#2497 Shpongle - Are You Shpongled?

Goa trance week, bonus round!

A lot of the best-regarded albums from this scene have this feeling of being beamed from space - of existing without the need for the filthy hands of man. But Shpongle's opus feels packed with effort, with ambition, with a kitchen sink blitz to blow your mind with every sound imaginable. At times the it's wildly successful, with a better album flow than most; and those last three tracks are truly alien, often terrifying.

But there's a failure to connect somehow. Is it that awful name, somehow worse than the likes of Dimension 5 and Paradise Connection? I can't imagine talking to someone who says they're a huge Shpongle fan without assuming that I'm about to have a really boring conversation -- the Dave Mathews Band of synths, the Humphreys McGee of beats. Or maybe it's just that production weight of it all, overflowing with throat singing and chopped robot vocals and shimmering endlessnesses piled like 2x4s, the album shouting in your face ARE YOU TRIPPING OUT OR WHAT 3/5