Producing music together since the late 1990s as Infected Mushroom, Amit Duvdevani and Erez Aizen have gained much recognition and fame for the style and prowess of their music making abilities, especially in the area of blending electronic and organic sounds together. But in the last five or so years of IM’s existence, controversy over style has made many devoted fans bitter over the artists’ attempts to expand their sound. Type “Infected Mushroom” into Google, and you
will easily find dozens of forums of people complaining about IM's new direction. For future reference, IM’s "old"
stuff is music produced mainly from their albums Classical Mushroom, BP Empire, The Gathering, and Converting Vegetarians, CD 1. IM's "new"
stuff is everything from Converting Vegetarians CD2 and later. This classification is not exact, just a vague categorization of art.
Often, people’s complaints are that they hate the "lame" lyrics, the "simple" chords, the "poor" singing abilities of the artists, and especially the drift away from their original sound, GOA Psychedelic Trance. Conversely, many fans
love the new trend in IM’s sound. It might be possible to say that the negative reactions are caused by people who are closed-minded to
change. They liked the original sound, and want more of it; they
don’t want the artist to move on to new
stuff they
don’t like and aren’t used to. They hate the addition of significant lyrics, and other "new" sounds.
IM has already proved that they have complete mastery over the Goa Psy Trance Genre. Now they move on to conquer new territory, trying new things, bringing along the knowledge, skill, and unique blend of acoustic and electronic sounds from the past that made them popular in the first place. IM is morphing their sound and ignoring genre barriers. It’s out of the
box.
Weather or not its IM’s intent to produce revolutionary music, they are nevertheless slowly breaking ground in new genres. Like
the Beatles, IM is producing a respectable amount of music over
time, and with their growing popularity, are becoming increasingly influential. If IM continues to produce quantities of great music and continues to branch out, it should have a deep impact on the music of the future.
The Beatles broke ground in different genres, too, in blues and country. Most of their songs had simple chord progression and the subject matter was usually about
girls. But you can’t deny that
the Beatles have had a long lasting impact on the world’s music ever since.
Other notes:
The mechanics of the
US media now and how the media, the RIAA and Hollywood control what is mainstream based off of –
money- has unprecedented power over which artists get heard who which stay underground. This effects a band’s influence significantly. Bands usually become mainstream when they begin to make enough
money on their own for one of the larger record labels’ greed to overcome their caution, at which point they buy out the Artist’s
soul, and whore it on said media for the rest of the RL noobs to eat up.
Infected
Mushroom gets
better the more I listen to it. Unlike plenty of recycled mainstream crap.
Other example bands of recommendation: Fischerspooner, an electronic pop band, though with only two albums out
atm. Gorillaz, also another band that incorporates electronic sounds into their music, though to a lesser extent and in different ways. Gorillaz could possibly be considered mainstream.
