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Artist: Shpongle Title: Are You Shpongled? Label: Twisted Records Released: 1st October 1998 Style: Psychedelic chillout Tracklist 1 Shpongle Falls (8:33) 2 Monster Hit (8:57) 3 Vapour Rumours (10:26) 4 Shpongle Spores (7:16) 5 Behind Closed Eyelids (12:29) 6 Divine Moments Of Truth (10:20) 7 ...And The Day Turned To Night (19:57) Shpongle, the renowned project by Simon Posford and Raja Ram, often described as pioneers in the psychedelic chillout genre. Such praise does not come lightly as their debut album Are You Shpongled? is without a doubt one of the seminal albums in the chillout genre. With heavy but relaxed beats, ethereal sounds from beyond the veil, melodies that sound like they are from an alien world and twisted samples AYS? is a real listening experience. Each track by itself is great but put together as a journey the 7 tracks are more like one long journey into the twisted DMT influenced landscape that Shpongle creates so well. This is the sort of album that you do not need drugs to experience. Many people have said that this is an album that you need to smoke to or to hear under psychedelics but the music speaks for itself & does not require anything artificial to bring out the twisted fucked up greatness of it. All this needs is a keen ear and an ability to visualise music. I may be lucky “suffering” from synaesthesia so I can easily picture the alien landscapes & twisted inner visions portrayed by the music but I am sure that even the hardened cynic could experience some kind of waking lucid dream while locked away in a darkened room with only this album to assault his senses. There are great ideas but also wonderful arrangement and production, I am sure that a lot of people in this world will hate the ideas but that in my opinion is the essence of art, a select few will absolutely adore whereas the masses will never be able to understand it & they will either hate it or be indifferent to it. Are You Shpongled? is some great audio art that I am sure will be totally adored but by just a few people. Track By Track 1. Shpongle Falls We start off a little shakily with a sample that stands out a little too much from the music. The guy talking about the circular vortex spinning spinning spinning is a little bit of a distraction from the lovely wet sounds of the rest of the track. The beats are tight, the flute slips through them like they are intertwined and all in all it is one nice psychedelic opener but for the sample. It is a small qualm with an otherwise great track though and is in my opinion is one of only blips on the album. 2. Monster Hit The first time I heard this album this track really stood out for me, the beats are so much more twisted & broken than in the opening track, the vocals are cut up and rearranged tribal voices ala Deep Forest but in a much more dark and psychedelic way. Whereas Deep Forest’s vocals sounded natural and Terran these sound obscure & alien. The melodies are sweet & once again there are a lot of wet bubbly sounds going on. For me though it is when the music breaks down, the light female sounding vocals come in before the original ones float over the light emerging beat & the music feels like it is building to something. That something is a rather cheesy sample saying “It was a monster hit” but is followed by all the elements that made the track great come in with a different arrangement making it jaw droppingly good. Even after over a decade it still impresses me which is a very good sign! 3. Vapour Rumours This is a very spacey track. The whole theme seems to be about Earth’s first experience with an alien species. From the opening sample about studying UFO’s to the long sample in the middle about Humanity’s first contact with an extra terrestrial race it holds a sense of juvenile wonder that is usually lost on adults weighed down by reality. The music starts of slow and ambient but builds into some nice beat orientated twisted mayhem, then it breaks down with the first contact sample, the beats slowly come in as the sample continues then the beats and the sweet high pitched acidic melody kick in taking this way beyond terrestrial music into the realms of drug induced alien visions. Great stuff! 4. Shpongle Spores Shpongle Spores follows seamlessly with the flute linking the two tracks but from the remnants of the flute comes a great trippy melody that seems to continuously build without getting any higher like some freaky tower with steps that always go up but always return to the bottom. The quick oscillating synths that come in and out throughout the intro are extremely trippy and the second melody to come in is really sublime in its smooth spherical feeling. The melodies just keep coming and going & we even have some “Hicksville” sounding guitar sounds in the middle. 5. Behind Closed Eyelids “Behind closed eyelids in very many cases the visionary quality, the quality of the vision, some says spills over into the external world so that the experiencer when he opens his eyes sees the outer world….” Such an exquisite opening sample all the better for getting obscured at the end so the end of the speech cannot be made out but is still audible making each listen bring forward a different ending a different possibility. Slow beats with a heavy tread and two melodies, one a flute the other a synth twist around each other like a double helix before the synth melody becomes dominant and rips at the inside of the head. The flutes take over in a soothing sort of way leading back into to a more beat orientated reverie of sound and vision. The longest track on the journey besides the nigh 20 minute closing track this gets the time to evolve, move, twist, turn and surprise the listener. This remains one of my favourite Shpongle pieces to date. 6. Divine Moments of Truth Dimethyltryptamine is a psychoactive substance that can be known to bring on epiphanies or Divine Moments of Truth! Whether this is usually true or whether my mind has been warped by this track is unknown to me but ever since I have always associated this track with inebriated revelations, be it that we all live in a sideways dimension parallel to a more spiritually evolved race or that aliens are all around infiltrating our society but we are all unaware as we just can’t see that “reality” they always seem real at the time. The lyrics are decidedly cheesy, “LSD through DMT” etc but they really fit the music in a psychedelic and twisted way. The last part of the track with the whistles and the and the “okays” which sound like some motivational sports chant are the second small blip on the album. 7. …And The Day Turned To Night …And The Day Turned To Night deserves its place in the annals of music history. If Shpongle are going to be remembered for anything it will be this album and this track. The nigh on 20 minutes of pure Shpongle bliss. Everything I like about this project is here; the flutes are simple and nice with the build up in the first few minutes being quite ambient with soft beats, touches of melody and some tribal chanting along the way. The heavier elements slowly tease in with some deep rumbling bass, dirty beats and nice synths before, after what seems to be such a long long tease, the melody comes in fast with really quick synth lines giving more and more energy without any beats. When the beats kick in, even though they are some crazy, frantic beats they seem to creep in almost unnoticed like they have been there the whole time with an innocent look on their faces. There is excellent progression through the whole track nothing seems rushed despite the frenetic pace of the beats. The ambience surrounding them is great and the atmosphere adds up to one wonderful journey. This track is a great way to round of one of the great psychedelic chillout albums ever.

