the shamen: c/d

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!!!

Bosh rockism.

Come on and bosh me, Amadeus!

Kevin Cole, wow. Well, now I'm a member of the Rev 105 Facebook group.

Let the record state I am 100% in favour of Utah Saints but they're neither psychedelic nor art-prankster enough for what we're talking about here, they're closer to The Prodigy really than anything Branwell's talking about.

What about, say, "Temple of Dreams"?

Temple Of Dreams is great stadium house, as are the Utah Saints singles - searching for more stuff as elevated art-pop as the KLF or committedly psychedelic as the Shamen is never going to pay off. Think of them as satisfyingly better than Scooter, not disappointing for not being as good as one of the best bands in the history of the universe.

This was also great (if not quite as good as Temple of Dreams)

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

i played the MESSIAH album this week in honour of this thread revival.
its not that good.

See the only thing that comes close, for me, is the Future Sound of London, who have the utopian cyber-psychedelia thing down - but they’re not even remotely Stadium House.

But that’s the kind of hippie art-prank vibe I’m looking for!

I tend to think of FSOL as blissed-out ecoterrorists

SHPONGLE ?
they were all over the hippy/cyber thing.
the album i have is totally Shamen via ambient/techno/dub,
but without the pop tunes.

https://www.discogs.com/Shpongle-Nothing-Lasts-But-Nothing-Is-Lost/master/7831

Ha! Shpongle!

Had completely forgotten about those dudes. Spent a lot of time stoned listening to those albums

Now I want to play the Opus III album

Messiah were basically a decent C-grade 'ardcore group who did a good imitation of Utah Saints' imitation of the KLF for one single iirc

can anyone remember what the Fini Tribe track with the church bells samples was called? had a quick look thru YT but no luck so far.

Come on sic, "There Is No Law" bangs

nevermind, found it. still sounds pretty great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNzr2qUmfgk

Come on sic, "There Is No Law" bangs

I said decent!

That's the one on the original Balearic Beats compilation?

Shpongle. It's weird because it's presented in the way that functional drug music is and sort of marketed to that crowd, (and there's something Infind culty about music that's made for "psychedelic peoole", even though that's also not really fair because it's pretty good music.

But then it's also not at all earnest in the same way as The Shamen. Maybe that's just humour. I don't trust those elves.