 film The Turning Point unique in its day and even today, at least in the small canon of dance films. This is a film centering on two women who started off as aspiring ballerinas in the 1950s and took radically different paths in life. Emma (the late, great Anne Bancroft) became the prima ballerina of the premiere American ballet theatre company. Dee Dee (Shirley MacLaine) became pregnant, gave up a promising career and settled into a low-key life running a dance school with her former partner Wayne (Tom Skerritt) in Oklahoma. Twenty years later, the company plays two nights in their small town and Dee Dee is reunited with her former colleagues, including her best friend and formidable foe Emma. The “turning point” refers not just to the pregnancy, but also the lead role in Anna Karenina, which was awarded to Emma when Dee Dee had a baby, and became a career-defining role.

That baby, Emilia (Leslie Browne), has become a promising ballerina. The dance company offers her a summer scholarship in Manhattan, and Dee Dee accompanies her, surrounding herself with her past and the career that she left behind, which now awaits her daughter. In the background, a young Russian dancer (Mikhail Baryshnikov, in the role that made him an actor) romances Emilia. Into this turmoil there are rumours of the dance company suffering financially, a young prick of a director trying to make ballet cold and hip, and an old flame from Dee Dee’s past, amongst others.

There’s enough drama here to fuel an entire soap opera. In fact, the content of The Turning Point could easily have been the catalyst for a show like NBC’s Smash, and an heir apparent to Fame (which, by the way, was released just a couple of years after the success of The Turning Point and became a cultural touchstone in its own right). Playwright Arthur Laurents crams his screenplay not with clichés, but with several plot threads giving the film an aura of really living in the dance world. There’s constant worry about funding an art form that has considerable support in Europe but not in America, where it is considered an elitist pastime and not as part of one’s essential cultural education. The ballet is not just a backdrop into which a navel-gazing treatise a la Eat, Pray, Love is thrown to give some young starlet an acting showcase. This is a film that honours the dance tradition and is about people who eat, breathe, sleep and love the ballet, without irony and purely for the love of it. Their bodies may ache, their feet will bluster and their will beaten (and sometimes broken) under vicious taskmasters, but all of the assembled members of the company believe in their craft, using it to create art.

Trailer Park: Wim Wenders’s “Pina”

Some film trailers are so mesmerizing that they inspire you to find out more about its subject matter. That happened for me recently with Wim Wenders’s dance documentary Pina.

Originally, this was supposed to be a film documentary made in collaboration with famed German contemporary dance pioneer, choreographer and dancer Philippina “Pina” Bausch. In mid-2009, as she was collaborating with Wenders on the project, she was diagnosed with cancer and shockingly died less than a week after being diagnosed. The film project went ahead without her, but the focus shifted from being a collaborative endeavour to a valediction on her legacy.

Bausch’s style of choreography was often matched with jarring body rhythms that seemed incongruous or not of modern dance, but her use of repetition to convey raw energy and feeling were what made her one of the leading lights of the dance world. In particular, her magnificent Rite of Spring is one of her trademark pieces, focusing the word “rite” to highlight the physical aspect of human sacrifice. With the dancers barefoot on a stage covered entirely in dirt, and the lead dancer acting as the sacrificial lamb, the effect is visceral and disturbing, yet beautiful:

Similarly, another of her trademark pieces if the Café Muller chairs sequence, consisting of dancers moving in a space populated by chairs, using them as metaphors for the obstacles and facilitators of life’s struggles. This was popularized in Pedro Almodovar’s film Talk to Her and is still considered part of the contemporary dance canon:

Wenders’s film, shot in 3-D, is a majestic tribute to Bauch’s work and shows us her aesthetics, how it influences people, and the beauty of movement. It is a celebration of the human body. And it’s just been short-listed as one of the finalists (the last step before the nominations are finalized) for Best Documentary Feature for next year’s Oscars. Pina, already a sensation at film festivals around the globe, will receive a North American limited release on December 23. In the meantime, you can view the magnificent trailer below:

Additionally, I recommend you also consider their influence on other art forms. The three-time world champion figure skaters and 2010 Olympic bronze medalists from Germany, Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy, have brought Bausch’s aesthetic to create some radical choreography in figure skating, as seen at a recent tournament. Note the jagged edges and deconstructed, broken-down body positions that are in contrast to more “classical”, balletic movements and clean lines favoured in the sport. It seems that even after her death, Bausch’s influence lives on.

