Infected Mushroom: Infected evolution

Anytime news from Israel reaches Australia, very rarely is the information positive or even barely reflective of Israeli culture and music. We are bombarded time and time again with images and reports of warring factions between gun toting soldiers and rock throwing activists, despondent mothers clutching desperately at children, or sheet enclosed bodies surrounded by keening pleading crowds. Australia is so saturated with this country’s religiously political situation that religious politics is all we generally associate with Israel. If one were to follow only the media’s perspective, Israel seems a place of despair and hopelessness, with seemingly no change ahead. Therefore, it is somewhat of a revelation that Israel, in fact, has a large centre of cultural activity sustained by a rather large and supportive community. Though Infected Mushroom members Erez Eizen and Amit ‘Duvdev’ Duvdevani have relocated from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles to avoid ‘distractions’, their ties with Israeli remain strong, while their music is an excellent indication that Israel is a relatively large community supporting the rather exclusive genre of psy-trance.

These days, whilst the word may still evoke imagery of a supposed long gone drug culture, the term ‘psychedelic’ is now used to describe any brightly patterned or coloured object – and to view the many ‘brightly patterned’ psy-trance album covers – this is certainly appropriate. “We just look for artists and works that we like and choose one,” Erez Eizen explains the process. “Hopefully if they are not too busy they will do our cover for us. For our upcoming album we are going with the same guy that did IM The Supervisor album. His name is David Ho. You can see his works at www.davidho.com. He actually won first place in the MacWorld competition with our cover!” The immense success of their album 2004 IM The Supervisor has granted Infected Mushroom a prominent place in music. “It’s our most successful album,” Erez states. “We invested so much time into small details that most of the people don’t notice, and we carefully chose each track after testing it worldwide on many dancefloors.” And for the record: The album’s name is IM as in I AM, which somehow refers to the creature on the cover. Erez outlines, “How you make that out is up to you.”

The core members of Infected Mushroom are avid electronic equipment enthusiasts and fans of PS2 with well established musical backgrounds. “My family act like they like [what we do], but of course they don’t,” Erez claims. This is understandable, considering the infamy attached to dance music and the word ‘psychedelic’. “We don’t use drugs first of all,” Erez firmly points out, “though stigmas tend to happen for a reason. There used to be a lot of drugs at old psy-trance/goa parties, so of course it’s connected. But today it’s more vodka Red Bull and beer parties, so soon it will change.” There is an irony that Infected Mushroom are advocators for drug free enjoyment for a subculture whose roots are firmly planted in drug use, but it is obvious that the siren call of the music that is psy-trance could not be ignored.

The genre psy-trance could be considered the bastard child of goa trance, appearing in the late 1990s and veering away from the eastern Indian melodies (achieved through the use of ragas; the equivilent of Indian scales) in goa trance, opting instead for more ‘western’ harmonies and melodies based upon minor 7 arpeggios, usage of transposition (moving the note/s of a melody up or down in pitch by a constant interval) thick overlaying textures and idiosyncratic basslines. However, psy-trance has retained the fast tempo with a slight update in technology while preserving the preference for the robust analogue sound with such inclusions of Nord, Access, Korg and Roland keyboards. It may seem strange to the average Australian that any connection exists between Israel and India. After a change to Israeli laws was effected in 1988, many Israelis were granted access to Indian travel visas, with the idyllic beaches of Goa becoming an accepted destination. The natural consequence would have resulted with young Israeli’s returning to their hometowns, armed with trinkets acquired whilst on holidays – including the music. The outcome was goa-trance exploding through Israel with the formation of Israeli labels, DJs and acts. With Infected Mushroom emerging as a psy-trance act, the culture of psy-trance hit Israel phenomenally. This duo stands out as pioneers, reputed to push the borders and overrun limits. And their latest tour to Australia promises to do just that. Their show will be one that fuses heavy metal with trance and incorporates live music performance and live musicians. Incidentally, this fusion between heavy metal and trance are the two most extreme (and primarily male dominated) forms of their selective genres of rock and dance.

