LIKE Wall Street stock, Booka Shade are slowing down. While still trading at the height of the electro house index, the boys from Berlin have hit the fader on their rep as doyens of the drop and taken on a more sensitive, alienated incarnation. Booka’s new album The Sun And The Neon Light charts life in the group, lived at a pace that would trigger tachycardia in the Dalai Lama.
“The album is about the difference between the day and the night. During the day, we run our label – Get Physical – and, during the night, we play,” says Arno Kammermeier, who composes Booka’s dancefloor duets alongside Walter Merziger.
Arno is a charming clash of teutonic precision (he reveals that he and Walter “freaked out” when their car broke down in NewYork), musical passion and party-hard excess (he recommends Panorama club in Berlin, “a place where you can go and get lost for three days”).
While Booka Shade’s 2006 album Movements garnered them queue-round-the-block kudos for dance floor slammers like Mandarine Girl and Body Language, their approach with their new album includes more vocal tracks that deal with the dissatisfaction of touring.
“Comacabana is about when we were staying in the Copacabana Palace Hotel in Rio, looking onto Copacabana – a wonderful sunny place – but we weren’t in the best mood. You get down sometimes on tour.” Booka have unplugged their Abletons for The Sun And The Neon Light, preferring a live approach. “This time, we used external elements like an entire orchestra. Some of the vocal numbers did well in Australia and in the USA. So we thought, ‘Let’s try some more of these vocals.’
“We’ve played in a lot of really strange venues. In Brazil, we flew to Florianopolis and then drove for three hours into the jungle. The venue was crazy – all these tents in the jungle. There were lots of jungle noises – then that night thousands of people turned up.”
Speaking of another tune on the album, he added: “Karma Car was inspired by driving back from New York airport in a taxi during a raging blizzard. In the middle of the blizzard, the car broke down. We were both freaking out. But our Indian taxi driver was very calm and waited a minute, then turned the key. He just let it flow. That inspired us.”
Haunting, numbed electronica twinned with disjointed vocals –the perfect foil to a gritty winter. Just keep some Toots in the bag if it cuts too deep.
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