You can find out more on Pina on the film’s website. 

Guilty Pleasure: Verka Serduchka (Верка Сердючка)

Have you ever looked at something completely ridiculous and, against your better judgment, not looked away from it even though you just know it’s the nuttiest thing you’ve ever seen? Some people have no stomach for something like this, but others have a penchant for taking pleasure in completely madcap, over-the-top spectacles and enjoy it without irony. I belong to the latter group, but if you have been reading my blog long enough, you’ll know that I have a mild fascination with Eastern Europe and in particular the Eurovision Song Contest in all its insane glory.

Verka Serduchka (Верка Сердючка) is perhaps the most outlandish music artist the Ukraine has to offer. He first came to prominence outside of Europe thanks to his unforgettable entry in the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest with “Dancing Lasha Tumbai”. A totally nonsensical song in English, German, Mongolian(!) and Russian, the pop-happy dance single is performed by a drag alter ego of Ukrainian singer Andriy Danylko. Given that Eurovision in 2007 contained an unusually large number of hard-rock entries attempting to ape the previous year’s winner Lordi, seeing an accordion-laced dance-pop single in four languages made up of catchphrases and no clear narrative thread or cohesion made for an unforgettable spectacle.

The single and its star were met with considerable controversy in the rather conservative Ukraine, and the selection committee was heavily criticized for sending a drag queen to represent them. Remember that in parts of the former Soviet Union, effeminate men are still the target of homophobia and Russia is in the process of trying to make any public references to homosexuality illegal, which if you ask for my opinion is just – and I am breaking with my higher level of diction here – totally dumbass and a total embarrassment for the entire country, and I hope they get over it soon. Anyway, back to the fun of Eurovision!

Watch the performance and take note of the genius of it.

The Desert’s Mystery: Everything but the Girl's “Missing”

I don’t often get song lyrics wrong. No, I did not think that last night, Madonna dreamt of some bagels in “La Isla Bonita” (it helps that I grew up speaking some Spanish and knew it was an invocation to San Pedro). I did not believe anyone would excuse themselves so that they can kiss some guy. It used to bother and amuse me that North Americans could not get the words correct to songs in their first language while no one bothered learning anything other than English as a means of communication. This used to annoy me until it happened to me in late 1995.

The British dance duo Everything but the Girl (who I will refer to as “EBTG” from here on out) were known to underground American audiences, but had never achieved mainstream success despite considerable critical acclaim. They had made their reputation as a folk and jazz act to some success in their native Britain but hadn’t broken through outside of Europe. Their 1994 single “Missing” was a guitar single about a woman pining for her long-gone lover, one who vanished without a trace but who more than likely simply changed addresses. She goes to his street from time to time, wandering and wondering what might have been. It’s a mournful confession, the kind of lament you hear in the wee small hours of the morning after a drunken night of introspection. It’s exactly the kind of self-reflective poem or letter you write, re-read the morning after and, in the harsh light of day, throw out in a fit of embarrassment and disgust.

In 1995, EBTG decided to give “Missing” to American house music DJ Todd Terry to remix and play in nightclubs. The resulting work turned the song on its head. The opening slam and staccato rhythm, followed by a lilting guitar pluck, and slithering beat was a call to attention. When that slam first got onto the radio, it made you stop and listen. In the brief acoustic interlude, EBTG lead singer Tracey Thorne announces that she had stepped off the train and was walking down her street. She knows her lover is no longer there, but she’s going to check it out anyway. The beat was sinister and, paired with Thorne’s plaintive vocal, produced musical alchemy. Her little trip down your street was fueled with a mission and a driving force that suggests her quest to find you will not be denied. It’s the sort of single that Adele Hugo would have recorded had she been born a century and a half later and had a recording studio in her room at the asylum.

Master Class: Maya Plisetskaya’s “Bolero”

The term “masterpiece” gets thrown around far too often these days. While I have seen it applied to cuisine, architecture and two-dimensional visual art, it’s not just a static finished product, but a performance, a live event that is best seen in motion.

