Shpongle

Shpongle formed in London in 1996 when Simon Posford and Raja Ram started working together. Posford came from making psychedelic trance as Hallucinogen, while Ram brought experience with traditional instruments and world music from his time in The Infinity Project. They weren't trying to create a new genre so much as follow what interested them, which happened to involve blending electronic production with acoustic sounds from different cultures.

Their first album, 'Are You Shpongled?' from 1998, set the template with tracks like 'Behind Close Eyelids' and 'My Head Feels Like a Frisbee' that mixed ambient textures with percussive rhythms. The follow-up, 'Tales of the Inexpressible' in 2001, continued this approach, incorporating collaborations with musicians from Chile and Bali. The music often builds slowly, layering tablas, flutes, and synthesizers into dense, evolving pieces that can stretch past ten minutes.

Shpongle's recordings have occasionally drawn questions about cultural borrowing, given their use of samples from indigenous sources. They've generally addressed this by working directly with musicians from the traditions they reference, though the conversation around appropriation in electronic music has continued around their work and others like it. Their sound remains distinctive enough that when you hear something like 'Around The World in a Tea Daze,' you know it's them.