Tripomatic Fairytales - a story of Jam & Spoon part 1

As a tribute to my past heroes of music and culture I hereby present the first chapter of writings! This one is about my favourite production partners: Mark Spoon and Jam El Mar! And it comes in two parts, stay tuned!

First I offer everyone a treat: Just finished scanning an old Muzik mag pages from august 1997 (issue 27) containing a three page interview of Jam & Spoon from their german promo tour when the Kaleidoscope album was released:

Now that´s interesting to read! You must notice the rock´n roll insanity behind these guys motives! It´s important to understand that this text is written in time when electronic music was at it´s peak in destroing all the traditional music styles (ie. rock music) and bands like Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and such had made their impact and were finally coming hugely popular. I even remember a cover from famous British Metal magazine; Metal Hammer where they were forced to admit that the Prodigy was taking Metal to very different direction. The Germans were not left behind even though their angle differentiated from the one that Brits had taken.

Continental supergroups were in one end like Scooter (which made music for the lowest common denominator with really cheeky aproach. I will get back to this business later but not in this text) and the other was dominated by these post war escapists who made the debauchery into form of art! Sven Väth is one of the notorius examples of this genre but I personally think that only Jam & Spoon managed to take it to the absolute limit!

I´m really sad that I didn´t make it to see their live shows or even a Dj set from Mark Spoon ever. I did try though and I should have the flyers still somewhere about the parties where Spoon should have been playing. Unfortunately as he was well known to be very complicated person every single gig that I was going to attend was cancelled for strange reasons. The last attempt was propably a year before Spoons death (that was 11.01.2006).

I do have another Muzik mag from around 2000 where Mark Spoon was awarded by the Caner of the year trophy for most insane acting in the Dj Scene (I´ll try to scan that one too if I find it somewhere). He was also known for beating up customers, club owners and generally behaving badly under influence... Well that´s not the point of this story so now on I will concentrate on their productions!

My understanding is that Jam El Mar was the one with greater production skills and Spoon was more like the front man with Djing ability and the character, but this is just a guess since no real evidence about their studio work has passed my path. The reason that I believe this is the case comes from realising Jam El Mar´s production career started years earlier in the 80´s (Spoon was a Dj troughout 80´s). Another fact is the amount of solo releases and remixes Jam has produced. In the end it doesn´t really matter because both were obviously very good friends and the productions would not have existed without each other´s contribution.

Jam El Mar or Trancy Spacer (or even Rolf Ellmer) made early records himself and in groups, most notable with Dj Dag (Dag Lerner) as Dance 2 Trance. This outfit that preceded Jam & Spoon (though their first album was from 91) basically consisted all the elements that would follow in the later years. Excellent trax include P. Ower Of A. Merican N. Atives, Where is Dag?, Hello San Fransisco, Take a Freefall and We came in Peace. All are good examples of early trancelike sound that was uprising during those times around germany. This sound was heavily influenced by such artists like KLF that had made lush trancey remixes of their big hits. Power was propably the biggest track and a huge hit all around the clubland. Their success propelled literally hundreds of poor copycats! And finally the whole eurodance phenomenon was created by inspired producers from this platform Dance 2 Trance was presenting (I´m not saying they were the only ones that contributed to this genre but they definitely were influential). Dj Dag does need his own praise too but I´m not going to concentrate on his works here (I should propably write something about the German scene generally and definitely about Love Parade and Mayday -parties).

Jam & Spoons story began within legendary R&S label with the Tales From A Danceographic Ocean ep that contained excellent songs: My First Fantastic F.F. was really experimental techno and trance fusion but the really huge track is of course infamous Stella which introduced classic Hold Me Love Me sample (or was this actually singer Plavka who was contributing to great part of Jam & Spoons records later?). The funny thing here is that My First Fantastic F.F. contains same samples as Stella but also the famous samples from Twin Peaks also used by Moby in the legendary Go! I haven´t heard myself but I know that moby actually ended up remixing Stella later on... Anyway around this time british label REACT released Age of Love by Bruno Sanchioni (of BBE fame) and Giuseppe Chierchia with Jam & Spoon Watch Out For Stella Club Mix that was to became on of the most well known classic trance record of all time! It´s funny how they decided to use this opportunity to promote their own production but since both releases are stellar it really doesn´t matter! These two trax together already gave them the legendary status they have in the scene even know!

The release of Stella predicted the forth coming album but who would have dared to ask what was coming? Tripomatic Fairytales was devided into two albums 2001 and 2002 former being more dancefloor orientated work of progression and genious and the latter being one of the most innovative and relaxing chill out albums in the veins of greatest Balearic records (for example William Orbit´s Strange Cargo III). Absolutely everything works brilliantly in both of these albums, from Right in the Night´s hypnotic (and a little cheesy) melodies to Stella´s sophisticated progression to 2002´s chantings and african drums and psychedelic phonecalls. They just work! Find Me (Odyssee to Anyoona) was also released as a single. It is pretty good single but the most innovative track was Follow Me! that was included in the b-side of Right in the Night. Now this one is fine example of the driving and goalike hardtrance that would soon follow! In any case if you have even the slightest interest of the beginning of the European dance movement you need both Tripomatic Fairytales!!!

