Spooky transcends with the two-disc 'Open'
Spooky's debut, Gargantuan, helped define synth-driven "progressive" house in 1993, opening the floodgates for e-music's heyday, when Leftfield, Underworld, and Orbital explored similar territory and reached critical heights rarely seen since. Gargantuan, with its sublime atmospherics and beat-driven dreamscapes, set a bar that's still hard to reach today.
But Spooky missed much of the subsequent party. That first album, released domestically on I.R.S., sold less than 50,000 copies worldwide and was known mainly to diehard e-music fans, DJs, and critics. A 1996 follow-up, Found Sound, was largely overlooked. By the time electronic dance music finally reached the top of the pop charts in the late 1990s, with the likes of Moby (and his Gargantuan-flavored Play), Spooky was all but disbanded, its music shelved and its ability to work shackled by a major label that had the duo under contract. Charlie May, one half of Spooky, found solace in studio work with new friend Sasha. But the definitive, otherworldly magic of the British pair skipped e-music's peak, only to return with a new album this summer, just in time for the bittersweet after-party. Or is it? These days, trend surfers have left the club, critics are heralding dance-rock as the genre's Next Big Thing, and vinyl DJ shops across the nation have nearly all dried up. Spooky, however, is high on now.
"We're more excited than ever," says the duo's Duncan Forbes. "We've never been in such a strong position."
The act strengthened its position by reacquiring its back catalog, including Gargantuan, and re-releasing it online last year, mainly at Beatport and iTunes. And, for the first time in years, Spooky has ventured from its London base to perform around the world. Forbes credits Sasha's globetrotting influence with helping to seed demand for Spooky. The pair has found fans in the far reaches of the globe, in places such as South America, Eastern Europe, and Asia - new audiences that are creating a new wave for e-music.
"There's an enormous global market," says Forbes, 38. "Live music is massive. People seem to be hungry for it in South America and Eastern Europe. People are downloading it, and then they want us to play at their venues around the world. I think that's the future, really."
To tap that demand, Spooky has unleashed a two-disc album good enough to bookend the e-music era it helped create with Gargantuan. Open, due next month, is ambitious and ardently ambient, beckoning the listener to inch closer as break-beat syncopation moves the night forward. It's a post-dance-floor album or, as Forbes puts it, "a-listen-to-at-home or at-the-beach record." Julie Daske ("Belong") contributes a harrowingly wistful voice reminiscent of Sarah McLachlan's. Celestine Gordon counters Daske's featherweight yearning with heavyweight joy, lending a soulful tone to the smooth "New Light." ("It feels so good, to be free," she sings, perhaps channeling Spooky's post-major label liberation.) "No Return" sounds like it could have come from a Gargantuan-era Spooky. It contains the classic progressive house formula - American-style tribal drums and diva vocals paired with high-flying Euro-synths. The rest of the collection slows down considerably, with shiny tuneful down-tempo, and a second disc of minimal dub mixes that wash over the soul like a summer tide.
Forbes and May grew up together, their childhood ears filled with the sounds of Roxy Music, Howard Jones, and Duran Duran; Bob Marley, King Tubby, and Scientist. They dabbled in bands, mainly one called Red 10. But at the dawn of the '90s, Forbes made a trip to New York. He bought thumping house records and took in the DJ-driven scene at the Sound Factory club. When he got back to England, he played his records for May. They ditched the band and pooled their gear - a sampler, a Roland TR-909 drum machine and a Roland JD-800 keyboard - to create Spooky. Today, even with the ultramodern Open, one can hear their ever-present yin and yang - soul versus synths, progressive house versus deep house, digital arrangements versus dub-style tape delays, American soul versus British tech - that have made Spooky a marathon act for the ages.
"We've been there all along," says Forbes. "Then and now are the two most-interesting times in electronic music since Kraftwerk. I don't know if it's because of what's going on in the world, but people are digging deeper and feeling more. People are coming out with more honest music, and I think that's the best music."
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