System 7: Saving The World With Ambient Techno
Author: Jonty Skrufff
Monday, October 11, 2004
Chatting down the line from his West London studio, legendary trance pioneer Steve Hilllage is both forthright and unapologetic about the stream of consciousness message that remains central to System 7 and the top quality ambient techno trance they specialize in creating.
"We feel, or should I say we like to feel; that by making our kind of spiritually imbued dance music we can make a little contribution," he continues.
"We can get people high in a particular way and if nothing else, by doing that we can get them to contact other people and provide a little bit of forum for positivity and intelligent thought about how we are going to rise above all this bullshit."
The bullshit he's referring to, of course, is the state of today's world ("I'm not sure we've seen the worst yet in Iraq and it looks very likely that Bush will win the next election," he predicts) though his overall stance remains positive.
"I have a feeling that life is gonna' go on, and that there's a lot of intelligent and sensible people in this world and they've just got to somehow come together, maybe in a different way," says Steve.
"But It's no good just standing up and hectoring people or forming yet another sort of militant group, because that will all end up with guns. We've got to get beyond that."
And practicing what he preaches, he's recently finished his latest album of "spiritually imbued dance music' (created with his long term System 7 partner Miquette Gaudy) called Encantado (meaning "enchanted' or "entranced' in Spanish). Delivered in the psi-trance-meets-techno-meets ambient style they've made their own, the record is System 7's first proper artist album since Seventh Wave and comes hot on the heels of their recent Remix compilation album, made in collaboration with Derrick May. Inspired by several trips to Mexico, where the duo studied the pyramids of ancient Mayan culture, the record is packed ideas, phrases and images steeped in mysticism and magic, reflecting their own heartfelt belief in the genuine power of music.
Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): Why did you decide to call the album Encantado-
System 7 (Steve Hillage): "To explain the title, I'm going to read you the little story that's on the sleevenotes. 'It was our third visit to Coba, perhaps the most magical of all the Mayan pyramid sites on the Yucatan peninsula'. That's in Mexico. "While waiting for a taxi back to Tulum we spent some time by the ancient lake and we were struck by the mysterious feeling of electrical presence. The taxi came and we started our journey, the taxi driver was friendly and Miquette started to talk to him in Spanish. He told us he was from Coba village and was born there from a Mayan family that had always lived there. We told him how much we liked Coba, and how we found it to be magical, and we told him of the strange presence we felt at the lake. That's no surprise, he said, you're feeling the spirits of our ancestors - they are Encantado. Does this mean we can even feel the spirits of the old Mayans that built the place and built the pyramids, we asked- "Of course you can, he said. We are all encantado.' Encantado in Spanish means enchanted or entranced. We were working on the album and we started getting into a Mexican thing on one of the tracks we remembered this incident and that was it."
Skrufff: I know you've been doing other projects, like the Derrick May remix album and producing for Skin, how do you view making System 7 records compared to working with other people-
System 7: " Obviously, I spend quite a lot of my time producing other artists, as you know, so by the time we've gouged out some time to do a new< Tags