There is strange information about including and removing trax from these releases and one that was not in the original albums was Angel. This time the better song was however Can You Feel It that was also on the b-side! Heavily acidic hardtrance monster and very much recommended! It also has som resemblance to the next project Jam&Spoon's Hands On Yello - You Gotta Say Yes to another Excess (uff die 12' mix) which in my opinion is the best hardtrance / Europian Rave anthem ever! Hands on Yello as a project was something out of this world, all the remixes are brilliant but Jam & Spoon steal the moment, mainly because Yello is propably the godfather of their sound and appearance! Everything seems so natural in this context and yes the excess is total excess in the case of the song and Jam & Spoons legend!

James Blake versus Mount Kimbie

I really wish that James Blake´s (self titled) album would have similar qualities than Mount Kimbies Crooks and Lovers did have. I mean if it doesn´t it is going to be one of the biggest disappointments of the year!

Though Mount Kimbies effort was not as good as the previous ep´s had been and I must admit that I was expecting way too much from them it has grown over repeated listening to be quite well composed and interesting experimental organism. Their sound is definitely original and presents sort of tinkered maximalism. On the first listen there was already hints of great arrangements and some of the trax left me wonder how these should be working (and propably thinking about the right environment). Now, after half a year I think this is among the great electronic music albums even though it has some flaws in, say continuity...

Blake´s album however has not started to fly yet. I have listened to it trough few times now and still don´t get it. First problem was the printed lyrics, why are these here. It doesn´t seem to say anything that important and the poetry behind is not that clever. Similar artist such as Burial have left this kind of nonsense away from the covers and concentrated to leave as much as possible to listeners imagination. The songs themselves are much more skeletized than I thought they would be and in most trax the voice of James Blake himself seems to be the only noticeable element available. Of course there is deep bass here and there and some percussions and stuff but it all seems too easy.

One of the big problems with the album is that the compositions feel like old English christmas carrols! I mean it feels somehow cheap and the melodies are repetitive in a manner that gives me this weird impression. I may be alone with this argument but listen to the last track "measurements"! I just can´t get this idea out of my mind when I keep listening to it. Some vocals are very irritating and it seems that Blake is holding something back all the time. It´s like he´s afraid of letting the songs grow and sticking to the minimalism as a safe ground for being intelligent.

In discogs I gave Blake´s album three stars out of five but this is propably going to be lowered to two if I can´t find the clue behind his sound. Mount Kimbie deserves four stars for their set and I really wish they enhance the sound that was present at the ep´s to a full scale album one day.

Amount of Snow is Amazing!

Today I participated in huge snow shoveling job (three hours) and almost forgot how nice the winter made the environment look like earlier. Here is some pictures I took from my surroundings:

Cornelius Tacitus - Histories

Roman history has always been one of my areas of interest. "The Histories" written by famous Roman writer Cornelius Tacitus is the latest book I have read about the classic age of Roman Empire (it was a Finnish translation from the original latin source).

This book concentrates in the period of 69-70 ad, the year when four emperors ruled and the empire was driven into civil war. All begins when Emperor Galba (ruler who was risen to power when the emperor Nero was defieted) was getting old and there were discomfort among legions about who should be his successor. Galba had noticed the turmoil and was trying to call his protege to be the next emperor. However this was the final straw for some of the army groups and they shouted Otho to be their ruler and when Otho arrived with his legions to Rome all hell broke lose.

After Otho´s men killed Galba the actual civil war was eventually going to expand since most of the german, gallic and british groups were not going to stand for such a decision. They gave Vitellius their commanderhood and started campaign against Otho´s newly formed regime. And so on until after some misfortuned battles Otho committed suicide. Tacitus describes Vitellius as a lazy person who was more fond of debauchery than actually benefiting the nation. This was also the reason why Vitellius regime was not in unison trough out the empire and soon the southern legions commander Vespasianus decided to take part on the race and challenge Vitellius´s groups.

I shouldn´t go further with the actual events except noticing that in the end Vitellius was defeated and several things followed. The Book ends with a chapter about the Great Jewish Revolt but this has not been preserved. However I want to make some notions about the life and roughness of the ordinary people and military during those times. First of all you have to keep in mind that Romans were at their peak about their Empire´s success then and it is this fact that brings strange light to actual living and prosperity in the empire.

What really buggers me is that the Military troops were so unpredictable about their decisions and the discipline was so hard to maintain. Minor revolts were everyday events and the leaders were all the time in a situation where they were forced to persuade troops to be loyal to their closest leaders and even for the emperor. There seemed to be lots of rumors always circulating about other peoples loyalty and deceit. People were also very superstitious and everything that happened could be interpreted as an omen (ominous or fortunate). These events could in a sudden moment mean that the troops would stand against their commander and even killing of leaders happened.

One of the main motivation behind military troops seemed to be looting instead of securing the empire´s peace. This lead to situations where a legion was relocating and manoeuvering forward the combat zone in their own territory (inside the empire) where they completely destroyed and robbed unfortunate and innocent cities that were on their way. And when they had a battle within a city that was inside the empire some of them were completely burned down, all the inhabitants were killed and raped.

Realising how huge the empire was (even todays standards) it´s also very impressive how they managed to keep up maintenance for such a huge force. The military had at best over a million soldiers (though most of the times the amount of troops was around 400 000). A single legion had about 5000 soldiers and lots of hangaround people (merchants, slaves, etc.) and all of them had to be kept fead and armed.

Rome itself was a city of over a million people and the surrounding areas couldn´t offer enough grain to feed the inhabitants. That´s why they had to ship food from northern Africa! The logistics were really impressive!

Finally I recommend this book very much to read if you have even a little interest about the real life during antique times! It gives a nice overlook about times and describes the turmoil of Roman Empire quite well. It also gives some advice why the Roman Empire was finally divided and demolished a few hundred years later.