the shamen: c/d

Someone I know regularly mentions the bonus ambient (?) album that came with early copies of Axis Mutatis so I keep an eye out for the 2CD but haven't found it offline yet.

Plavka (vocalist on Hypereal and later on Jam and Spoon’s awful Right in the Night)
I love the Shamen, but "Right in the Night" and "Find Me" are still better than any of their singles.

― Tuomas, Thursday, 6 August 2020 08:58 (one hour ago) link

SACRILEGE!! But "Stella" on the other hand, remains a classic.

I loved 1993, and Emprion "Narcotic Influence" is peak 1993 for me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLr3dSekkIY

Sorry, Tuomas I just went and read up a few ILM thread about Eurodance, and one of your polls revealed that the genre-defining track was Technotronic: Pump Up the Jam

I'm sure that's because them majority of the voters are from the US and the UK, and that song was a big hit in both countries. But most of Eurodance was made and consumed in continental Europe, and for us the most emblematic Eurodance song would probably be 2 Unlimited's "No Limit", which wasn't a hit in the US, and which was released UK as an edited version without Ray's eurorapping, only with Anita's singing.

the most emblematic Eurodance song would probably be 2 Unlimited's "No Limit"

Naturally I must agree with this.

Talking about Eurodance here is a red herring really, just in case of where they came from and where they fitted in (as opposed to where they briefly ended up in 1992). A song like LSI is as much a cockney geezer/Scottish hippy take on Kevin Saunderson as anything else.

you people made me listen to Phorward yesterday and it stands up and also demonstrates that the Shamen got Bleep Music way faster than any of their reformed indie chancer contemporaries that i can think of

OK, I'm listening to No Limit right now (I only knew the UK version, natch) and I think we're broadly in agreement about what we're talking about.

This would fit perfectly within what I'd call Stadium House - I guess what I mean by that term is... correct me if I'm wrong, but most dance music is about the beat. When you listen to a dance track - case in point, the Emprion track above - usually it starts with the beat so that a DJ can mix it into the previous track, then adds the rhythmic components that make up the distinctive groove, that groove is what makes the song the song, and other elements are added, such as a vocal hook or a memorable riff.

In what I'd call Stadium House, it STARTS with the riff. In the 2 Unlimited track, they bash you immediately over the head with that amazing "DURR DURR DUH-DUH DURR-DURR" riff. You can stick an acid beat under it, you can stick a house beat or a disco beat or whatever under the riff, and do a million remixes. But the riff, the hook is the thing, and not necessarily the groove.

because The Shamen started as a rock band, I think their most distinctive work is about The Riff. That Make It Mine and Move Any Mountain are about the riff, the pop hook, the chant - a lot of UK dance acts of this era (the KLF were classic at this) were about taking a football chant of a vocal riff, and building a song around it.

LOL, Persephone's Quest just came on, and my immediate reaction was "this is an early Spiritualized track, right?" It's got the exact wubwubwub sounds, the exact same shimmer, it's everything I loved about the early 90s in terms of ~sonic texture~.

I guess my mistake was, I was after that specific sound, and followed a bunch of dronerock bands that were producing that sound - into all kinds of rockist nonsense I now regret. Where there's another parallel dimension where I could very easily have gone the other way and sought that sound out in Trance. (Which would have had its own nonsense.)

YES I SAID SONIC TEXTURE DID YOU MISS ME

(don't all shout "no" at once)

Naturally I must agree with this.

― Basil Ker-ching (Noel Emits),

things you were shockingly old when / puns you had missed

The origin of the user name is actually as much John Lilly's province of the mind maxim as 2 Unlimited which is a very The Shamen combo as it happens.

you people made me listen to Phorward yesterday and it stands up and also demonstrates that the Shamen got Bleep Music way faster than any of their reformed indie chancer contemporaries that i can think of

totally OTM.
i mean i loved Gorbachev and all, but this was when i really began to take notice.

That pun could have been clearer, except emit has a long vowel? If it had been Noel Emmetts, 'twould have been clearer but ah well. I get the joke now.

I have to applaud Noel Emits' long game here

also I am very annoyed that Phorward isn't on US Spotify

the 99 reissue is rather pricey on amazon !
i guess not many copies were pressed up.
you can read the sleeve notes written by Paul Lester via the Discogs listing of it.

I found the good version of En-Tact on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehiddG5Sv3M

Freewheelin' just like Franklin.

Hang on, the track list given in the description doesn't seem to match the running order in the video?

It doesn't?

Oh, do you mean the algorithmically-generated one? I always ignore that.

