The Shamen
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
The Shamen | |
---|---|
Background information | |
Origin | Aberdeen, Scotland |
Genres |
|
Years active | 1985–1999 |
Labels |
|
Past members | Colin Angus Bob Breeks John Delafons Gavin Knight Richard West (Mr C) Victoria Wilson-James Jhelisa Anderson |
The Shamen (/ˈʃeɪmɛn/ SHAY-men) were a Scottish psychedelic band,[1][2] formed in 1985 in Aberdeen, who became a chart-topping British electronic dance music act by the early 1990s.[3] The founding members were Colin Angus, Derek McKenzie and Keith McKenzie. Peter Stephenson joined shortly after to take over on keyboards from Angus. Several other people were later in the band. Angus then teamed up with Will Sinnott, and together they found credibility as pioneers of rock/dance crossover.[citation needed] When rapper Mr. C joined, the band moved on to international commercial success with "Ebeneezer Goode" and their 1992 Boss Drum album.
History
1980s
The Shamen were preceded by
By mid-1987,
"Knature of a Girl" was the first record by the Shamen to feature Sinnott, but it was not until June's "Jesus Loves Amerika" single that the techno influence began to show.[4] By this stage, Angus and Sinnott had become hooked on the acid house movement taking place in London, and its music and clubs were to exert an influence on the pair. Keith McKenzie and Peter Stephenson were less impressed by these new developments, and left the group the following summer, after the January 1989 release of the In Gorbachev We Trust album, which saw the group further enhancing their sound. Over summer 1988, they met Mr. C and Evil Eddie Richards, who later both worked with the Shamen to help them transition their music into the rave scene.
Angus and Sinnott relocated to London, allowing them to start afresh, and plunge into the emerging rave scene. 1989 was a busy year, as they set out on their Synergy tour, a nightclub experience,[4] combined with live music from the Shamen and others like Orbital, and with DJing from Paul Oakenfold, Mixmaster Morris, Mr C, and Evil Eddie Richards. The tour was to last nearly two years. Synergy was innovative at the time, as a touring rock dance club introducing live bands to clubbers, and house, techno and ambient DJs to rock fans.[4] The Shamen also released the Phorward mini album, produced by ex-Fiction Factory singer/songwriter Kevin Patterson.
1990s
Their third album,
In May 1991, with the increased popularity of their band, Will Sin decided to release an EP entitled "U Make Me Feel" with an unknown female singer under the pseudonym Elsi Curry, and it was released as a promotional record. Later that same month, after the Sixth Mark of the Synergy Tour, and a one-week tour of Russia, the Shamen headed to Tenerife, to film a video for "Move Any Mountain". On 23 May, Will Sinnott drowned whilst swimming off the coast of La Gomera.[5] Colin Angus later said: "When it first happened, I was still reeling from the shock of Will's completely unexpected and tragic death, and I couldn't think about the Shamen at all, couldn't see how anything could continue. But as I came to terms with it and thought about the situation I realised that what the Shamen was about was positivity and that positivity is like the spirit of the music and positivity acknowledges the need for change. So for those reasons I elected to carry on and also I knew that the name Shamen really meant a lot to Will and that was one of the main attractions for joining the band for him."[6]
In July 1991, Plavka Lonich chose to leave the band, because she was planning to start on her solo career.[7] After finding a new female singer, Cheryl Melder, the Shamen embarked on the start of their Progeny tour. With Mr. C now a full-time member of the Shamen, and Soul Family Sensation's[nb 1] Jhelisa Anderson[9][10][11][12] (who was chosen to replace Plavka, as she was already a One Little Indian artist) providing guest vocals, the Boss Drum album followed in 1992.[4] Boss Drum featured a spoken-word collaboration, "Re:Evolution" with Terence McKenna, and the Shamen's biggest and most controversial hit: "Ebeneezer Goode".[4] "Ebeneezer Goode" was accused of promoting drug use, owing to the refrain, 'Ezer Goode, Ezer Goode' as homophonic with 'E's are good' (E being slang for the drug ecstasy), 'He s ever so good, he's Ebenezer Goode' (using the homophony of "he" and "E"), and to double entendre drug references throughout the song.[4] This echoed similar references in previous songs such as "Synergy"'s 'MDMA-zing... we are together in ecstasy'. Despite – or maybe because of – the subsequent storm of publicity, the song reached the top of the UK Singles Chart and stayed there for four weeks.[4]
Subsequent singles such as "Boss Drum" and "Phorever People" were chart hits, and they were voted "Best New Act" by Radio 1 listeners at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party in 1992, but after the unexpected success of "Ebeneezer Goode" some long-term fans believed they paled in comparison to earlier singles.[citation needed] As Terence McKenna observed:
- Nothing ruins you for the underground like success. So when Boss Drum went double platinum, they were obviously 'establishment'... I've talked to Colin about this, and he agrees. It would have been wonderful to hit it big at 23. At 35 it becomes a pain in the ass, and you just have to manage the money and the image.[13]
However, the Shamen's new mainstream popularity enabled them to release an unusually large number of remix singles, EPs, and LPs during the Boss Drum era, including the "Face EP", the "S.O.S. EP", and the On Air and Different Drum albums. On Air featured a series of popular tracks from En-Tact and Boss Drum as performed live on BBC radio; Different Drum was a remix album containing alternate versions of every track from Boss Drum. The tracks "Boss Drum", "LSI (Love Sex Intelligence)", "Phorever People", "Ebeneezer Goode", and "Re:Evolution" were all released as singles in their own right. It was however impossible for the band to fully escape the shadow that Sinnot's death had cast across them. At a time and in a scene when performers were often both masked and anonymous, the emerging early 1990s dance music world had lost one of its more notable personalities.[4]
Axis Mutatis was released in 1995,[4] with new vocalist Victoria Wilson-James replacing Jhelisa Anderson. Early special editions of this album featured a bonus disk, Arbor Bona Arbor Mala, an experimental ambient album.