With the grand re-opening of Moscow’s hallowed Bolshoi Theater this week, one cannot help but think of the most well-known ballets danced on the stage, including Swan Lake, Spartacus and The Nutcracker, all of which have roots in Russia. The theatre, however, produced no greater star in the twentieth century than Maya Plisetskaya.

Born in 1925 and still alive today, Plisetskaya faced a number of obstacles on her way to becoming one of the most seminal stars of the Bolshoi. Her father was executed during the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s, her mother was sent to a gulag, and she fought against anti-Semitism and the supposed limitations of her physicality – mainly that she was a fiery redhead with milky skin – to earn international acclaim and the rare honour of being named prima ballerina assoluta, a title conferred to very few dancers to this day. Retiring in 1990, Plisetskaya never slowed down as a ballerina, having danced the lead in Swan Lake as late as 1986 to considerable acclaim, at the age of 61. Maya Plisetskaya is considered the Maria Callas of the ballet world.

While there is no consensus for which of her performances ranks as the greatest, for me her finest work was the free-form, modern dance routine set to Ravel’s Bolero in 1975. At the age of 50, Plisetskaya showed she was in top form in this fifteen-minute performance, which she danced as a solo piece accompanied by 40 men onstage. Set on an elevated but unadorned white dance space against a black background, she danced the piece barefoot, her hair tied back and pulled away from her face, dressed in a simple white tank top and black trousers. The set incorporated traditional ballet points and positions but infused in a modern style. What makes the piece so compelling is that Plisetskaya may be accompanied by dozens of other dancers mirroring her movement, the first and only focus is on the prima ballerina herself. Her continual rocking and swaying at certain points, rhythmically timed to the syncopations of the orchestra, create a mesmerizing effect that demonstrated an absolute control over every nuance of her body, from the smallest toe to her fingertips, to the top of her head. One could almost imagine that her supreme mastery might have compelled her to make her hair stand on end by sheer force of will.

The point of the piece is not to recreate verisimilitude, or time and place. It’s a free-form dance piece that is meant to showcase only one thing: Maya Plisetskaya, and her God-given talents alone.

Sometimes words fail do fail even this writer, no matter how verbose I might be. Words cannot compare to the majesty and raw beauty of Plisetskaya’s finest performance. See below, and be mesmerized.

VIFF 2011: "First Position"

Director and journalist Bess Kargman was looking for inspiration for her first documentary feature. One day, while walking in Manhattan, she happened upon a dance recital. Being a former dancer herself, she went into the concert hall and was captivated by an enchanting half-Japanese, half-American dancer named Miko, who was not even ten years old, and decided to make a film about the young ballet talent competition, the Young America Grand Prix. This was the inspiration for her directorial debut, First Position, as she told us at a screening of the film at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

First Position follows a year in the lives of a half-dozen young dancers aged 11 to 17 as they prepared to participate in the Grand Prix. This contest, like American Idol does for singers, can make careers. Prizes include not only performance medals, but highly sought-after dance contracts and major scholarships from the likes of the Royal Ballet Theatre, American Ballet Theater, Royal Winnipeg Ballet and virtually all of the world’s most esteemed dance companies. Kargman was given all-access to these dancers and the competition.

We meet 11-year-old Aran, a charming young dance prodigy living on a US army base in Naples and training in Rome. His fellow competitor Gaya is a young Israeli girl whose mother is a little too intent on making them into a ballet supercouple (they are only 11 years old). Fourteen-year-old Michaela was born at the height of the Sierra Leone civil unrest, adopted by a New England Jewish couple, and now fights various bodily injuries as she takes her shot at a dance scholarship, hoping to one day open a dance academy in her war-torn home country. Sixteen-year-old Colombian Joan Sebastien is sponsored by a former ABT dancer, and carries the hopes and dreams of his family in New York City. Privileged Rebecca is the all-American girl who may have the word “princess” in stencils on her bedroom wall, but who is a studious, disciplined dancer, entering the job market at a time when companies are no longer hiring new talent. And then there’s Miko, the Palo Alto tween who has a glowing, natural stage presence and clearly lives to dance, whose mother has also pushed her adorably clumsy younger brother Jules (J.J.) into the field, hoping to raise two dance stars in her family.

