Bran Van 3000

There are desert-island albums and there are spaceship albums. The former shore up memory and console the present of castaways, real or metaphorical. The latter get shot out of Earth's orbit to preserve the canon of a civilization, for the benefit of interplanetary tenants. And then there are a very few albums that manage to fulfill both roles. "Glee", for instance.

It all begins in 1994, half by chance and half as a joke. A video maker with musical ambitions, Quebecer James Di Salvio tries his hand as a producer, remixing a track by fellow Montrealer Jean Leloup. Against all odds, it's a hit: the single climbs the charts and he pockets a check worth cashing. Galvanized, he calls up his friend E.P. Bergen to pick his brain about the art of DJing, and the spark between them ignites: thus are born Bran Van 3000. The bizarre name is a nod to E.P.'s van, which he claimed ran on "bran flakes, brännvin and brand recognition", and the music brewing between them will be among the most astonishing of the decade. First, though, they need to cut their teeth, starting with the already-proven liaison with Leloup. Di Salvio and Bergen work first on the single "Johnny Go" and then on the album "Le Dôme": both storm the Canadian charts, and the BV3 land a deal with Audiogram.

It would be easy enough to stay behind the scenes like so many sonic sorcerers, but Di Salvio has other ideas: to build a genuine collective, somewhere between a hip-hop crew and a hippie commune. He ends up assembling as many as 20 musicians, including rappers, DJs, a whole host of singers and a full rock band. The creative humus is Montreal, a lively metropolis at the crossroads between the Old and New Worlds, whose colorful frenzy he absorbs wholesale. It's no surprise, then, what title he has in mind for the album of his dreams: "Glee", joy. Everything he loves has to go in it – and we're really talking about a mountain of stuff.

If the setup is somewhat clumsy (with a three-track demo they tie for first place at Canadian Music Week, only to be disqualified once it emerges they're not a "real" band), the follow-through is a knockout. Whenever the Bran Van story comes up, it always starts – and usually stops – with that fateful first single, anno domini 1997. That's rather ungenerous given the phantasmagoric scope of their catalogue as a whole, but it would be equally short-sighted to deny the obvious: "Drinking In L.A." is one of the peaks of contemporary music.

Not since "Microphone check one, two, what is this?" had a hip-hop track opened with such magical, inspired nonchalance as "Hi, my name is Stereo Mike". The real question, if anything, is whether we can still call this hip-hop. As per the Di Salvio playbook, it's easier to just list the outfits on the runway: a delay with sci-fi reflexes, a mammoth guitar bursting with fuzz, a rap slurred with hangover, a chorus lost in who-knows-what dream, a scratchy, sensual voice, a few anemic drops of piano. And what about the lyrics, with that idle narrator who seems to have wandered out of a Linklater film, and his shameless self-promotional swagger? It's enough to make your head spin. Not even the Beastie Boys had managed to push the interplay between instruments and samples to such a level of perfection. Alongside "Loser", it remains perhaps the most vivid snapshot of the 90s melting pot, and a perfect candidate for that space mission mentioned above.

Helped along by an iconic, brilliant video, "Drinking In L.A." smashes its way through radio and TV. A couple of months later the rest of "Glee" arrives, for now only in Canada, and the impact is once again devastating: gold record, two nominations and a win at the Juno Awards (Canada's answer to the Grammys), tracks plundered wholesale by films and TV commercials. Di Salvio & co. are already a living cult act by the time, the following year, the album is launched internationally – not before a few strategic tweaks: two extra tracks (bringing the total to 19, brushing up against the hour mark) and two reworked for an English-speaking audience ("Ceci n'est pas une chanson" is trimmed down into the instrumental "Une chanson", while "Forest", brought along by Leloup, is translated into English).

And let's run through the other gems in this necklace, an irrepressible ode to the most imaginative eclecticism, an intoxicating whirl of 90s vibes. More a demonstration of Di Salvio's virtuosity in fast-forward than a song with a beginning and an end (in fact it lacks both), "Gimme Sheldon" finds him as a fearless collagist, half John Oswald, half DJ Shadow, whirling through jazz, funk, breakbeat and jungle. What sets it apart, besides the results, are the sources: the samples aren't fished out of some obscure vintage 7-inch, but lifted from the productions of unknown local hip-hop DJs. A dizzying case of sampling squared, in other words, as well as a loving tribute to his beloved city.

But Di Salvio is also a songwriter, and "Couch Surfer" immediately silences anyone who might suggest otherwise: turntables and drum machine here shape an indolent lo-fi ballad. And while the deadpan tone still evokes Beck, the clownish humor harks back to vaudeville tricks, complete with kazoo and theremin. With "Problems" and "Highway To Heck" the smart aleck is back at the blackboard, delivering two brief lessons, one in composition, one in manipulation: the first sounds like My Bloody Valentine stripped of the din, the second is a swung interlude that promises much and delivers nothing.

If Di Salvio's mastery at hopping from one genre to another is by now beyond dispute, his new challenge is to cram as many of them as possible into a single song: in "Forest", rap tirades coexist with trip-hop sirens, nu-metal riffing and amen breaks, noise and reversed vocals; "Rainshine" (which takes its cue from the melodic hook of "Problems") lines up dramatic alternative rock with breezy pop worthy of Blur's self-titled album, then slaps on top of it the slurred sermonizing of a reggae shaman.

Moods and atmospheres are also in perpetual imbalance: the elegant dub-jazz of "Carry On" and the sickly noir-rap of "Afrodiziak" (muddied by an ambush from the Gravediggaz) bring down a starless night, but "Lucknow" is a psychedelic pond with rainbow reflections, and the cover of "Cum On Feel The Noize" turns the original's machismo into a freaked-out workout worthy of Primal Scream.

The quality of the songwriting once again silences those crying conspiracy over special effects: "Exactly Like Me" wouldn't look out of place in the Lemonheads songbook, and "Everywhere" has the sweetness of the very earliest Smashing Pumpkins, both tracks graced by delicate violin. That said, "Une chanson" (sampling "Perfect" by The The, with acid wobble, vibraphone and cocktail-lounge trumpet) and "Old School" (crude industrial clatter, disco ineptitude, bluesy rasp, frenzied turntablism) still confirm him as a master of cut-and-paste. And who else but James Di Salvio could hijack the Celtic ballad "Willard" into an exquisitely chilly slice of d'n'b?

"Supermodel" is no less impressive, and it's hard to say whether it's more folk or more soul, though for that matter it's not even clear what "Oblonging" actually is: no longer knowing who to turn to, Di Salvio hands the mic over to a voice simulator, cradling it with an aching Fender Rhodes. And it's that same hushed intensity that shapes the country nursery rhyme of "Mama Don't Smoke", the gentlest drug song ever written, needing nothing more than a voice, a guitar and a wheezing harmonica. It takes real class to close an album that shifts its coordinates every few minutes with such simplicity.

Whatever came after would be less than negligible: the over-produced, over-hyped "Discosis" (2001) will mostly be remembered for Curtis Mayfield's final recorded appearance (the hit "Astounded") and its ghastly cover art, while the albums that followed left no trace at all. Best to look the other way and take this masterpiece for what it truly was: a dazzlingly bright meteor. As John Ford taught us, sometimes it's better to print the legend.

An ode to the possibilities of the fleeting moment, "Glee" is the soundtrack to a party that has no intention of ending, to a summer forever on the verge of fading out, to a nostalgia already present before the last song even ends.

Ain't no party like a Bran Van party

'Cause a Bran Van party don't stop

Ride the wave of great music

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27/10/2024