Arambol Experience
  • tribal Tan
  • Be lazy
  • Jago Bridja
  • Tell me
  • World Children
  • tribal Tan
    Genre: World Fusion
    WAV (03:35) [36.17 MB]
  • Be lazy
    Genre: Trance
    WAV (04:55) [49.66 MB]
  • Jago Bridja
    Genre: Psychedelic
    WAV (04:32) [45.72 MB]
  • Tell me
    Genre: Trip-Hop
    WAV (01:36) [16.22 MB]
  • World Children
    Genre: Children's Music
    WAV (04:18) [43.46 MB]
Biography

ARAMBOL EXPÉRIENCE
 

A collective creation (DOUBLE CD + DVD) brimming with influences: psychedelic, pop, trance, breakbeat, acoustic ballads, Indian … all pointing to the same message: one heart in different bodies.
 

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PACO - KUNDALINI AIRPORT


www.myspace.com/kundaliniairport


Manu


MANU


At the height of rock utopia in the 1960s, love children from San Francisco through New York to London set out to create a holistic environment influenced by groups like Soft Machine and Pink Floyd. Psychedelic utopia was an experimental guerrilla that took in everything from sex through politics, music, art, comic strips and the alternative press to animation. When the hippies said, “We all want to change the world,” music was just one of the means to their end. But the 1980s put the screws on, mainstream became the main man and the golden boys were born. In this charged atmosphere and its natural extension in the 2000s, it is now frowned upon to hop off the matrix, to take a different view. In a highly informed society that quickly subdues protest movements, you can no longer hope to gain approval for another lifestyle, a marginal way of thinking. Or can you?
 

Turning their backs on the dictates of the industrial world and the illusion of cushy consumerism, musicians from all four corners of the globe have pitched up in Arambol. This village in the north of Goa is spearheading a psychedelic revival in the Indian province.
 

Chris, executive producer (Scorpion, Street Fighters, Atoll, etc.), Marie BORSCH, director and singer (ex YASSASSIN) and Dume (OTISTO23) engineer-programmer went to capture the atmosphere of this hotbed of musical creation. They set up a local studio with Fabrizio, guitarist and long-time resident of Goa. Over a three-year period, they invited local musicians (Western and otherwise) to create a collective work combining different influences: psychedelic, pop, trance, breakbeat, acoustic ballads, Indian, you name it …
 

Okay, so the musicians on the tracklisting are unknowns: so what? And made on a shoestring, filmed with a video camera traded in against a piano, the documentary that tells the tale of the recording saga contains some clunky and clichéd editing. These are obviously no experienced filmmakers … and? Well, it’s precisely its shortcomings that bring out the plus points of this “experience”. It may be rough and ready, but there’s some cracking teamwork. Because what hits you about Arambol Experience is the sheer inspiration behind it all.
 

Arambol is like the organic cousin of the famous urban “temporary autonomous zone”. Its refugees have escaped city stress to live there where “beautiful” is natural and you can play music without any limits or pigeonholing. They have turned their backs on the rat race, learned to enjoy life again and have a hedonistic sense of nothing to lose underpinned by their rejection of the objective tyranny of tomorrow. This environment obviously generates its own reference points and a different use of time … Real pitfalls for someone out to make something lasting! You had to have the capacity to get the best from this decidedly different set-up without caricaturing or desecrating it. You had to have the instinct to make a musical jigsaw puzzle out of it. And you quite simply had to have the courage of your convictions. Because if you want to take on this haven where partying and the offbeat are king, you have to be prepared to take the plunge yourself.
 

Such is the dedication of the architects of this project: chuck it all in to take a gamble on the unknown, muster the energy needed to form a team of musicians who were in Arambol to do anything but work, give new meaning to the pleasure of creation and find the beauty in doing something for nothing. It makes for a powerful combined effect that points to the underlying message: one heart in different bodies. That’s why, in a world with oceans of music and barely a drop of risk-taking, Arambol Experience makes its mark on the short list of current initiatives worth sitting up and paying attention to. This documentary film and double album tell the tale of a human adventure in which each character takes a bird’s eye view.
 


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INTERVIEW with CHRIS, producer of the project
 

What’s your musical background?
 

“I’m an executive producer. In 1981, I set up the disc jockey school FNDJ with a friend where I trained DJs for radio stations and discos. That automatically gave me the urge to produce, but I didn’t have enough money. I contacted Loulou Gasté, Line Renaud’s husband. He tried me out on a few small productions, then he let me loose on a studio he lent me. I worked with Street Fighters, Atoll and others. Then I met the manager of Blood Sweet & Tears. He liked my vision of music and I went to Los Angeles with him in 1983. I spent over ten years there, working for labels like Lax Records and Tamla Motown. That got me stuck with this weird label of a bit of an oddball rock-soul producer. I became a sort of “call-out doctor” for a kind of music that wasn’t really played in France at the time. After that, I worked with Scorpion on the management and production side. I’ve also worked on occasion for various pop set-ups, such as Frégate Music, where I’ve sometimes had to compromise, because you have to eat …”
 

What got you into modern electro?
 

“In 1995, Carrère/East West asked me to produce a trip-hop record. I set out in search of an experimental studio and found one in Romainville where a young engineer, Dume, was working. Dume is now an integral part of the Arambol Experience project. Trip-hop opened him up to a whole new world. He gradually took up with the electronic crowd, groups like Interlope and Cosmik Connection.
“Then there’s my son, who’s Watcha’s guitarist. He loves to jam with musicians from all walks … They both brought me into contact with the scene.”
 

