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"There he goes. One of God's own protoypes. Some kind of high-powered mutant never considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."
Hunter S. Thompson wasn't talking about Raja Ram, but the words are an apt description nonetheless. At 74 years, Raja is still touring the world with his own singular brand of madness. Like some Pied Piper from beyond the doppelbereich, he dances about the stage playing the flute, "throwing hats to the people" and leading dusty dance floors into phantasmagorical states of rapture and delight. He's a quarter of the legendary psytrance act 1200 Mics and half of the strange, divine and utterly unclassifiable beast that is Shpongle with Simon Posford.
Raja briefly put down his flute and descended from his magic carpet to have a chat with Pulse Radio's Morgan Richards before Shpongle's appearance at Earthcore later this year.
Pulse: Hello Raja. Where are you right now and what have you been up to? Raja Ram: Well, I’m out in Simon Posford's place which is a giant enormous house in a forest, with no neighbours within five miles. It's in a very beautiful part of the west country of England. Last night we were up really late starting the new Shpongle #6 and it was a very exciting night because it was a full moon. It's just one giant panorama of groovology at the moment. It's a tapestry. It's really a magic carpet ride we're on.
We've got this new album concept that we're working on and it just went amazingly well for a first day and we're well into it. That was a giant breakthrough because what we're doing is something we've never done before. And so that's pretty exciting to be down here doing that. And as soon as Simon gets out of bed we'll go down and do another fifteen hours in the room. I always get up early, being Australian, so as soon as the light comes in, I’m up and out. But Simon likes to sleep. So I'll have to wait until he wakes up.
Tell us about what you and Simon will be doing at Earthcore this year. We'll be doing a Shpongle set together, and I’m doing a 1200 Mics with ric tum* and chicago live. And I'll be doing a DJ set and I’m hoping Spiro [Earthcore organiser] is gonna join me on the stage - I’ve invited him up for the two of us to do a DJ set together. It will be a fantastic festival I’m sure. I'll have a chance to see all my relatives and a lot of them will come to Earthcore. So, pretty exciting days.
You guys have been making music together for almost twenty years. How have things changed and evolved in that time? It's like being married without the sex! It's a fantastic relationship. He's half my age but musically we just seem to be always parallel and trying to do the best we possibly can. When we work on this music it's so exciting to see it unfold and develop, because we don't really know what we're doing, we sort of just let it happen. A lot of it's about getting yourself in the right frame of mind. Last night we celebrated by cracking open a fresh lobster, had some magnificent Italian wine and sat here licking our lips and laughing well into the night.
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It's a lot of fun and a lot of hard work. Each album takes three or four years. It's not a fast sort of business. To make a trance track with 1200 Mics, we try to do a track in one day. We go in and work for 15 hours and come out with a finished track. With Shpongle it just doesn't work that way because it's so complex. It's up to 300-400 parts overlapping each other on each track. It might take a week just to get the right sound on the drums. It's a slow process but in the end if we come out with something good it's worth it.
Do you think that says something about the current state of psytrance that you can bang out a track in a day? For me, it's not how long it takes to do the track. It's where you're coming from and what sort of track you want to make. It's like a painting. Sometimes you can paint a watercolour in a day and it's complete. You can't add another brushstroke to that painting. We don't do those tracks in a day because we just want to get them out or we can't be bothered to spend a week on them, it's just the initial rush of energy and what you're doing can be put down quickly.
But it's been pretty straightforward over the last twenty years. You have your kick, you have your bass, you have your theme, you have your sample. Three minutes before the end you have a breakdown. You have a climax and boom that's the track. And that's why so many tracks sound the same in trance.
If you consider how many acts there are in trance and how many thousands of thousands of producers and groups there are...fifteen years ago it wasn't like that. But now everybody's doing it, because everybody's got a computer and consequently, because everyone's using the same programs, the same drugs, going to the same parties, you're basically going to get a lot of similarities and it's going to be very hard to rise above the dross and come up with some masterpieces that are going be played in ten years time. Usually trance has a very short shelf life.
Do you think there's room for psytrance to evolve? If you're looking at something like jazz or classical or opera or anything like that, it took them dozens of years to evolve. If we go back to the start of trance in 1990, it's not long in the structure of the world. A lot of people have given up on trance and they've gone to progressive, but I’m certainly not giving up on the idea that we can break barriers and push boundaries and it can evolve. The genre can evolve because people have got to learn how to push it further like any other art. And that art will develop into something else. After just 24 years I don't think we can really abandon it. I’m certainly not going to.