Kargman’s compassionate feature marks the confident debut of a new talent. Having trained as a journalist and a dancer, she explained in the post-screening Q&A to a receptive, appreciative audience that her professional training and understanding of the inner workings of the ballet world gave her the tools to truly explore these aspiring dancers’ lives and interpret the challenges they face to her audience. Write about what you know, they say, and the same is true of directing as it is in any art form. We gain insight from intimate moments, such as Michaela’s mother dying the flesh tones in her daughter’s ballet costumes for aesthetic purposes. Why? Because ballet outfits aren’t available in African-American flesh tones. We follow Joan Sebastian to his home in Cali, Colombia, a world away from Manhattan, and realize that without his mentor’s assistance, they would never have afforded the tuition when the average salary is $250 a month in Colombia. Dance was his way out and into the world. And we see how Miko’s and J.J.’s father moved his entire company’s office closer to the best dance studio in order to give his children’s burgeoning careers flight. These little sacrifices, combined with the hours of punishing practice and debilitating injuries, show how resilient and tough the dancers are.

You will not find stories of anorexia or the artfully perverse fantasia of Black Swan here. Even the so-called stage parents and sadistic coaches are empathetic, not monsters. They simply recognize that their young charges will falter, but also can and will continue to do better. These youth live to dance simply because they are happy doing it, and can better express themselves in their physicality than they ever could in words. And that is the mark of a real visual and performance artist. Kargman has already indicated she will be doing a follow-up film in ten years’ time, to chart the development of these youth into hopefully accomplished dancers.

First Position played to rapt audiences at the Vancouver International Film Festival. You can still catch one last screening on Friday, October 14 by buying tickets here. If you miss it, don’t fret, because Kargman announced that the film was very recently granted a distribution deal in North America and will be coming soon to a theatre near you. For more information, check out the film’s active Facebook page and website.

Sound Advice: Hi Fashion & “I’m Not Madonna”

Meet the new dance pop duo Hi Fashion.

Formed by the members Jen DM and Rick Gradone, this duo is a deliciously catty pop machine that may very well be performance art in disguise. Every one of their singles could have been collected from the ruminations of the most attitude-filled, delusional drag queens. A creation called “Amazing” pretty much sums up the entire “I don’t care if you don’t like it because I’m amazing” fantasia that, although could have been mined entirely from a transvestite’s internal monologue, might easily have danced out of any reality TV show’s participant’s mouth, masking a deep-seated insecurity and possible psychosis. (Why else would they agree to be on television, dummy?) It’s the duo’s delirium that sets them apart from any other dance or pop acts.

The band’s videos remind me of old 70s and 80s Japanese commercials, but acted out by gender-bending transvestites in faux Amy Winehouse beehive hairdos and Stevie Nicks’s Goth night outfits. The only proper reaction to any of these videos is the following question: “is this on purpose?” (They also remind me very much of Eurovision and most of Eastern Europe’s ideas of what is supposedly cool.)

But their crowning glory remains the dance club smash “I’m Not Madonna”.

This is a knowing, winking but extremely savvy pop single that trumps any self-referential attempts by the Jersey Shore kids. Why? Because their brand of irony is rooted in a need to self-deprecate that is hampered by the fact that they think they’re being smart. The protagonist in “I’m Not Madonna” has the delusion without the irony, and that makes the entire performance that much more exciting and accomplished. They’re not doing it to seem smarter than they already are, and the hell with anyone with doesn’t like it. It reminds me of what Amy Poehler said to Jimmy Fallon during a rehearsal on SNL, when he told her to stop a gag because he didn’t like it: “I don’t fucking care if you don’t like it!”

Before I discuss this sooner, please listen to their Soundcloud here and then join me after the jump.

Happy Nation: Ace of Base Concert Review

Vancouver is a town notorious for having some of the least animated concert crowds. A friend went to Beck’s December 2002 performance and even he was disgusted by our collective behaviour, intoning sarcastically, “uh, this is the last song of the night, you can get up and dance, if you want to.”

Thankfully, there was no such sign at the Ace of Base-headlined Outgames Closing Party this past Saturday. There was only The Sign.

