Infected Mushroom - Middle Eastern psytrance

Today's rave music scene wouldn't be the same without Infected Mushroom, the Israeli duo who gave a crucial boost to the spread of psychedelic trance, bringing the gospel of "music to get wasted to" to the masses.

Erez Aizen and Amit Duvdevani are two musicians from Tel Aviv: one has played piano since childhood, the other played keyboards in a new wave band. After a trip to India, Duvdev falls in love with raves and convinces Erez to drop classical music and get behind a mixer, blending the relentless rhythm of pure trance with distinctly Arabic-sounding tones. Of course, they're not the first to do so. But after listening to the work of Hallucinogen, Hux Flux and Cosmosis, the two Israelis decide they'll need to do something different to make a name for themselves in an incredibly crowded field. And it's they who will end up detonating the rave scene in Israel, where labels like Bne, Hom-Mega and Yo Yo Records now dominate a market that yields over 20,000 copies per record.

Their debut album, The Gathering, from 1999, is a distinctive work for the genre's evolution, and begins to sketch out the Infected sound: a whirlwind of effects built over an almost constant kick drum, spilling literally out of the speakers. The BPM hovers around 150-160, and you'll suddenly hear a heavily distorted guitar burst in ("Release Me", "Blue Muppet"), or a cacophonous synth coiling in on itself, as in the title track or the thoroughly hallucinatory "Return Of The Shadows". "Psycho" is less original, while "Montoya Rmx" opens with a piano (!) that quickly morphs into an obsessive beat surrounded by sliding keyboards, building to a majestic finale.

It's a rough-edged work, revisiting the classic tropes of pure trance without major departures from the sound of Transwave and similar acts; and yet The Gathering is the record that kicks off the spread of psychedelic trance in Israel, where the desire to escape a reality made of attacks and everyday terror translates into a craving for intense nights out, where anything goes.

Raves become an extremely powerful form of social bonding, and Infected Mushroom's fame grows further when the duo release Classical Mushroom, their most famous work. It's the single "Bust A Move" that drags the album far beyond any rosy sales forecast: an acoustic guitar, then a sharp hit and a processed female voice throw open the doors to the kick drum, which no longer attacks the way it did on the previous record, but is instead tamed by strings and lightning-fast harmonic piano runs. With a Moog and Cubase, shaping sounds becomes easy, but Eren and Amit have class, and the cinematic theme of "None Of This Is Real" also shows the good taste of artists who create music by blending classical instrumentation with cutting-edge new technology.

Other notable moments include the disorienting "Disco Mushroom", the robotic lyricism of "The Shen", and the mad dash into darkness of the closing trilogy: "Nothing Comes Easy", "Mushi Mushi", "The Missed Symphony". The beat grows ever more insistent, drawing you into a cylindrical tunnel marked out by fierce BPMs and the darkest of atmospheres, by walls of colour bleeding into one another: this is Mushroom, this is the trip you're signing up for, overwhelmed by the sheer purity of sound in these final three tracks. The last one is the true peak of the album: towering keyboards buried under a dusty layer of glitch references, voices that pop up out of nowhere shouting "boo!", our now-familiar lone pianist breaking up the hallucinatory rhythm of the kick drum, wrong-footing anyone expecting one final explosion of violent beats.

Overall, the sounds become increasingly hallucinated and twisted, chasing each other through long, complex tracks in which the blurred effect of the keyboard becomes the backbone, backed by a kick drum as devastating as a tank in a china shop. A sound that, however, can wear thin over time. Classical Mushroom is a record that's hard to sustain from start to finish, one that can gift your night some moments of wild dancing ("Dracul"), but you'll hardly manage to swallow it whole without ingesting some…mushroom.

A turning point is therefore needed. Infected Mushroom's music can't be just obsessive beat. Eren and Amit realize this too, and after two years of work (and dj-sets around the globe), 2002 brings us B.P. Empire. It's a bold work, profoundly different from what came before, evolving the Infected sound by drifting slightly away from the pure psytrance that The Gathering had been a cornerstone of. There's more melodic exploration, a convergence of influences from different styles, from glitch to industrial. You can even catch echoes of Brazil ("Tasty Mushroom"), the hallucinated, screaming slides of "Unbalanced", or the ambient undergrowth of "Noise Maker". Never before had we heard anything like the arc of the opening track ("Never Ever Land"), which grows slowly, unhurried, with no urge to erupt into the usual bpm explosion, cradled instead by metallic sound experiments in the vein of early Autechre. The title-track is of an infernal violence, while the following "Funchameleon" feels like finding yourself in a crowded bazaar, among pot sellers and snake charmers; a place to lose yourself and get drunk on confusion.