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There are a lot of young artists coming up. A lot of them we've got on TIP Records now, like The Outsiders and Martian Arts and Black Noise. It's going into different places round the world, rather than just Israel and the UK and Germany. We probably get twenty tracks from around the world every day. For the most part, it's pretty boring and nothing much is happening. But there are some pearlers out there, and there are people working hard and blowing minds. I’m very positive about the future.
You've been part of trance music and culture for a long time. What effect do you think it's had on the rest of the world over the past twenty years? Socially, politically, in terms of changing consciousness? It has completely changed the world. When it started in Goa, there were about a thousand people on the dancefloor. And from these early roots it's developed into millions of people around the globe involved in this scene. It's not just the music. It's more than having a party and having a good time and getting stoned. What we're talking about here is really a revolution of one’s heart, one’s consciousness, a revolution socially, politically, how one reacts with everyone else on the planet, your brothers and sisters. I believe really heavily in this scene and what we've all accomplished.
We're responsible and intelligent. We're really against fracking and we're really against the bankers but we're not political beings. I never make comments on Facebook or anything else regarding politics. It's just something I wanna stay out of. I’m an ambassador of music and my job is to go around the world playing to people and making people happy. And they've got to go home and make their own judgements and come to their own conclusions. But we have changed the world politically and we are outlaws. No question about it. We are the underdogs. We are those dirty hippies and people generally are scared of us and don't like it.
"It's the governments who don't know how to behave themselves. They should realise that what we are is really a positive force."
That's why we have trouble with the authorities. I just played at Azora in Hungary, and to go into the festival took an hour for the artists because every time we went in they took us apart. Every suitcase, every piece of clothing, strip searches, and when you left to go back to the hotel you repeated the process again. So we spent about eight hours with the police over the whole week. It's really boring. But the police know what we're up to, and we know what the police are up to, and it's all a game.
They just try to spoil our fun. We have our own security. We have ambulances, fire engines, medical facilities. Everyone looks after each other. I used to bring my daughter to the parties when she was nine years old. Now I bring my granddaughter, who's eight, and she comes to all the Shpongle concerts when we play in London. This music's for everybody and we know how to behave ourselves. It's the governments who don't know how to behave themselves. They should realise that what we are is really a positive force.
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What are you up to the rest of the year? Next week I get to Brazil and do a couple of parties there. There's a big one called Playground. They'll get about 35 000 people and they have an amusement park at the festival, it's like Luna Park or something. You have bungie jumping and helicopter rides and the big dipper and all of that fairground stuff. After Brazil I go to Portual and do an outdoor party over there, and then after that I go to Japan and do a 1200 Mics TIP party with all TIP artists and then I think I have Russia. Then I go to Australia and that will take me up to the New Year. Then I leave for India to go to my house on the beach in Anjun and I'll probably spend two months in my hammock overlooking the Arabian sea. Thinking about new projects and where to go. Already next year's pretty booked out. We're going back to Red Rocks in Colorado...
I actually wanted to ask you about that concert. How was it? God, maybe the greatest night of my life. Ever. It's carved out of the Rocky Mountains, it's a mile high, you've got very thin air. You've got ten thousand people in an amphitheatre overlooking the Rockies and the whole of Colorado. It's the best venue we've ever played at. And we're going to do it again next June and hopefully sell it out again. And maybe tour America. But we're not going to do any of these really big tours. I’m not into that at all. I like to do 3-5 Shpongle live gigs in a year and that's enough, because it's 19 people and it's a really complex to bring that many people and arrange everything.
What's it like touring at age 74? Surely that takes more of a toll on you now. Well, yeah. I guess I’m always tired. [Laughs.] I just keep going, it's what I do. Sometimes you've got physical ailments, you lose a tooth or your knee hurts but nobody wants to hear about that shit. They want you to go out onto the stage and transcend into another level of enjoyment. And the only way you can do that is by mustering up a lot of internal and spiritual energy.
It sort of happens automatically. I don't even know what I’m doing half the time. I’m not one of those guys who stands over the decks and mixes everything and makes it all very smooth. Most of the time I'll run out in front on the stage and throw hats out to the people and act and dance and bring chicks onto the stage and just have a mad time. Because the music is all done in the studio and it speaks for itself — either it's going to make you dance or it's not. I’ve got a slightly different approach when I play. I’m not that serious about it. I want people to have a really good time and get high on the music. That's my motive.
But I think [performing] is just something that my body wants to do. I'll be 75 next year and I hope I'll be touring. Well, I will be — I’m already booked, contracted. I'll keep going until I die on stage. Basically that's my wish: that I'll just die on stage and move onto the next level.
[Shpongle play Earthcore this comng November. Check the full lineup here]
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