Shpongle ‎– Museum Of Consciousness

English / Polish version

Shpongle ‎– Museum Of Consciousness
    TWISTED RECORDS
    Shpongle
    Museum Of Consciousness
    2013

      1. Brain In A Fish Tank
      2. How The Jellyfish Jumped Up The Mountain
      3. The Aquatic Garden Of Extra-Celestial Delights
      4. Juggling Molecules
      5. Further Adventures In Shpongleland
      6. The Epiphany Of Mrs Kugla
      7. Tickling The Amygdala

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Shpongle is always great… but will it even surprise me with something new, and will it always taste just as good as during the times of ARE YOU SHPONGLED?

This time, the most recent album, MUSEUM OF CONSCIOUSNESS of the project Shpongle, whose psybient tracks so strongly etched in our minds that they do not need to be adjusted at the outset, I have 'swallowed’ in several stages. First, my appetite was fueled by the hunger for Shpongle, I felt incredibly excited about the fact that in a moment in my hands there will fall the fresh and fragrant album. What was my surprise when I looked at the cover – cheesy, exaggerated, with terrible colours. The first sounds – of course they were Shpongle related but I have already heard them earlier… After listening to the whole album, my reaction was immediate and acute – where is that Shpongle, on which I was waiting for so long and was expecting after it really a lot? As we say in Poland, reheated pork chops, most of which have been similar to previous ones. I thought it was not a very fresh album, rather the predictable one, full of old themes and I felt a great disappointment, even a thought went through my head that the project along with the geographical expansion (tours on different continents) becomes more and more popular, and thus, it lacks little to commercialization. Again, the same, or similar, distinctive sounds, instruments, which are usually heard in the works of Shpongle, vocals, loved by me Michele Adamson (as for me, I can only add that her interesting voice is even better than the one from Irina Mikhailova herself, who’s charisma can not be denied). My first impressions, mixed feelings remained in my head for some time, until one day when there came the big boom, the third stage of my familiarity with the new work of Mr S. and Mr R. – the volte-face, after several times confrontation face to face or rather ear to ear…

That day, when once again I have pressed the 'play’ button and heard:

’This is a story about
a museum of consciousness
Release to you
The sins I’ve made
The danse macabre can now begin
Stone wall floating through the sand
Protective circles all around
Break apart to build anew
Golden prisms rage on through
Holographic pyramids
Were seen behind closed eyelids
It feels like my brain
Was floating in a fishtank
I’ve never felt like that ever before’,

I knew right away that something has broken in my and I have started my own story with this album again, a new deal in the game has started. I admit, I made probably the biggest musical mistake in my life. I have focused so much on my big or even huge expectations for the new album, that from the start I was hoping for SOMETHING. The worst thing is that so far I do not know what IT really was, and my mind was just set to the point that rather than to experience the pleasure served to us by a crazy duo in MUSEUM OF CONSCIOUSNESS and fly to Shpongleland, I preferred to sit on the Earth and look for holes throughout. The feeling that accompamnied this breakthrough in receiving the album, can be compared to the moment when we put into the mouth a pleasantly sweet candy, after having a bitter taste of the previous dish in our mouth for a long time.

Simon Posford and Raja Ram could not probably give a more accurate title to their youngest, Shpongle child, as the album from the year 2013 is a real MUSEUM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. The museum, where we can find a seemingly familiar sounds, old themes, where we will be back for a moment to the past, but also we will look from a different perspective on the crazy Shpongle exhibits. In the museums we can admire the most precious, the most important monuments, specific objects, symbols, and similarly, the exposures made ​​by Shpongle in MUSEUM OF CONSCIOUSNESS are the most brilliant ideas in the achievements of the project. Starting with the bizarre, but how great matching titles of the Shpongle tracks, the specific, colourful cover with the Shpongle mask and closer unspecified objects, familiar voices, the flute of Raja Ram. It seems to me that this album can be closed by a buckle together with ARE YOU SHPONGLED, because it contains in itself all that over the years, Simon and Raja have managed to create and I do not mean just the music, but the whole Shpongle sheath, the artistic side – the graphics, amazing , colourful performances, costumes, gadgets, Shpongle vocabulary, inspirations. For me, it is the essence of Shpongle, being conscious and making clear what exactly is this project or to answer the question from when Shpongle is not only the project, but also a state of mind. By the way, I have to admit that it is brilliant for me to smuggle the theme from the TV series Twin Peaks, more precisely from a track of Laura Palmer’s Theme around the 35th minute of the album (mastery in creating a climate!).

At the end, I want to give you a special invitation, which can be also found at Twisted Records website:

’Would you like to have your Amygdala tickled?
Or watch a Jellyfish jump up a mountain? Perhaps you would rather feel like a brain floating in a fish tank, or watch molecules being juggled..A room with an Epiphany…or maybe an Extra-Celestial Aquatic Garden?..these and other Adventures in Shpongleland, can be found in……….

MUSEUM of CONSCIOUSNESS
A Gigantic sound complex, with each room a different and unique experience into higher multi dimensional realms. There are many corridors and mazes, but you have access to 7 of these rooms…..come and enjoy….’ RR
My dear Shpongle, I am really sorry that I have doubted in you and answering your old question: 'Are you Shpongled?’, again I say: 'Sure am I, like the good old days.’
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8 / 10
Kasia