Erez was playing organ at age 4, and then studying piano at The Samuel Rubin Israeli Academy of Music by the age of 8. By the time he had hit 18, he had already released 3 albums and a mass of tracks. Duvdev (a nickname acquired during his service in the army), is the elder of the duo, has played piano since a young age and has written the material for punk rock band Enzyme. Having a musical background “helps a lot,” Erez notes. “Any knowledge can’t be bad to have. For us its easier to write melodies that sometimes sound complex compared to other psy-trance acts that don’t have this knowledge or perhaps too lazy to use it. Besides, we listen to everything, from hip-hop to pop, classical and heavy metal. There is a lot of good music around, and when we like something I’m sure that we add something from it into our tracks without always noticing that it has affected us.” But it appears the acceptance of all musical genres is unfortunately not extended to country. “Hmmm…. I guess that we can get a good thing from almost any genre generally… hahaha. Heavy metal is a good mix with everything. We are even hearing the latest hip-hop stuff being  fused with heavy metal. I guess I think anything that goes with heavy metal music makes it better.”

With their upcoming Australian tour, Infected Mushroom fans will be guaranteed a quality show. “We have 2006 fully booked, and we love coming to Australia. The bad thing about it is the long flight – you should come closer to the rest of the world!” Erez laughs. “But you will get to hear all our upcoming new psy-trance stuff because our next album is almost ready! It will be called “Vicious Delicious” and it will be very different from the others. There will be some dancefloor psy-trance tracks but also some other songs – some heavy metal, some hip-hop and electronic breakbeat stuff.” Erez claims that the addition of live music and musicians for their upcoming tour, “makes the show much more live then a standard psy-trance live show. Duvdev sings, me on the synths and Erez Netz on guitars.” Erez Netz is considered one of the best guitarists in Israel, celebrated as “Israel’s number one guitar hero” where he is such a “guitar god in Israel” he even has his own TV show. In an interview with Andrew Drever from The Age, Erez Eizen explains that Erez Netz is, “teaching music; teaching guitar players, and he gets all the biggest Israeli musicians and rock stars to teach people tricks. He plays guitar, and teaches the audience secrets of how he does stuff. It’s really cool shit.” Erez Netz is certainly well noted for his blues guitar skills, and thus brings a new dimension of distorted guitars to Infected Mushroom. “Our show is also great because we improvise a lot, so each show is more fun to us and hopefully to the people as well. The show is much more live and more heavy metal because of the guitar distortion. We have been performing with Erez Netz for over a year and it works great. We are also planning to add a percussion player in the future, but we haven’t found the right one yet.”

There is always the pressure of keeping it fresh, of keeping it different in order to stay ahead of the pack, and Infected Mushroom appears to have found the secret in achieving this. Erez claims “The best solution that works for us is to work harder and not to give up so quickly. Giving up is the easiest solution. Access to new technologies definitely helps us too.” For example, we support the downloading of music. Music should be free, though buying CDs is kind of fun as well. I like opening a new CD that I just bought with the original cover and of course the sound quality of a CD is still much better then any MP3 format.” I was then curious as to who actually did what in the music – was Erez and Duvdev fulfilling specific roles when it came down to laying down tracks? “After so many years it has found a balance,” Erez notes. “Sometimes one of us does more melodies, while the other brings ideas to the table – or vice versa. When we are putting a track together, we both decide what is good and what is not. The technical stuff is easy, anyone can do it, but to bring ideas, melodies, thinking what’s best to put next in a track, the right build up, etc, [it] does becomes harder and harder.” It appears then that the both of them are able to effectively use each other as sound boards. “We care only about the quality [of our music]. A few years ago we tried to do different projects, some of them were supposed to be housey cheesy stuff and the money was good, so we said ‘why not?’, but in the end we didn’t release it because it was really bad and the guys that wanted to buy it from us said that it was not cheesy enough. We got the hint and we will never do a tune that we don’t like again.”

The world is indeed a fascinating place. Too much are our eyes and minds saturated with information that is generally prejudiced and over sensationalised, leaving us biased and/or ignorant of the greater aspects. Like the rest of the world, Israel simply wishes to follow their path to happiness. Music, after all, is the universal language and regardless of race, creed, religion and colour, music continues to surpass human imposed limits and boundaries. It is through music alone that our view of the world changes, that we embrace diversity and find tolerance toward the human race. Music can open the ears and the heart to the most incredible issues. Such an example as Infected Mushroom has opened my eyes to the world, simply through their music. Bypass what your eyes see and tune into your ears. Don’t just see. Listen.

Infected Mushroom tour Australia this month, don’t miss out!

Sat Mar 4 – The Arena, Brisbane
Sun Mar 5 – Metro City, Perth
Fri Mar 10 – Emerald Creek, Cairns
Sat Mar 11 – Home, Sydney
Mon Mar 13 – Earthcore in the Park, Melbourne

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