B.P. Empire draws a lot of criticism from fans of the duo, who see it as a betrayal of "pure" trance philosophy and a step backward from their previous work. In reality, it represents a development that was much needed in the Israeli duo's music, a decisive qualitative leap forward. As if to say, not just kick drums: that's the spirit behind the closing suite, "Dancing With Kadafi", which opens with a romantic guitar and melts into a downtempo blend of tribal rhythms, African horns, pianos, little organs and cascading strings, without pushing the rave-music accelerator, but rather exploring Middle Eastern sonorities applied to digital rhythm. Purists, however, turn up their noses…

In trying to please both sides of the coin — those looking for a powerful, gritty rhythm to energize their nights, and those who instead want tracks from the group that are pleasant to listen to even outside the rave context — Infected Mushroom lose their way. In 2003 the double album Converting Vegetarians comes out, made up of an aggressive "Trance Side" and a more experimental "The Other Side", which shows how far the duo's musical exploration has moved into new territory. The result, however, doesn't live up to the ambitious project: the trance tracks lack bite, falling short of the originality of previous albums, and side A boils down to a long, monotonous procession of kick drums and droning riffs repeated endlessly, with little worth saving: "Echonomix" shines like a pearl in the desert. Nothing terrible, mind you, but not quite what you'd expect from the undisputed masters of the genre. Better to forget it and try the second disc, which offers more to chew on. "The Other Side" gets off to a terrible start: "Converting Vegetarians" reprises the strings of earlier work, mixing them with a sung hip-hop chorus that's completely out of place. But if the single is a letdown, on the other tracks the duo find their best form again: "Elation Station" is a delightfully hallucinated pop gem, "Blink" evokes the 80s (with Michele Adamson on vocals), "Drop Out" is the soundtrack to a rainy day, "Avratz" a fabulous poem somewhere between downbeat and jungle.

The ideas are there, on "The Other Side". What was wrong was lumping it together with a trite, banal trance record like "Trance Side". A marketing mistake, for sure, one that also earns Infected Mushroom the label of "commercial", in their failed attempt to please both factions of their audience.

What you want often arrives when you stop chasing it obsessively. The "fusion" of Infected Mushroom's two souls is achieved perfectly, in fact, on their next record, I'm The Supervisor (2004). And it's a triumph, both critically and commercially. The duo's sound reaches an unparalleled purity, the tracks have a disarming freshness. The title-track is a tremendous steamroller, with an artificial voice declaiming just a few words, but eloquent ones: "Dance with me… c'mon, c'mon". "Meduzz" builds a spectacular crescendo, from a clubby bassline all the way to an electric guitar chasing the violins over a lyrical theme, all wrapped in a sauce of energy-charged bpm. The hallucinated, wintry journey of "Horus The Chorus" follows the same script, and is perhaps the track Infected Mushroom had always wanted to write. Industrial flavors and elephant trumpeting chase each other through the mini-suite "Noon", but the real gem is the third track: a shy music box, fading into a muezzin's call under a starry night, kicks off the dancing in that fabulous tribute to Arab culture called "Muse Breaks RMX", a reworked version of a J Viewz track. Style and class meet the Middle East and rave music. The crescendo is breathtaking, overwhelming at every turn. The vocal is reprised in every possible way, from syncopated to female voice, up to the final explosion of "Feel me get in…", followed by a digitized barbaric scream. A stylish close, with the opening music box accompanied by violin as the sun rises. It's the apotheosis of Infected Mushroom's music, the true diamond set in a record of rare beauty. Even the perfect single "Cities Of The Future", which would have made the ideal soundtrack for Fritz Lang's "Metropolis", risks paling after this gem.

Following the record's huge success, the Israeli duo's engagements around the globe multiply, as they dethrone acts that had topped the genre's charts for years, like Hux Flux, and spawn hordes of disciples in their own holy land. One name above all: Astral Projection.

The duo's definitive breakthrough with I'm The Supervisor would lead you to expect a thoroughly respectable follow-up, but that's not the case with Vicious Delicious (2007). The record is largely forgettable, with hazy attempts to venture into unfamiliar musical territory — hip-hop, funk, metal. Recorded in Los Angeles, where the two Infected members most likely came into contact with many other musical cultures and then tried to transplant them into their work, but with disappointing results. The album's high points are in fact its few "conventional" tracks, pure, damn good trance, like the beautiful "Suliman".

The future? They'll keep traveling the world. To keep exploring, but, they say, always keeping their origins firmly in mind. And it's precisely those origins that make the difference, in the crowded landscape of the psytrance scene, between those content to just crank out 160 bpm at raves and those who can move you with their music, even in broad daylight.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google