The show took place at the Plaza of Nations, located at 750 Pacific Boulevard in downtown Vancouver, across the street from BC Place Stadium, which non-locals will recognize from the 2010 Winter Olympics. The Plaza is an open-air square and concert space, the sort of piazza that one expects for outdoor performances in Europe and the American East Coast but is curiously missing from the West Coast, despite the fact that there’s a lot more land to build. The Plaza is also home to Gossip Nightclub, a fun straight bar that occasionally attracts a good cross-sectional demographic. It’s also the site of the Edgewater Casino and is located directly from the visually stunning Olympic Village housing development across False Creek. The mixture of fiberglass-and-steel structures, offset by the iconic stadium and pleasure cruises and yachts swanning along False Creek, made for a perfect outdoor concert.

The crowd at the Ace of Base show was surprisingly more hetero-friendly than one would expect. Since it’s well-known that nostalgic pop music concerts cater to a predominantly gay audience, it’s always a bit surprising to find throngs of straight girls and a few of their boyfriends at an event like this. Nevertheless, the beautiful thing about Vancouver is that increasingly, people look beyond the “labels” attached to gay-dominant events and bring out locals from different social groups, all in the name of partying. I worked the ticket booth at the event and saw first-hand the crowd heading into the venue. Everyone was in for a good time and the band did not disappoint.

Beautiful Life: Ace of Base at 2011 North America Outgames

There’s a line in Almost Famous, when Zooey Deschanel’s character says to her un-hip but sweet brother, “don’t worry: one day, you’ll be cool”. Some have claimed 1990s dance band Ace of Base were anything but cool, even if they were the most successful musical act of the planet and sold 20 million records in a single year. It’s rather appropriate then that the group gets to headline the forthcoming North America Outgames Closing Party during Vancouver Pride Week, arguably the single coolest event on the social calendar in Lotusland this summer.

Ace of Base is the brainchild of Swedish singer-songwriter Ulf Ekberg and initially composed of five members, including sisters Jenny and Linn Berggren. Eventually, other members of the band left and the Berggrens' brother Jonas stepped in, forming the most familiar line-up of the group in 1990. Ace of Base first attempted to bring techno-dance sound to the airwaves, but were prevented from major breakout success even in their native Sweden due to the prominence of heavy metal in the early 1990s. Eventually, they broke through with “All That She Wants”, a dub-reggae single that came to represent their signature sound and conquered European pop charts in the fall and spring of 1992-1993.

Ace of Base, the "classic" line-up

The band first emerged on the international music scene in the summer of 1993, when “All That She Wants” appeared in North American clubs after conquering the European charts over the previous three seasons. In a rare feat, and in an era when grunge, New Jack Swing R&B and gangsta rap ruled the airwaves, the dub-reggae-infused dance club single gained significant airplay in the United States and crossed over on the pop, adult contemporary, dance and R&B charts, ultimately peaked at Number Two and selling well over a million copies domestically. Follow-up single “The Sign” gave the band their only US #1 in 1994, but it proved so popular and enduring that Billboard magazine named it the #1 single of the entire year. Parent album The Sign topped the charts as well, and became the year’s best-selling disc.

The band, however, was unable to repeat the same success. Their 1995 follow-up disc The Bridge was a failure on the American charts, peaking at #37 just a year after having the most successful disc in the country. The band quietly reined in their North American efforts, although their cover of Bananarama’s immortal “Cruel Summer” made the Top Ten in 1998 and “Beautiful Life” remains an enduring hit on recurrent radio. Elsewhere in Europe, the band’s success continued through the rest of the decade, even if the Berggren sisters both receded to the background voluntarily before eventually leaving the band. Eventually, they were replaced by Clara Hagman and Julia Williamson, forming the current lineup.

Sound of the Underground: Massive Attack’s “Mezzanine”

Perhaps it’s the unexpectedly cold, rainy summer weather that has infected Vancouver, and also London, Seattle, Portland and even LA. Perhaps it’s the run of MI5 episodes in the last few wet, rainy evenings. Perhaps it’s the effects of the triumphant Shpongle show this past week. Regardless, the Blogger cannot stop listening to Massive Attack’s classic Mezzanine album.