Or like me who just has a fried brain and doesn't need drugs to trip the light fantastic

Great! Am loving what I have heard so far

Subradial - Bioloophorm 2

Well, the only person to call Shpongle cheesy in this thread is......you! A few people have called them Crap <- Opinion, Ear Bleedingly awful <- Opinion The thing with opinions is they are always objective. I don't want to hear a subjective opinion. If you don't have opions based on emotions & personal preferences then go and debate with cold emotionless robots! Really, I have had a lot of people harp on about objectivity when talking about music but it is something I really don't want. Music is emotional & it is all about taste. This is not business or politics, people like what they like & hate what they hate and are free to express themselves. I like shpongle but IMO there is much more psychedelic music out there. Much! oh and by the way doesn't sound very objective. It sounds like your experience with drugs is influencing your opinion here. Please break the music down into it's cold components before confronting us with your so called "objective" view

This topic was originally made in August 2008 though Good for you, maybe you have similar taste to Damion. But I bought quite a few albums that he raved about being the but was mostly disappointed. Even some of the decent ones like Scorb & Mood Deluxe were not nearly as good as he saif they were. Mood Deluxe was in his words "the start of a whole new genre of music" but was merely pretty good. Scorb was supposed to be this amazing insta-classic but was nowhere near as good as the first scorb album. Maybe I just don't have similar taste as him but it was so easy to get wrapped up in what he was saying. Still his negative reviews were great

Yeah, this reamians my favourite Kettel album too

The reissue is being sold at fairly reasonable prices on discogs Databloem records are very trustworthy in my experience. Don't hesitate, just get it It's definitely worth it

The Circular Ruins - Immer Du

The Circular Ruins - Falling Into The Sky

That's exactly what I am going to tell you. For me there is no Shpongle track that even comes close to The Answer Why do you think there is a lack of objectivity here? Do you think that we are all part of The Infinity Project? Or enemies with Raja Ram? People having different taste to you does mean they have a lack of objectivity. If anything it would be the other way round as the Shpongle project has been much more popular & well known than any of TIP's ambient works. I could say you are not objective but just following popular trends, but I wont as I don;t care why someone likes something over another thing. Taste really is taste. It boggles my mind trying to think about why some people just don't get this BTW Shpongle is Simon Posford & Raja Ram, they get A LOT of praise, maybe even more than they deserve

Just finished (val)Liam - Daydreamer and bow on (val)Liam - Early Reflections

Hope he sticks to negative reviews

I thought the whole album was better than any of the shpongle works tbh

another spammer on the run muzrinkl sent me a message linking to some .ru site

no but I did see the lead actor punch Chris Jericho at Wrestlemania 25

Hell Yeah! But even better are 2. Ghost In The Shell 1. Innocence

Kwook - Calling All Stations

Niiiiiiiice!!!!

I am looking for some books on Poetry. But not flowery wishy washy crap that make us read at school that IMO puts 99% of kids of the whole idea of poetry. I am looking for stuff like Wallace Stevens - Anglais Mort a Florence exerpt He was that music & himself. They were particles of order, a single majesty: But he remembered a time when he stood alone. He stood at last by God's help and the police; But he remembered the time when he stood alone. He yielded himself to that single majesty; But he remembered the time when he stood alone. When to be and delight to be seemed to be one, Before the colors deepened and grew small. anyone else read poetry?