Spooky - 'Gargantuan'
No. 35 in our Top 100 Electronica Albums of the 1990s
“They don’t make them like they used to.” — Mixmag, 1996*
Celebrating Gargantuan‘s 1996 reissue, Mixmag magazine cheekily praised Spooky‘s ground-breaking album from 1993 while tweaking the “progressive house” genre as a whole. Poking some at the epic builds and moody crescendos of London’s clubland — see BT and Paul Van Dyk — the reviewer waxed nostalgic about the original milieu that spawned Charlie May and Duncan Forbes’ trippy and gorgeous aesthetic; asked years later for his favorite hangout, Orbital‘s Paul Hartnoll had a soft spot for the heady oceanic vibes of Spooky and William Orbit‘s Guerilla sound, which was a sonic mainstay at his favorite haunt, the Drum Club — seeking that “spooky” feeling.
In April 1993, Mixmag’s Nick Jones caught May and Forbes before their historic Megadog “Midi Circus” tour with the likes of Orbital and Underworld. But like their name indicated in a roundabout way, they weren’t that interested in the limelight or doing interviews off stage or spending time away from the studio. They were always after that feeling: the chills up the spine, the ghost in the machine and the mind. They were deep inside the night-scape of electronic music, when house and techno were still becoming the global force they are today. “Someone asked us if we had any hobbies yesterday and we just couldn’t think of anything,” Forbes noted; it was obvious the childhood friends were on a real mission. “It was pretty sad,” May observed. “It gets a bit obsessive at times.” Because, it takes perseverance.
For the pair had long pursued songs and records that would endure. With the progressive house scene in its infancy, they brought both a more atmospheric and heavier sound to the rave experience. They saw music itself as a metaphor for life, as the passage of spirits through time, of stories in the form of sounds. “With an album, it sounds obvious but the main difference is time,” May noted of their foray into their first long player. “You’ve got so much time to play with. So you can go off on a little journey or a little trip.” And so they busied about building their little world — a world that was bigger than them — Gargantuan — with little to no thought of real fame or attention.
“I always felt that music had more power than a personality,” May explained to Ross Palmer of Beat the Often Path in 2021, when he was asked why he had never sought the spotlight and had worked more as a ghost producer over the years, even picking a name like Spooky. “So why not just put all your effort into that? And also, the receiver of the music, or art, or whatever you want to call it, puts their own tint on it, and their own mark. It’s like when you hear a song and you don’t know what the lyrics are, you invent your own lyrics. You personalize it… I prefer to have something more abstract because I’m a bit of a space cadet and that’s how I think and operate… So I’m really content… I can also be more chameleon-like and I don’t get known for one thing.”
Never quite given the credit they deserved, Spooky were in fact favorites among countless DJs and producers — their records and remixes ended up in trance, house and techno sets — anything that purveyed a cool yet spiritual beauty. In fact, that was their charm. As Guerilla’s standard bearer, they helped coalesce an immersive sound that was neither Detroit, nor Chicago, nor Manchester. Some called it “trance” before that term was welded to 140-bpm metronomes and groove-light filigree. For Spooky deployed breakbeats and the UK’s dub bass, as intrinsic elements in a kinetic wave. Think Orbital, Leftfield, Underworld, Future Sound of London‘s ‘Papua New Guinea,’ and Sasha, yet consistently shot through with howling, soaring winds of wonder.
That wonder began with their friendship as kids. “I remember very clearly the first time I heard stereo, from a Sony Walkman,” May told Palmer. “It was Duncan… He put these headphones on me and he played Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’ — and I thought, ‘Wow!’ It blew me away. It was the first time I heard stereo, and the intimacy of it, like they were there in front of me…” They were like ghosts. “It was just unbelievable,” he said. “I was a headphone junkie from then on. Growing up I had to keep quiet. There was no place for loud music… It became a very personal thing… It was almost like sneaking out at night, but I would sneak into music.” And so Spooky sneaks us back into the future.
Gargantuan kicks off with the pure house joy of ‘Don’t Panic,’ which at seven minutes, takes a ride though the genre’s most exciting trademarks: bursting and resonant keys, chugging piano, bumping fat bass and ricochet drums. Mashing sped-up samples of Francis Black on The Pixies‘ ‘Broken Face’ with Mike D‘s “Suckers may be saying they can take out Adam Horovitz!” from the Beastie Boys‘ ‘Shake Your Rump,’ it’s a gutsy intro that tests the listener for a playful sense of humor and good taste. Those who miss the first test, may miss the second: rolling on into ‘Schmoo,’ Spooky keep the party rocking with xylophonic whirls and chopped up coos, shuffling into shape-shifting bass riffs — possessing bodies like a cloud-flickering full moon calling to everyone’s inner werewolf, the smooth alternation of the beauty and the beast.