 Released in the spring of 1998, Mezzanine was a radical departure from the Bristol trip-hop outfit’s prior output of trance-y but danceable beats. This disc gathered distorted guitars, fuzzy bass lines and muffled high-hats into a down-tempo setting. The new sound unveiled on Mezzanine is that of lush sonic layers, built organically to create a sinister and almost disturbing effect. This is the album that creeps up on you and doesn’t let you go. Sonically, Mezzanine conjures up images of meetings between government informants and secret agents in underground car parks to exchange sensitive intel. It’s no accident, perhaps, that tracks are named after potential code names for spies and there are two tracks named “Exchange”. It’s dank, ambient and decidedly British industrial music. For all intents and purposes, the album could have been subtitled “if you’re feeling sinister” (the title of a Belle & Sebastian album which was released in the same era).

The Blogger had so looked forward to this record at the time that he purchased the rather expensive imported version from Germany, just to get the now sought-after original gatefold packaging that has since gone out of print. (The disc remains available in standard jewel box and in MP3 format.) He was not disappointed.

The disc is one of the most perfectly constructed and engineered records of all time. Each track builds on the previous one, layering instruments and taking them away to create different effects. This is an album you could play end-to-end and not have to skip any tracks. “Angel” is the muted opening, but one that builds its power with a stop-and-go rhythm that doesn’t assault the listener all at once. “Risingson” is its ice-cold stepbrother, one that gives way to the majestic centerpiece “Teardrop”, still the album’s most popular track. “Inertia Creeps” could be perfectly tied into the image of being shackled to a table and tortured, but beautifully, rhythmically so. “Mezzanine” is the sound of an interrogator whispering threats of further harm to his captive: this is the dark cousin to one of Massive Attack’s earliest singles, 1991’s “Safe from Harm”. The album ends on a muted note, the downbeat “(Exchange)” that acts as a release from the dark and into the light. In totality, the album sonically starts at midnight for a clubber and appears to end with the vertical rays of the sun at 6 am, just when the wearied reveler emerges into the light (although the disc is 60 minutes, not 6 hours, long).

Mystical Journey: Shpongle on Tour

It seems everyone is a DJ these days. Throw on the latest Britney Spears “song”, stretch it three times the radio edit’s length, and liberally throw in some monotonous autoerotic come-ons. Jack up the speed, throw in a few more beats and be ready to pummel the average clubber into submission. The result is that clubbing is not just tiring, it’s a primal assault on the senses guaranteed to level the hardiest partier.

Thank goodness there are still adventurous electronica artists with Shpongle’s vision and ingenuity.

Formed in 1996 by Simon Posford, British musician and mastermind behind the noted electronic act Hallucinogen, and Raja Ram, co-creator of The Infinity Project and owner Tip Records, Shpongle started life as a downtempo electronica project. Their style has evolved organically from psychedelic conglomeration of analogue and digital sounds into a marriage of western psychedelic trance beats with aboriginal, Indian and Brazilian musical influences. Do not mistake this for now-trendy but faceless “world music” you’ll buy off the counter at your local Starbucks on impulse and play harmlessly at your next dinner party. The problem is that such music has no personality.  Shpongle is anything but that, do not confuse the two.

Posford (left) and Ram (right)

The band’s persona is that of a human face with the eyes layered and superimposed one over the top of the other to create a distinctive mask. One can’t help but be immediately faced with an alternate consciousness that recall both mind-altering psychedelic states and long-forgotten ethnic deities. In other words, unlike so many contemporary electronic artists, Shpongle are intent on giving their music its own multi-sensory signature and creating it organically, rather than building a set of remixes for other artists. This is not your mama’s electronic band, and certainly has a different philosophy than the “mix” that you run to at your local gym.

Posford’s background is unconventional by electronic artist standards. Trained as a sound engineer, Posford’s musical influences include psychedelic 70s rock bands such as Pink Floyd, The Cure and American humourist Bill Hicks. It’s not difficult to see the scale and influence reflected in the Shpongle oeuvre. He went to work as an engineer in the infamous Butterfly Studio in Brixton, under the tutelage of pioneering dance music artist and Killing Joke bassist Martin Glover, better known as Youth. It was here that Posford honed the art of creating psychedelic trance music under the stage name Hallucinogen. Posford then went on to found Twisted Records in 1996, which since has been the home to Shpongle and other boundary-breaking electronic artists such as Ott, Prometheus and Younger Brother.