Shpongle

Technorati Tag(s): Music

I'm not one for the mainstream four on the floor trance scene. Never really liked techno.

Was about ready to disregard electronic music as a passing fad extinct before it was born.

Then I came across a site called psynews.org which introduced me to a facet of electronic music I, and most of the rest of the world hadn't heard.

It's called psychedelic; it borrows from Pink Floyd; it's mostly four on the floor.

Yes, it's four on the floor, but it's great.

Most psyheads hear it high on LSD.

I don't need LSD.

I've tripped out to Dark Side of the Moon too many times to be sure.

Tucked away in a little corner on psynews.org is a section called Chill-Out and Ambient music.

This is where you'll find Shpongle.

I don't know if it is even possible that a piece of music can completely change you, but it happened to me.

When I heard their first album, Are You Shpongled? I could not believe that such lush and beautiful--yes, beautiful--music could exist. More than that, I could not believe that two men and a few instruments could create such brilliance.

Shpongle is Simon Posford and Raja Ram. Both veterans of the psychedelic trance scene. Simon Posford is also famous in the psytrance scene as Hallucinogen.

You can't really see it when hearing Shpongle, though. The difference is as huge as pre and post-Roger Waters Pink Floyd.

Shpongle's music is so lush that it is really not possible to describe it in words.

I don't know how they did it, but their music perhaps assembles almost all the sounds in the vast soundscape that the human ear can pickup, and mixes all of it in a striking balance that to someone like me who has dabbled in music production, it is nothing short of a miracle. As a writer may want to someday write something like Joyce or Nabokov, I wonder if I could someday create music as fulfilling as Shpongle.

I said once that no one will really love something the way you do. And it is true. I cannot make you love this music as much as I do, but perhaps you could love it in your own way.

Shpongle's music cannot be categorized. It is ambient, but it is also not music you can go to sleep to. It has horror elements, it has elements of comedy.

One thing it does constantly is take you away. You close your eyes and hear And the Day Turned to Night, and you will be transported. Not in a I'm-so-high-I-can-fly way, but in a way any good book can transport you: you think of nothing else but the music.

One thing about it: it never gets old. I've heard Are You Shpongled for roughly three years now, and the songs still give me the same satisfaction.

When their second album, Tales of the Inexpressible came out, I rejoiced.

Was it as good as the first? Suffice to say it was.

Could it have been better? I don't honestly think so: you cannot top the very best there is, after all.

Tales... was a departure from Shpongle's psychedelic roots, and incorporated a lot of live instruments. Was it an overproduced World Music album, though? No sir. No way.

Their third album came out on the 6th June, and though I haven't yet heard it, I certainly will. It is supposedly their last. Which is fine. I doubt if I could take any more of such fascinating music.

Music which frankly makes everything else sound like dry coughing.

I love Shpongle's music. And I do not use the word love as often as almost everyone else.

Shpongle's music might very well be one of the very few human achievements I think are actually worthy. One of the very few achievements that define the very best of what we can accomplish.