Always seeking to push out musical and communication boundaries, the Shamen saw themselves as an information band. Their Internet site Nemeton[14] was amongst the first British music sites to host unique Web based events, e.g. releasing the first ever single and LP on the net in 1995[15] and it also features a remarkable piece of software devised by Angus to convert the DNA structures of human life into electronic music. "S2 Translation", a track on Axis Mutatis, was generated using this software.[16]
The Shamen continued recording into the late 1990s, releasing two additional LPs with an increasingly experimental bent. Their penultimate studio album, the instrumental
Mr. C has since continued as a house music DJ and became a nightclub owner of The End club. As of 2007, he was also recording as a member of Sycophant Slags, with Francis Harris a.k.a. Adultnapper on Mr. C's Superfreq Records label. Colin Angus worked on a project called Pablo Sandoz, from 2004 to 2008.
Band members
Final lineup
- Colin Angus – (1985–1999)
- Bob Breeks – keyboards (1992–1999)
- Gavin Knight – drums, electronic percussion (1991–1999)
- Richard West (Mr. C) – vocals, keyboards (1990–1999)
- Victoria Wilson-James – vocals (1993–1999)
Former members
- John Delafons – electronic percussion(1989–1990)
- Derek McKenzie – vocals, guitar (1985–1987)
- Keith McKenzie – drums, electronic percussion (1985–1988)
- Allison Morrison – keyboards, vocals (1985–1986)
- Richard Sharpe – keyboards (1991–1992)
- Will Sinnott (Will Sin) – bass guitar, keyboards, vocals (1987–1991, his death)
- Peter Stephenson – keyboards (1986–1988)
- Cody "The Chuck" H. – vocals (1991–1993)
Touring members
- Jhelisa Anderson – vocals (1992–1993)
- Alexis Blackmore (turntables(1990–1991)
- Plavka Lonich – vocals (1990–1991)
- Cheryl Melder – live vocals (1991–1992)
- DJ Stika – turntables (1990)
Discography
- Drop (1987)
- In Gorbachev We Trust (1989)
- Phorward (1989)
- En-Tact (1990)
- Boss Drum (1992)
- Axis Mutatis (1995)
- Hempton Manor (1996)
- UV (1998)
See also
- List of Billboard number-one dance club songs
- List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Dance Club Songs chart
- List of UK Singles Chart number ones of the 1990s
Notes
- ^ This One Little Indian act featuring Republica's Johnny Male were also known as Sensation when Jhelisa left the band.[8]
References
- ^ "The Shamen".
- ^ "Moksha management : The shamen".
- ^ "SHAMEN | full Official Chart History | Official Charts Company". Official Charts.
- ^ ISBN 1-85227-745-9.
- ^ Bainbridge, L. (2013). The True Story of Acid House: Britain's Last Youth Culture Revolution. London: Omnibus Press.
- ^ "Archive of over 20 years of musician and band interviews". Chaoscontrol.com. Retrieved 16 February 2016.
- ^ "Shamen Shambles as Singer Hops It". Plavka.com. July 1991. Archived from the original on 21 February 2007. Retrieved 1 June 2008.
- ^ Sensation – Burger Habit 1993 One Little Indian catalogue number TPLP45CD
- ^ "Musical Maverick Jhelisa Anderson releases long awaited new concept album '7 Keys'". 11 October 2021.
- ^ "SOUL FAMILY SENSATION | full Official Chart History | Official Charts Company". Official Charts.
- ^ "Jhelisa".
- ^ "Soul Family Sensation – the Day You Went Away". 30 April 2015.
- ^ "Interview with Terrence McKenna, ICA, London, 11/10/96, by Gyrus & John Eden". The Annihilation Fountain (#4). Archived from the original on 6 January 2006. Retrieved 3 March 2006.
- ^ "Welcome to Axis Mutatis". Nemeton.com. Retrieved 16 February 2016.
- ^ "Internet Today Issue 11 – Sep 1995 | Flickr – Photo Sharing!". Flickr. 11 July 2008. Retrieved 4 April 2012.
- ^ "S2 Translation". Nemeton.com. Retrieved 4 April 2012.
- ^ "Shamen, The – Hempton Manor (CD, Album) at Discogs" Discogs.com, 2009, webpage: DC: notes "the first letter of each track spell...".
Further reading
- Jacobs, Daniel; Wren, David (2003). "The Shamen". In Buckley, Peter (ed.). The Rough Guide to Rock (3rd ed.). London: Rough Guides. pp. 926–927. ISBN 1-84353-105-4 – via the Internet Archive.
- Frentner, Shawn (1999). "The Shamen". In Brennan, Luann (ed.). Contemporary Musicians: Profile of the People in Music. Vol. 23. Detroit, London: Gale. pp. 209–211. ISSN 1044-2197– via the Internet Archive.