In this opening one-two punch, Gargantuan documents the early 1990s house magic of the rave experience, pulling in elements of airy Italian disco music, the bouncing bass lines of Chicago’s Adonis, and the dub-sonics of the West Indies by way of London, Manchester, and Birmingham; growing up in the West Country, Spooky betrays a bucolic inner sanctum, the freedom of open fields and the superlative majesty of stone churches. They take that haunting beauty and coax the ghost, echoing the breathy trance of Jam & Spoon’s ‘Stella,’ the hypnotizing groove of Double F.M.’s ‘Sound of Amnesia,’ or the tribal bang of Jaydee’s ‘Plastic Dream.’
If that’s too straight up for you, ‘Aqualung’ wipes the mind clean of any self-conscious dismissals. It’s a seething deep dive into a night ocean of electronic wonders. Its little shimmers and ripples rejoice in polyrhythm while its groove pushes forward on an underwater rail, flashes of light playing on the sea floor like messages in a dream. ‘Aqualung’ remains one of Spooky’s greatest triumphs, at once understated and stunning in its twists of drama, inventiveness, and timeless jukes. If anyone is wondering why progressive house deserves the highest respect, this is it.
Yet May and Forbes turned the underground upside down with ‘Little Bullet,’ their most well-known track and a mainstay of Sasha’s DJ sets, one of its versions delivering the lofty climb to his seminal Northern Exposure : East Coast mix album. It gently calls to mind 101-era Depeche Mode, but is wholly original, a bona fide classic that can push any DJ set into the spiritual stratosphere. (The ‘Live Version’ included on the single release is another must.) With a touch of the synth swells reminiscent of Depeche Mode’s ‘Stripped,’ that moody edge is played in an ecstatic direction, evoking the vaulted heavens and highs of blacklight dance floors, its melodies spiraling and running up and down the spine, a little bullet that exits and heals all wounds.
Native to all of Spooky’s compositions is that tingling feeling of being truly alive: Gargantuan’s songs cascade and whirl — the miracle of many hearts that beat as one. “I was always taking music that I heard apart in my head and wondering how certain sounds were made,” May told Bean Cuenca for the Global Dance Music Collective. “I remember watching Elvis on the television and being mesmerized with the slap back echo on his voice. Going to choir practice at school in churches I would listen to the reverb in the building more than the source sound. I always think I make inside-out records where the effects are louder than the sounds. A kind of musical autopsy.”
Like pathologists carefully deconstructing the human body, Spooky’s music always retains that exquisite technical precision, every beat and note placed with the utmost sensitivity. Combined with the bold chthonic bass of house, it’s a kind of X-ray music. It’s that pursuit of perfection that pushes right on through to resurrection. So Spooky keep pushing the limits in the album’s second half: ‘Something’s Got To Give’ slings through slamming breakbeats and metallic vamps in a call and response of sensual moans and scats, while ‘Orange Coloured Liquid’ relishes in ambient embodiment, dropping the listener into Balearic tranquility. It’s quintessential ‘90s chill-wavery.
Like a flame burning in the palm of a magician’s hand, Spooky’s music rises and mesmerizes, ghosts swirling around skeletal spirit-scapes, cathedrals in the soul and out into the air, progressing from the inside to a haunting gospel of human movement. Like that slap back echo of Elvis, it rocks in a kind of dance from the dead, off into the impossible. Fittingly so, Gargantuan gently concludes with ‘Let Go,’ an unassuming healer of slow-building atmospherics. With a mid-tempo groove that samples the “Oooh-ooooh!” of The Pixies‘ classic ‘Where Is My Mind?’ — sprinkling it over an irresistible tug into a cyber calmness — its punchy rhythm accelerates with a missionary zeal for tomorrow and techno’s dream of the spiritually liberated.
