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Two years ago Berlin-based Get Physical was belatedly recognised as the label for voluptuous, hook-heavy electro-house, but by this point it was already moving on. Booka Shade's "Mandarine Girl", issued last May, announced a paradigm shift, its sheets of noise and spiralling synth riffs reaching out to both the most stentorian minimal and the most epic trance. Other artists have followed in the duo's wake, crafting records that perversely treat "minimal" as a license to create grooves of impossible largesse. In the process, Get Physical has become a byword for arty-but-populist records with crossover potential-- from one genre enclave to another and from cult status to mass consumption. Booka Shade are perfectly placed to capitalize on this unexpected ubiquity, and while their 2004 debut Memento surprised many with its noirish, claustrophobic vibe, Movements is the gregarious corrective: not only the better record, but friendlier, larger, and more epochal in its survey of the varied delights of German house and techno. And at times it does feel like a survey, moving from rumbling Metro Area disco ("Night Falls") to fluttering Isol?e falter-funk ("The Birds and the Beats") to beautiful Kompakt techno-pop ("Wasting Time") with an unselfconscious grace the belies the album's range. If Get Physical increasingly resembles early Warp in its elevation of club dynamics to a steely artform, Movements might be its equivalent of LFO's Frequencies-- a record whose state of the art grooves were equally suited to sweaty dancefloors and the close intimacy of headphones. Indeed, while some grooves are more physical than others, everything about Movements seems deliberately designed to subvert the usual inverse relationship between a dance record's club-readiness and home-friendliness: "Darko" might boast heart-tugging synth melodies worthy of Boards of Canada, but its cavernous, bass-heavy production begs to be showcased over huge speakers in a rammed warehouse. Likewise, the duo's "interpretation" of "Body Language", their 2005 hit with M.A.N.D.Y., begins with a meandering guitar and reggae lilt intro perversely playing cat and mouse with a mnemonic bassline hook, but it soon builds into a sultry house groove whose brazen physicality leaves the original resembling a wallflower. But Booka Shade's dab hand with a groove should hardly surprise-- after all, as backroom producers for DJ T and M.A.N.D.Y., they've been partly responsible for most of the music on the most reliable dance music label of the past four years. Rather, it's the unexpected emotive quality to the music on Movements that entrances. "In White Rooms", the album's simplest moment, is also its best: A succession of ascending trance-like riffs over a straightforward house groove, with no other purpose than to lay claim to your heart and your tear-ducts. It feels intensely nostalgic, even if, like me, you're too young and/or too far from Germany to actually appreciate its evocation of early 90s trance parties. The nostalgia is not merely for a particular sound or moment, but for the youthful conviction that music can change the world, can change us, merely by its astonishing power and newness. But I swear there is a moment only 30 seconds before the end of this (rather cruelly foreshortened) track where it feels like the duo are actually inventing new emotions?so maybe their nostalgia is premature. Booka Shade will never achieve the auteur status of figures like Ricardo Villalobos, and I suspect they prefer it that way-- after all, these are the guys who ghost-produce records for their labelmates, and make their money from writing nifty tunes for commercials. Rather than seduce with ostentatious artistry, what they offer is a superlative functionalism: Dance music so perfect it can't help but move you. Tim Finney, www.pitchforkmedia.com

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Bio

German Producers and live act Booka Shade have launched themselves into the upper echelons of live dance acts with their stimulating live sets, timeless albums and proven singles. With a grueling tour schedule that reaches as far as Asia, Australia and South America, numerous European appearances and steadily putting the finishing touches on their third studio album; 2007 is set to be their most successful year to date.

In 2006 The UK’s leading electronic music website: Resident Advisor, crowned them Best Live Act as well as awarding them with the Best Album for their second long player, ‘Movements’. Proving that this was no fluke, it also appeared in many a “Top Ten of the Year” in numerous electronic music publications.

Pitchfork, the US music website, listed ‘In White Rooms’ as among the best songs of last year. Closer to home, Germany’s ME Sounds ranked ‘Vertigo’ amongst the ‘most important songs of all time’. Simultaneously Booka Shade won kudos in Groove Magazine’s end of year poll as they were selected as the second best producers of the year and the album was featured in the top 10. Germany’s top DJs voted the band as the country’s best live act; adding to overall acclaim for the album which helped to earn ‘Movements’ a nomination for the Plug Award in the US.

Booka Shade are no newcomers They’ve been a touring live band since the early 90s, when they were a synth pop act. Later, they were seduced by the trance, house and techno they heard in Frankfurt club The Omen and started releasing records on R&S, Music Man, Tommy Boy and Sven Vath’s Harthouse imprint. They scored a big success with the 1993 trance classic ‘Una musica senza ritmo’ as Degeneration, and during the mid-90s on Dutch label Touché with the progressive ´Kind of Good´ and ´Silk´.

By the end of the 90s, they needed a new direction and founded the Get Physical label with DJ T. and their old friends Patrick Bodmer and Philipp Jung, aka M.A.N.D.Y. Booka Shade are responsible for all productions and remixes by M.A.N.D.Y., DJ T., Sunsetpeople and most of the releases of Chelonis R. Jones. Since starting Get Physical, it has become one of the most respected and popular underground dance music labels.

2004 saw the release of their acclaimed debut album, ‘Memento’, on Get Physical. Huge hits in 2005 came in the form of ‘Mandarine Girl’ and ‘Body Language’. Subsequent live performances at the 2005 Sónar festival in Barcelona, and Mylo in London were followed by an invitation to tour with Royksopp. They also provided the warm up for Depeche Mode on their Berlin date of their world tour; cementing Booka Shade’s reputation as one of the world’s most exciting live electronic music acts.

As a natural progression from their celebrated live sets and superior original work, Booka Shade are in-demand remixers and have been requested to remix works from artist such as Moby, The Juan McLean, Yello, Hot Chip, Depeche Mode, Roxy Music, Tiga, Dave Gahan, Azzido Da Bass and The Knife.

Booka Shade’s second album, ‘Movements’ was released in May 2006, featuring the massive club hits ‘Mandarine Girl’ and ‘Body Language’, as well as three other club anthems, ‘Night Falls’, ‘In White Rooms’ and ‘Darko’. These tracks were among last year’s biggest dance tunes, and ‘In White Rooms’ and ‘Night Falls’ were the two top selling EPs for vinyl distributor Intergroove in 2006.

While the album maintained Arno and Walter’s love of soaring bass lines and epic melodies, they also flirted with slow motion hip-hop, electro and chilled-out Balearic house music. Through showcasing their musical depth and versatility, ‘Movements’ was once again highly praised by US mag XLR8R as they championed it as one of the top 100 albums of all time.

Their ‘Movements’ tour has seen Walter and Arno perform and win over crowd after crowd at clubs and festivals around Europe, Australia, North and South America. They have captivated and conquered diverse audiences at The Montreux Jazz Festival, Virgin Rock Festival and Detroit Electronic Music Festival, of which their performance was one of the festivals main highlights.

In between wowing audiences all over the world, Booka Shade are working on their third studio album, which will be released in spring 2008.

www.bookashade.com
www.myspace.com/getbookashade

Label: !K7