[Doc] ARAMBOL EXPÉRIENCE

Subject: [Doc] ARAMBOL EXPÉRIENCE Fri Feb 08, 2008 3:11 pm

ARAMBOL EXPÉRIENCE

I haven't seen it yet, but it looks really nice Smile

[Doc] ARAMBOL EXPÉRIENCE ARAMBOLCOVER_72dpi

Quote :: 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.

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.

Here is the trailer