Classic Album: Booka Shade, Movements

Get Physical Music, 2006

There’s something to be said for making music in a bubble – just you and your friends, writing the kind of stuff you want to hear. Forget what’s going on outside – it’s boring. Everybody always copies each other anyways, right? Where’s the fun in that? That’s pretty much the lightbulb-lit convo the Booka Shade boys had with each other before they set to work on their second album.

Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier were completely uninspired by the club music of the time. ‘Schranz’ – a standardised form of monotonous techno – ruled the dancefloors. It was time for a change. It was time for a new movement. “We got together to do something new,” says Arno. “The predominant music had no melodies, or basslines. We tried something more uplifting and positive. It didn’t really exist back then.”

Flushed with good vibes they set to work on their new album, with the aim of bypassing the ‘go-to’ styles that dominated the era.

“We were working in a different way,” says Arno. “Back then everything was either schranz and hard techno, or very trancey, with a lot of delays, and deep bass drums with reverb, and all these clichéd FX. We wanted to get rid of all of that and get back to the vibe or texture that the groovy tracks of the past had.”

Movements showcased this glowing new approach – from the glorious disco ball illuminations of Night Falls, to the golden era trance shimmer of In White Rooms. Booka Shade had now stepped into the light.

“It was like we were all building a tree house in the sunshine,” says Arno. “It was really childlike. We didn’t care what happened outside.

“We were tired of what came before. Techno was boring. We decided to do things in a different way – no delays. No reverbs. The big chords and the big riffs – do them small.

“The belief in what we were doing was so strong that we could move mountains. We were in this wonderful bubble, and that’s what you can hear in the record.”