You want this from the description:

01. 00:00:00 Human NRG
02. 00:03:23 Progen (Land Of Oz)
03. 00:07:29 Possible Worlds
04. 00:11:14 Omega Amigo
05. 00:15:58 Hyperreal
06. 00:20:30 Lightspan
07. 00:26:17 Make It Mine V2.5
08. 00:30:14 Oxygen Restriction
09. 00:34:02 Evil Is Even
10. 00:47:16 Human NRG (Massey)
11. 00:51:53 Make It Mine V1.3 (Pirate Radio)
12. 00:56:47 Oxygen Reprise V2.0
13. 01:02:05 Hear Me O My People (Orbital - Delays Expected)

Sorry, I'm being an idiot. Forgot Move Any Mountain was called Progen (Land Of Oz) on the album. I only ever had the 12" singles from this period, at the time. It's cool to hear how they fit together.

Oh, lol! I only ever call it "Pro-Gen" because it reinforces my "I was there" cred that's the first name I heard it under

That running order does kind of fall over at Evil Is Even which, being a 13 minute+ tribal ambient track, is a sudden and sustained drop in energy. It would make better sense as a final track but it's also followed by two vereions that appear earlier and an Orbital collab that also drags IIRC.

* versions of tracks that appear earlier

I treat everything after "Evil Is Even" as a bonus track

this makes me want to listen to ex:el by 808 state

I'm sure the idea was to add value but for that reason it's never quite worked as CD.

LOL, I just ended up working half an hour past my allotted finish time because I was so caught up in this. If everything past Evil Is Even is a bonus track, I can knock off now.

::curses adorable Scottish hippies for making me work too hard::

::shakes rave-cane in Dan's direction::

OMG that Orbital collaboration does not drag. Always been one of the high points for me

OMG!

i tried to start a stadium house thread recently, it went nowhere

t/s - kate bush vs gwen guthrie + annie lenox

utah saints were much better than the shamen, i think

btw i think the line between riff and rhythm is complicated and fuzzy in most dance music if not outright erased so i'm not sure it's a useful distinction. that said the two utah saints tracks do start in unmixable fashion so maybe there's something to it.

Maybe if you'd called it "Stadium House - classic or dud" it would have gone down a bit better? I think the defining quality of Stadium House is that it has a very distinct chant, that could plausibly be sung in the terraces of a football stadium. I think the KLF and the Shamen excelled at that aspect.

What Utah Saints track do you reccommend I start with, because I can't really remember them at all?

(They just kind of blur into a whole mass of other acts like Renegade Soundwave and Meat Beat Manifesto so maybe I've got completely the wrong idea of them.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o712mgqVZXI

Also this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-_HJohPg5Y

Utah Saints ruled

hell I’ll ride for their “new gold dream”

bugger.
you guys are going to make me dig out the second album by utah saints aren't you.
listened to it a couple of times, enjoyed the chuck d appearance, cant remember much else.
their first album is absolutely fantastic, not so sure re the second one.

oh, and like the shamen, i think the debut by utah saints had a very different uk vs us tracklisting

yup.

US debut :

https://www.discogs.com/Utah-Saints-Utah-Saints/release/65265

UK debut :

https://www.discogs.com/Utah-Saints-Utah-Saints/release/23919

Wasn't the second album mainly breakbeat? xps

Wasn't the second album mainly breakbeat?

i think so yeah.
certainly none of that stadium house brilliance from what i can recall.

They probably never made a penny off those singles.

Is it racist to wention Finitribe in relation to The Shamen? I want to dig up good Finitribe songs as well.

sorry, but i don't get the racist jibe.
finitribe were part of the same scene, and i seem to remember there was a lot of connection between both crews.
weren't both bands on OLI together at the same time.
i always wanted to get their stuff, but never did.

Just kidding because I'm connecting them based on both being Scottish bands that embraced house music around the same time. I wasn't sure how much direct connection there was. Certainly really like a few of their tunes and they could be quite pop.

https://youtu.be/1XyLq_2j2_A

ahh .. thought you knew more re the bands histories regarding very local issues between them.
pretty sure they worked together, and did gigs together etc.
for reasons i can't recall, i have nothing by Finitribe.
it's probably cos i have never ever seen anything by Finitribe in a charity shop to be honest.

Finitribe and The Shamen had fairly similar trajectories in that they both evolved from indie post-punk type bands in the 80s to embracing rave culture and technology around the end of the decade (and both signed to One Little Indian around that time)

Surely room for this one in your collection mark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJSequ5TYF0

i would have a lot more room for finitribe if i ever came across their stuff via charity shops and/or bandcamp.