Pilgrims Of The Mind - What's Your Shrine?

  • A tripped-out classic from Vancouver's '90s dance scene gets a well-deserved reissue.
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  • Vancouver has a long and storied history with dance music, from its illegal raves in the '90s to the minimal explosion in the early '00s to its most recent incarnation via the Mood Hut and Pacific Rhythm cosmos. But what's often glossed over in this narrative is the city's vibrant ecosystem of electronic music experimentalists in the mid-90s. There were musicians like husband-and-wife pair Dan and Christina Handrabur, Steve Keddie and Phil Western, labels like Map Music and Outersanctum as well as clubs like Mars, the Chameleon, and World that allowed the dedicated raver to see everything from tripped out drum & bass to live techno PAs every night of the week. Many of the releases from this particularly fruitful period were, unfortunately, released only on CD and remain scattered in thrift stores up and down Highway 99. That is, until fairly recently. The essence of this scene was captured by two compilations both remastered and reissued in the past five years. Polish label Brutaż reissued the 1993 landmark LP Frequencies from the Edge Of The Tektonic Plate—which featured the techno side of this sound—while the legendary Welcome To Lotus Land, reissued by Map Music in 2018, is Vancouver at its lush and most pastoral. Check out the back catalog of any of the artists on these comps and you'll find a wealth of strange electronica that could have come out on Rephlex or Warp in that '90s golden period of IDM. Now, thanks to London label Heels & Souls, we're seeing the reissue of something like the holy grail from this scene, What's Your Shrine?, by Stephane Novak under his Pilgrims Of The Mind alias. Originally released in 1997—and highlighted in parts by Greek label Echovolt in 2019—it's an album that blends together progressive house, dub, breaks, downtempo, jazz and electronica into cosmic groovers as unexpected and dramatic as the Northwestern coastline. Novak grew up in Montreal, where he trained as a jazz musician before moving West in the early 90s. He quickly fell in love with the Vancouver's natural beauty (and penchant for hallucinogens) and, as Ciel documents in her liner notes to the reissue, spent his "spare time [looking] for spoken word samples on yoga albums, drum and instrument breaks from crackly mondo records." You can hear a sense of whimsy and wonder on the chillout centerpiece, the ten-minute, "Sandcastle." Over a meandering breakbeat, the track unwinds like a drive along the coast as constellations of melody—a sax here, guitar there—come into focus briefly, before being swallowed up again into a haze of dub effects. While it's made from shades of green—both of the pine and cannabinoid varieties—What's Your Shrine? is no mere chill-out album. Take "Nothing Can Pull Us Apart." The track was previously licensed for a Ministry Of Sound The Chillout Session compilation in 2001. But the track stands apart from the sort of generic sunset, sunscreen and spritz fare that CD was aiming for. Yes, the breakbeat is chunky and the chords are Balearic enough, but the synths are occasionally chilling, almost creepy. It's Novak's appetite for that kind of zany stylistic risks that elevates What's Your Shrine to a more rarefied air. completely willing to take those sorts of risks. As he described the album in a recent interview, "I took getting lost in music seriously, but never took myself too seriously. I always wanted to have fun and explore. I think that comes across and is appealing." You get this from the jump with opener "Smell Zee Flowers." It starts with a windstruck piano loop and squiggly acid pads, but then the drums lock in and it builds into a proper peak-time house bomb, complete with jazz guitar licks launching off the top. He gets even bigger on tracks like "My Baby Like Rum" and the Goa-baiting "L'Amour? Encore?!" There are also times where Novak hints at what would become the more heady sound of Vancouver in the following decade. While not microhouse by a longshot, both "La Belle Du Jardin" and "Loosejaw" shimmer with the type of groovy '90s psychedelia favored by the latest generation of new minimal DJs. You could just as easily imagine either being rinsed by Vera deep into an afternoon sesh at CdV or Francesco Del Garda unleashing at peak time at Houghton. It feels like a lost cause to try and describe this album in parts. At the risk of cliché, What's My Shrine? is really about the vibes from start to finish. It's the type of record you want to send to everyone and ask, incredulously, "Can you believe this is from 1997?" (Many of the Discogs commenters can attest to this.) It's criminal that it has taken this long to get the attention it deserves, but hopefully this is just the tip of the iceberg.
  • Tracklist
      01. Smell Zee Flower 02. Nothing Can Pull Us Apart 03. My Baby Likes Rum 04. L'Amour? Encore?! 05. Le Belle Du Jardin 06. Loosejaw (co-produced by Andrew Ross-Collins) 07. Following The Sofuto Kuriimo 08. Sandcastle 09. Something's Pulling Me Under
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