The Shamen: Very much maligned and misunderstood?
It is pretty easy these days to look back on the heady days of the early 1990s when The Shamen bestrode the charts and scoff. The tabloid-baiting Ebeneezer Goode completed the transformation of the band from serious underground pioneers of the Acid house scene to cartoonish chart cut-outs. A steep decline, fallout with the record company and eventual break up followed a few years later. A story as old as the musical hills perhaps, but one that obscures just how credible and influential The Shamen were in their earlier incarnations.
Its incongruous to think of the band as a psychedelic pop outfit, but that is exactly what The Shamen were in 1987, as their first album, Drop, all too clearly displayed. The next two years saw the band surveying a musical landscape packed with bands like Jesus Jones intent on melding traditional rock structures with dance beats, electronica and sampling. The result was January 1989's In Gorbachev We Trust, an album that marked a halfway house between The Shamen's first transition from lightweight pop to deep acid house.
This transition was significantly aided by Will Sinnott, who joined band in late 1987 and the band began experimenting with dance beats. While In Gorbachev We Trust still had one foot in band's past, the release just a month later in February 1989 of Phorward marked a step change in the band's development and firmly pointed them in a radically new direction.
Phorward had been created with the help of Evil Eddie Richards, a leading light of the acid house scene in London. The Shamen began hanging out with him, along with Orbital, Paul Oakenfold and Mixmaster Morris, emerging themselves in the emerging music and drugged-up aesthetic of the underground rave culture of the time. Richards remixed much of Phorward, taking it to dark, sparse places. This was not the chart-friendly dance music of S-Express or M/A/R/R/S. Tracks like Phorward and You, Me and Everything (Else) were a deeper, dirtier type of music that explored the outer regions of acid. What's more it was genuinely influential. The Shamen set up and toured 'Synergy' throughout 1989, a ground-breaking club night that combined sampled guitars and rock with dance music. Orbital, Oakenfold, Mixmaster Morris, Evil Eddie Richards and Mr C, who would eventually join the band, all DJ'ed on the tour.
All of this fevered experimentation culminated in 1990 with the release of En-Tact. Its easy in hindsight to view this album as The Shamen's high watermark. While they would go on to become wildly successful, they were arguably never again to sound so urgent, ground-breaking, influential or cutting edge. En-Tact perfected the acid sounds of Phorward but also introduced elements of world music. It tipped its hat to greater popularity on tracks such as Move Any Mountain and Make It Mine, but the album was equally adept at exploring elements of techno and trance.
En-Tact's greatness though lies in The Shamen's employment of collaborators and remixers, the list of which reads like a roll-call of some of the best around at the time. William Orbit - in one of his earliest assignments - produced a seminal reworking of Hyperreal; Orbital remixed Hear Me Of My People, featuring a speech by the then anti-apartheid campaigner Allan Boesak, while Graham Massey from 808 State remixed Human Nrg.
The singles were no different. Move Any Mountain - which was famously subjected to repeated remixes - was remixed by Evil Eddie Richards, techno heavyweights Caspar Pound and Joey Beltram and by Paul Oakenfold under the guise of the Progen (Land Of Oz). Make It Mine was worked over by techno pioneer Lenny Dee, Mark Stagg (under his Pro-Gress moniker) and, most significantly, Moby, in one of his first major remix jobs in the UK (his Deep and Manhattan remixes are particularity brilliant). Meanwhile, in addition to the stellar William Orbit remix, Hyperreal was remixed by Jack Dangers from Meat Beat Manifesto.
The success of Move Any Mountain in the form of the chart-friendly Beatmasters remix meant that The Shamen's career was about to go into overdrive. However, the sudden death of Will Sinnott meant that the band would ride the cusp of the explosion of acid house and dance music ignited by the 'Second Summer of Love' in a way that would risk their underground credibility.
The release of Boss Drum in 1992 spawned a year-long period of heady mass appeal. The singles from the album - LSI (Love, Sex, Intelligence), Boss Drum, Ebeneezer Goode and Phorever People - followed the populist Beatmasters-drive template set by Move Any Mountain. That said, The Shamen were still able to pull in hugely-credible remixers. LSI was reworked by Frank De Wulf, Moby and Paul Gotel in his Well Hung Parliament guise; Justin Robertson and Youth remixed Boss Drum while Ebeneezer Goode was overhauled by Meat Beat Manifesto, Richie Hawtin and Evil Eddie Richards. Finally, Phorever People was remixed by MK, Tommy D, Todd Terry and Kevin Saunderson. Impressive names all, but somehow, somewhere, the underground magic of the earlier releases was missing - arguably, something no amount of remixing could compensate for.
