Shpongle
Shpongle is a psychedelic electronic music project from England that formed in 1996. The group includes Simon Posford and Raja Ram (one of three in The Infinity Project). The duo are considered to be one of the progenitors of the psybient genre — a genre combining world music with psychedelic trance and ambient. Their musical style combines traditional music from all over the world and vocals with contemporary western synthesizer-based psychedelic music. When asked to describe Shpongle's music, Posford has responded that it is "like nothing you've ever heard before."
Shpongle's first track, "Vapour Rumours", was released on TIP Records' Infinite Excursions compilation in 1996. Their debut album, Are You Shpongled?, was released in 1998 on Twisted Records. On 9 September 2014, Posford confirmed beginning work on a sixth album, which was released as Codex VI on 23 October 2017. On 3 October 2017, even before the release of Codex VI, the duo announced via a Facebook video that they have begun working on their seventh studio album. Since 30 June 2017, the duo have also been releasing remasters of their previous albums, focussing on releasing special edition vinyl records.
Posford is generally responsible for the synthesizers, studio work, and live instrumentation, while Raja Ram contributes broad musical concepts and flute arrangements. Raja Ram stated in an interview that "Shpongle" is an umbrella term for feeling positive and euphoric emotions. Shpongle's music is heavily influenced by psychedelic experiences and frequently makes use of sonic textures that approximate psychedelic states as well as vocal samples relating to consciousness expansion, hallucinations, and altered states of awareness. For example, the track "A New Way to Say 'Hooray'" contains a vocal sample of Terence McKenna describing the effects of DMT.
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