What exactly is the Arambol project about?
 

“I was sick and tired of Paris. I’d lost all motivation to work for people who insisted I made coffee table music. I decided to sell up everything and leave to work on a project elsewhere. I earned a good living, I had good contacts, but no one wanted to get involved. My project was just too “weird” for them. Not surprising really, because I knew what I wanted, but I didn’t know how to get it or how much time it would take me. You see, I wanted to blow away the preconceived idea that Goa is just about trance. You have to realise there’s a constant over there: the psychedelic spirit. The place is alive with the memory of what guys like the Beatles and Jerry Garcia (Grateful Dead) left behind when they passed through. What I was hoping was to get together all the musical styles played there (folk, rock, trad and trance) to produce a lithe, flowing and, most importantly, inclusive electro pop project. But we needed to give this musical melting pot a colour. Dume and I set up an electronic framework. We had digital mixing consoles and computers brought over to crosscut with the local analog sound. The musicians played over this. I made the most of these live sessions to find out which musicians worked well together, where they really hit it off. I didn’t need to explain the spirit of the project to the people I asked to work with us. The magic of the place did the job for me. Everyone pulled together as a team, and that was my dream.
“At the end of the day, I think I got an interesting musical form out of it. No one knew exactly what my goal was, but everyone went with the flow. It was great to be the manager of all that!”
 

When did the project actually start?
 

“In 2003, I went on a reconnaissance trip with Marie Börsch, ex-singer of Yassasin, to find a place to record. To our surprise, we bumped into a musician, Fabrizio, the very first evening who had been looking for years for someone sound to work on a musical project. He had had his house built in the garden of an Indian family. They had a verbal agreement that he would rent the house for ten years and then it would go back to the family. Anyway, I met an incredible pool of musicians over there who were all living for the moment. To begin with, Marie, who had the idea for the video part of the project and acted as our director, had a really hard time filming them because the guys just wanted to be left alone.”
 

Why did you choose Arambol in particular?
 

“Arambol is an old pirate village cut off from the rest of Goa by the banks of two major rivers. When the first hippies arrived, they set up lakeside, not wanting to crowd the locals’ space. Friendship and shared interests took root. Freaks, hippies and others decided they wanted to be self-sufficient. The Indians quickly realised that the money they brought them was enough for them to develop independently. I first went to India in 1973. I had already helped organise parties and jam sessions, just for fun, without any professional motive or idea of developing something bigger. It so happens there’s been an influx of musicians into Arambol in recent years. It may well be the only place in Goa where the old wanderer spirit still exists, the idea of living in a community in harmony with the Indians. This spirit has been completely lost in the South to the droves of property developers and holidaymakers.”
 

A lot of people criticise the hedonistic myth of Goa …
 

“I have to admit that in the 1970s, we were just getting our kicks from the peace and love thing. We were in “sweet FA” mode, like all rucksack wanderers, strung out on a totally unrealistic utopia. We thought nothing would ever change, and we did nothing for the Indians. We spent our days on the beach getting high, watching the Indians going to the well and struggling every day. They lived in total poverty, which, to be quite honest, we actually found really cool because there we were suddenly experiencing something completely different! Basically, we were on totally the wrong track. We played at being poor, schlepping about in Jesus boots, barely washing because you couldn’t touch the well water. And when our visa ran out after a few months, we got on the plane back home – two to three years’ wages for an Indian – and went straight back on with our lives, me included! So it was inevitable that the Indians would think it was all very well, but they were fed up with starving while they watched us come and go. When the property developers realised Goa’s commercial potential, they pitched up with their fat wallets. I told myself I wouldn’t make the same mistakes the second time round.”
 

What approach did you take?
 

“I wanted to be active, not passive, for the Indians to be pleased to have us there and also for them to benefit from our work. We realised we needed to work with the Indians so they wouldn’t be tempted to go to the property developers and flog their land at rock bottom prices. Because they need money just like anyone else, but when they do all that only to find themselves just as poor as when they started … I went to see the mayor who gave me permission to use the name of the village. I’m not claiming that the village will thrive thanks to the project, but it is benefiting from the interest in it and all the shopkeepers get a commission on the records they sell.
“With this project, we sparked off the “Arambol family” since the story doesn’t stop at a record or a film. We wanted to create a movement generating a positive vibe, where everyone could become creative. There are now a lot of westerners living with the Indians. Numbers have risen from 200 to 300 people to some 1,800. All these people rent from or share land with the Indians. The project’s success has been a real driving force with a multitude of offshoot activities: designers, boutiques, music school, concert venue, dance classes, restaurants, sports, and a whole host of spiritual and artistic activities … Arambol has become kind of like Asterix’s village, with a strong sense of community, but one that respects above all else individual tranquillity, because people are still wary of the past mistakes.”
 

Interview by Anne & Julien, November 2007
 

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1
  • Members:
    Chris Marie Yann
  • Sounds Like:
    A CD
  • Influences:
    trip hop, rock, psychedelic, transe, electro, indian classical music
  • AirPlay Direct Member Since:
    12/17/08
  • Profile Last Updated:
    08/20/23 05:17:43

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