the shamen: c/d

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.

Unexpected Groovy Treat is indeed an unexpected groovy treat, not least this piece of future nostalgia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc-XWU793dw

I listened to the Utah Saints and I enjoyed them, particularly the second track, and I agree that this is pretty delicious Stadium House.

But it still seems to be missing the certain *something* that I get from The Shamen or The KLF, the anarchic sense of "WTF?!" that literally... *anything* could turn up in the next few beats? You have no idea where the track is going, if you're being taken to a gay cyber-rave in a darkened arch underneath some dodgy railway bridge; you could be taken to a remote island where they plan on burning Edward Woodward, a million quid, or quite possibly *you*. The next sample could be Terence McKenna, it could be the Dalai Lama, it could be Tammy Wynette floating up in an Egyptian sun-barge?

I don't know if it's the hippie-dom, the acid, a touch of surrealism or psychosis, but from Utah Saints, I get the feeling of, yeah, ooh, this music is kinda shimmery and psychedelic sounding. But from The Shamen, I get that bizarre 'how is this real' juxtaposition of the everyday and the extremely freaking weird, that genuinely *feels* like a psychedlic experience - or a break from reality - does?

I'll listen to the Finitribe next. ha ha oh god this is so adorably Scottish.

(OK, I guess I've kind of answered my own question here, in noting that the truly surreal / dreamlike / psychedelic experience is not the ~completley off the wall~ weird, but the absurd juxtaposition of the absolutely unexpected and weird, with the completely mundane and familiar. That it's not 'the Dalai Lama', it's the image of the Dalai Lama drinking vermillion tea from lotus leaves with your Great-Aunt Matilda. And I guess because of my own personal background, 'Scottish hippies' reads as the background childhood normality against which all of the other weirdness becomes psychedelic and surreal, rather than purely nonsensical.)

The Shamen and the KLF both had rock backgrounds, is probably the difference and brought that 'chuck a bit of this and see what happens' sensibility to it. Early house music does that as well but in a much more formalised structure, while early 90s/late 80s rock music was in quite a state of flux anyway.

I remember seeing The Shamen do Phorever People at Glastonbury (on TV) and I'm pretty sure they had the singer on a swing dressed up as Alice. They were quite happy to be as obvious as possible with the imagery when they wanted to. The Orb could have gone down a similar road and did on occasion but their focus was wayyyy more horizontal.

In contrast Utah Saints were quite content making gigantic stadium sized bosh which probably has more in common spiritually with EDM than the other acts here. Even their logo looked like a cheap casualwear logo from the time.

I remember seeing The Shamen do Phorever People at Glastonbury (on TV)

That reminds I remember seeing The Shamen on stage at Glastonbury and my mate I was with either convinced or for some reason trying to convince me that it was actually happening on TV. LOL.

I remember seeing The Shamen do Phorever People at Glastonbury (on TV) and I'm pretty sure they had the singer on a swing dressed up as Alice.

This sounds amazing, but doesn't seem to appear in the televised coverage? The singer does have long blonde extensions, but unfortunately there's no swing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U7E8QLUkZs

Unless they did more than one Glasto? That's entirely possible.

(Please could the cheekboney dude with the filter sweeps on his Roland synth be sent to my tent? kthxbai)

I was at Glastonbury that year but have no idea if we saw The Shamen or not. Think that was the first year they had a dedicated Dance Tent and we spent most of the weekend in there

I strongly associate "Weekend" by DJ Dick with The Shamen because both were frequently played on the dance mix show I listened to religiously in high school/early college (Depth Probe by Kevin Cole; I think there is a Soundcloud or Mixcloud archive out there somewhere)

i see anti saints rockism has reared its ugly head!!!