Infected Mushroom are Erez Aizen and Amit Duvedevani, a duo from Tel Aviv, Israel, who are perpetrating some of the hottest electronic dance music ever fashioned by human hands. After snapping up their latest album last September, I pestered their manager to grant me an interview for months, which he finally granted when the guys moved to L.A. to work on their next album. You’ll find an mp3 and typed transcript of the full interview on The Free Press’s website, as well as links to samples of the band’s music. Their tour will cross over to the east coast this summer, coming as close as Montreal and New York.
Context and Discography
Infected Mushroom’s roots lie in the tradition of anthemic, melody-driven trance music. This electronic dance genre is characterized by a relentless, thumping bass line and a much faster tempo than the hip hop music that currently dominates American dance floors. The focus in trance is on woven, intricate melodies and a steadily rising urgency crashing like a wave in final, ecstatic epiphanies.
Unfortunately for the Mushroom, hip-hop has a stifling grip on the U.S. dance scene. The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and Daft Punk are probably the most recognizable electronic dance groups stateside. And though these are all British groups, each draws heavily on hip-hop rhythm, loop and vocal techniques. Ironically, the major exception to this rule is the U.S. electronic group Crystal Method. Anyone who liked the highly melodic Vegas album should take a serious look at Infected Mushroom.
For five years, Infected Mushroom has been the gold standard in a subset of Trance called goa, or psychedelic trance (psytrance), defined by saw-toothed, or “squelchy,” processed sound, moody soundscapes and prominent bass lines. The band’s first major contribution to the scene came with their 2000 sophomore release, Classical Mushroom. Standout tracks on that album like Bust a Move, The Shen and Mushi Mushi did for the Israeli dance scene what Freebird and Sweet Home Alabama did for redneck rockers.
After a luke-warm effort with their 2001 BP Empire (curiously, the only album Bull Moose’s Portland store currently stocks), the band struck gold again with Converting Vegetarians, a two-CD effort, in 2003. Many fans consider this the group’s masterpiece, and it remains to be seen whether the new album can escape its long shadow.
Converting Vegetarians offers several excellent Psytrance tracks, especially Song Pong, Semi Nice and Yanko Pitch. Some of the weirdest and most compelling tracks the band has released to date also appear on the album’s second disc – Especially Jeenge, Ballerium and Shakawkaw – representing a commitment to downtempo tracks, territory that most Psytrance groups will never dare to touch – or maybe they will, now that the godfathers have shown them the way.
I’m the Supervisor – Detailed Review
The apparent goal with I’m the Supervisor is to assemble an album that kicks ass from opening sample to final, brain-swelling crescendo. Though the duo deny ever starting an album with a plan, Supervisor exhibits a tautness that sharply contrasts with Converting Vegetarians’ freeform sprawl. It’s also shamelessly marketable to an American audience, a fact that has antagonized many of the band’s original fans.
The first thing you’ll notice about the album is its amazing cover art. An ancient, androgynous stone figure with mushrooms for hair levitates a metallic, spherical totem. The piece visually produces an aesthetic the band has been sonically grasping at all along: The psychedelic spiritualism of the subject, like the band’s trance origins, receives a dark, Giger-like treatment, conjuring the band’s angsty heavy-metal departures. The band commissioned artist David Ho for the piece and later learned that Ho was an Infected Mushroom fan in the first place. The music, for the most part, lives up to the treatment.
The first moments of the first and title track sound like the opening notes of a rave – two ominous, metallic notes slowly building to a plateau that shows off some of the band’s characteristic choppy samples, then kicking out into some of the most senseless lyrics ever penned by any hand: “I’m the Supervisor / Can I get a taxi numbah?” Is there an innuendo somewhere in “getting a taxi numbah?” Anyone? By the time the song breaks down with a sample of the same vocalist urging “c’mon” over and over again at an inhuman pace, the gonzo tone of the record has been forcefully staked out. “I’m the Supervisor,” “Muse” and “Cities of the Future” are the hit singles of this album.
“Ratio Smatio” fuses a lot of previous Infected Mushroom tracks and takes a telling twist at the end. The squirming synthesized build-up starting at 2:48 sounds a lot like Bust a Move and the spartan breakdown just after sounds a lot like the one on Chaplain, a heavily engineered track on Converting Vegetarians. At the end, the song peters out into a pretty generic passage that reprises the grooves from the rest of the song without doing anything new. Most Psytrance tracks don’t include this kind of House-like interlude. This bit is likely there to make a transition easy for amateur DJs spinning their LPs in dark U.S. clubs. The band’s recent move to L.A. and their admitted assault on the American mainstream probably informed this and a lot of other choices that went into the album.
Track number three, Muse (Breako remix) is a cover, but it’s going to be one of the band’s most popular songs for a long time. The song is a major achievement in transitioning an uptempo Psytrance track to an odd-beat reggae intermission and back again without breaking the dance flow. The band says it’s one of their most popular tracks at live shows. It’s one of their most accessible songs, and that’s why many of their original fans object to this and much else on the album. The group is extending their sound into a direction that is immediate and catchy for the uninitiated. Whether or not this is a case of selling out is up to the listener.
Meduzz is a solid Psytrance track with an excellent choppy breakdown that appears twice in the song and a gothic string interlude that repeats as a squealing electric guitar solo. The band piles on disparate elements here: Traditional synthesized sequences, a non-techno instrument (the guitar) and an extended classical overture all come seamlessly into play. This track has a little of everything that makes Infected Mushroom a great band.
The group released “Cities of the Future” before the album’s release. The vocal-heavy track is, again, anathema to many old-school Infected fans. Videos on the band’s website show seas of sweaty kids going bonkers when Duvedevani breaks out the microphone and belts out the song’s chorus, though, so the guys must be doing something right. A squealing freak-out in the midsection of the song showcases some of the group’s knob-twiddling mastery.
The most kicking track on the album is “Frog Machine.” In traditional Psytrance fashion, the track opens up a few thematic pieces and then heads into a long buildup, exploding into the best breakdown the band has ever pulled off. The metallic samples, something like a coin bouncing off a tightly drawn guitar string are a lot of fun, too.
“Bombat” is another great Psytrance track, twisting a forlorn groove upward into a fine high-tempo peak that crescendos twice before letting you go.
Finally, the unique downtempo skills the group sharpened on the previous album come to fruition on the final track, “Stretched.” After mercilessly wringing you out on the dance floor for exactly an hour, the album sends you off with a medley of synthesized and acoustic grooves, and some suitably weird vocals. A shredding guitar solo bops into a water-tight electric bell solo. Even the band’s worst detractors across several internet forums praised this extremely tight cool-down track.
If you’ve made it this far, you owe it to yourself to download some samples. It’s hard to find the band on the major retail sites, but some specialized websites sell CDs and other merchandise, and offer audio previews. Check out http://www.psyshop.com/shop/CDs/yoy/yoy1cd063.html for samples from all tracks on “I’m the Supervisor.”
check out the full interview here