“It’s bittersweet,” is how May described a lot of his music to Beat the Often Path. “The music I like has to have a bit of an ache to it. Because music is a metaphor for life and life is not a bowl of cherries. We all know that. It has ups and downs. I’ve always had this sort of existential ache. I like to call it an ‘un-scratch-able existential itch.’ I just can’t settle. I can but there’s something about it that’s familiar but strange... It is a dichotomy... there’s lots of paradoxes in life… And good music for me, it embodies those life facets… I’m a very ‘stand on the edge’… music that’s got an edge to it.”
“If you put on a great jazz record, you get it from a John Coltrane record or a Miles Davis record,” he continued. “You get it from any of the Eno stuff, or just a beautifully played piece of music like Neil Young. It’s got that intrinsic detail in the expression, it’s so well performed, and all the mistakes work as well. And we’ve always sought to kind of replicate that in electronic music — to have all of these details so you don’t hear it, you don’t get it all on the first listen. I want to be able to make a record that you want to hear 20 years later and still hear something new in it. Or that still has some sort of nourishing effect. Because good music, it’s tangible — it has that sort of spiritual nourishment.” And the more immersive and the more emotional, the more alive.
It’s in this spirit that Spooky made some of their biggest marks for others. Their ‘Hydro-Electric Mix’ of Jo Bogaert‘s ‘Water’ is a progressive house landmark, a funky drift into neon didgeridoos and far-out submarine pings; an alternative ‘Heavy Water Mix’ is a reverse waterfall, stepping up its terraced pools into a heady jacking groove. Their ‘Remix 1’ of the Chameleon Project‘s ‘Feel’ is another genius rework, throbbing with ping pong bass and banging three tone drum hits. Its moody synths surge over the vocal refrain of “Feeeeeel!” in timeless dance floor reflection. While it clearly echoes LaTour’s infamous ‘Blue’ from the movie Basic Instinct, Spooky’s vision explores a deeper melancholy — that is yet infused with an ever higher calling.
And then there’s the beautiful ‘Xylem Flow Mix’ of William Orbit’s own ‘Water From A Vine Leaf.’ If there’s a pinnacle in the highs of the early ’90s “trance” sound, here it is: leaping through liquid lightning that ropes you in over a cosmic horizon — its rumbling bass line pounding the ground and its soaring winds of sonic light blazing from the center of the universe — it’s the most bittersweet and life-affirming composition British techno has ever wrought — immaculate, keen and sent to redeem.
May and Forbes would return in 1996 with the avant-garde, excellent Found Sound, accompanied by three brilliant E.P.’s: Clank, Shunt and Stereo. Tied up in major label hassles, their output would stall until 2002’s Belong single and the expert torch songs of 2007’s Open, featuring the amazing ‘No Return,’ ‘Strange Addiction’ and ‘The River.’ May would also co-pen many of Sasha’s best tracks — ‘Wavy Gravy,’ ‘Seal Clubbing,’ and ‘Xpander’ — remix Orbital’s ‘Illuminate’ to perfection and author the absolutely stunning ‘Behemoth’ in 2001; Forbes would himself release a slew of excellent solo releases, the two coming together every now and then to display their uncommon mind-meld in the deepest currents and the highest highs of sound.**
But like a giant planet, Spooky’s Gargantuan — along with their searing remix work — commands the stronger gravitational attraction. No other artist better represented the hope and euphoria of the time. Epic? Yes. Uncanny? Absolutely. Spooky? Positively out of body. Just turn it on. Enter the dawn. And let your spirit go.
Track Listing:
1. Don’t Panic
2. Schmoo
3. Aqualung
4. Little Bullet Part One
5. Little Bullet Part Two
6. Land of Oz
7. Something’s Got To Give
8. Orange Coloured Liquid
9. Schmoo Dub
10. Let Go
*The exact quote is lost from my archives of original copies and sources. But it is a distinct memory from a time when I had to buy Mixmag and Muzik on Import at places like the Virgin Megastore. I have been able to source all of Muzik’s published issues, but not Mixmag. The reissue review is not in Muzik, so by process of elimination, I paraphrased my memory of what I must have read in an issue of Mixmag.
**Spooky’s catalog and activity is less well-known than some of their ‘90s peers. Charlie May’s solo output can now easily be found on Bandcamp. It’s the same for Duncan Forbes. They also have a Spooky page on Bandcamp. Their Spooky remix work is less easy to get, but can be chased down on Discogs or YouTube (if you must, though I strongly believe in compensating artists and using YouTube more to find and rely on if there are no other affordable options. Spotify and Apple Music have major holes in their libraries when it comes to underground music, which is why I urge all music fans to support artists through Bandcamp.)