The Shamen were always going to struggle to reproduce the success of Boss Drum, indeed, given the sacrifices to their underground credibility, it is doubtful they wanted to. Consequently, follow up albums Axis Mutatis and Hempton Manor neither recaptured the experimental zeal of Phorward or En-Tact or the popularity of Boss Drum. The latter album in particular was poor, following as it did a bust up with their record company. Perhaps not surprisingly, disillusionment and break up followed.
Essential listening
Its incongruous to think of the band as a psychedelic pop outfit, but that is exactly what The Shamen were in 1987, as their first album, Drop, all too clearly displayed. The next two years saw the band surveying a musical landscape packed with bands like Jesus Jones intent on melding traditional rock structures with dance beats, electronica and sampling. The result was January 1989's In Gorbachev We Trust, an album that marked a halfway house between The Shamen's first transition from lightweight pop to deep acid house.
This transition was significantly aided by Will Sinnott, who joined band in late 1987 and the band began experimenting with dance beats. While In Gorbachev We Trust still had one foot in band's past, the release just a month later in February 1989 of Phorward marked a step change in the band's development and firmly pointed them in a radically new direction.
Phorward had been created with the help of Evil Eddie Richards, a leading light of the acid house scene in London. The Shamen began hanging out with him, along with Orbital, Paul Oakenfold and Mixmaster Morris, emerging themselves in the emerging music and drugged-up aesthetic of the underground rave culture of the time. Richards remixed much of Phorward, taking it to dark, sparse places. This was not the chart-friendly dance music of S-Express or M/A/R/R/S. Tracks like Phorward and You, Me and Everything (Else) were a deeper, dirtier type of music that explored the outer regions of acid. What's more it was genuinely influential. The Shamen set up and toured 'Synergy' throughout 1989, a ground-breaking club night that combined sampled guitars and rock with dance music. Orbital, Oakenfold, Mixmaster Morris, Evil Eddie Richards and Mr C, who would eventually join the band, all DJ'ed on the tour.
All of this fevered experimentation culminated in 1990 with the release of En-Tact. Its easy in hindsight to view this album as The Shamen's high watermark. While they would go on to become wildly successful, they were arguably never again to sound so urgent, ground-breaking, influential or cutting edge. En-Tact perfected the acid sounds of Phorward but also introduced elements of world music. It tipped its hat to greater popularity on tracks such as Move Any Mountain and Make It Mine, but the album was equally adept at exploring elements of techno and trance.
En-Tact's greatness though lies in The Shamen's employment of collaborators and remixers, the list of which reads like a roll-call of some of the best around at the time. William Orbit - in one of his earliest assignments - produced a seminal reworking of Hyperreal; Orbital remixed Hear Me Of My People, featuring a speech by the then anti-apartheid campaigner Allan Boesak, while Graham Massey from 808 State remixed Human Nrg.
The singles were no different. Move Any Mountain - which was famously subjected to repeated remixes - was remixed by Evil Eddie Richards, techno heavyweights Caspar Pound and Joey Beltram and by Paul Oakenfold under the guise of the Progen (Land Of Oz). Make It Mine was worked over by techno pioneer Lenny Dee, Mark Stagg (under his Pro-Gress moniker) and, most significantly, Moby, in one of his first major remix jobs in the UK (his Deep and Manhattan remixes are particularity brilliant). Meanwhile, in addition to the stellar William Orbit remix, Hyperreal was remixed by Jack Dangers from Meat Beat Manifesto.
The success of Move Any Mountain in the form of the chart-friendly Beatmasters remix meant that The Shamen's career was about to go into overdrive. However, the sudden death of Will Sinnott meant that the band would ride the cusp of the explosion of acid house and dance music ignited by the 'Second Summer of Love' in a way that would risk their underground credibility.
The release of Boss Drum in 1992 spawned a year-long period of heady mass appeal. The singles from the album - LSI (Love, Sex, Intelligence), Boss Drum, Ebeneezer Goode and Phorever People - followed the populist Beatmasters-drive template set by Move Any Mountain. That said, The Shamen were still able to pull in hugely-credible remixers. LSI was reworked by Frank De Wulf, Moby and Paul Gotel in his Well Hung Parliament guise; Justin Robertson and Youth remixed Boss Drum while Ebeneezer Goode was overhauled by Meat Beat Manifesto, Richie Hawtin and Evil Eddie Richards. Finally, Phorever People was remixed by MK, Tommy D, Todd Terry and Kevin Saunderson. Impressive names all, but somehow, somewhere, the underground magic of the earlier releases was missing - arguably, something no amount of remixing could compensate for.
The Shamen were always going to struggle to reproduce the success of Boss Drum, indeed, given the sacrifices to their underground credibility, it is doubtful they wanted to. Consequently, follow up albums Axis Mutatis and Hempton Manor neither recaptured the experimental zeal of Phorward or En-Tact or the popularity of Boss Drum. The latter album in particular was poor, following as it did a bust up with their record company. Perhaps not surprisingly, disillusionment and break up followed.
Essential listening
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