Infected Mushroom
Classical Mushroom

"It's about time we infected them"

Wise words. One of the most spine-chilling musical openings I've ever heard in my life.

Because when those immensely low and distorted frequencies kick in, the kind that literally go "inside" you, I sink, I let go... a hallucinogenic and totally out of control experience, completely inescapable.

The beat of the bass drum, soft, powerful, and steady, takes me on an unprecedented journey, and the sound connection it creates with the acid-soaked synths' wild lines is something unimaginable. Immersed in this musical alchemy, detached from the world, I perceive different waves... classical echoes but made more vibrant by new life, they seize me and carry me away.

"Bust A Move" is the quintessence of trance, an essential cornerstone, and certainly the pinnacle of this album.  The presence of this track alone glorifies this third work by Infected Mushroom, published in 2000 and the Israeli duo's last "trance" release in the strict sense of the term.

Despite this, musical contaminations, which will find greater expression in subsequent albums, begin to slowly emerge in tracks like "None Of This Is Real", a marvelous hybrid between grimy doom metal and a pounding technotrance base, or "The Missed Symphony", where classical influences are possibly even more evident than in the opening track.

The remaining tracks, instead, prove much more tied to the standards of trance sound, especially in "Nothing Comes Easy" or "Mushi Mushi", frigid rhythmic progressions with distant echoes of goa (particularly in "Nothing..").

Indeed, while listening to this work, I often felt sensations of "coldness", chill, expansiveness... desolate spaces, and journeys to the infinite, direct travels to who knows where; the almost devilish cerebrality felt in the unstoppable patterns of the tracks is fascinating, yet at the same time frightening.

The only exception is represented by "Sailing In The Sea Of Mushroom", which begins in a "cheerful" way, only to develop into the already previously highlighted characteristics in the final part (the title, by the way, might seem like a homage to Primus and their major work... pure coincidence?)

I haven't done justice to every track on the album, providing a detailed description, so as not to bore the already sparse (I already know) audience that will patiently read these sparse lines; my main intent, in fact, was to characterize the work in its most general aspects and, at most, to highlight the most remarkable creations. This doesn't mean, however, that the tracks I "discarded" aren't noteworthy; in fact, they are of significant importance as a whole; without them, the entire album would certainly lack the cursed atmosphere emanated by this album.

In conclusion, "Classical Mushroom" fully represents, together with "The Gathering" and the subsequent "B.P. Empire", an ideal trilogy of trance, yet with the introduction of new and original ideas, later revisited retrospectively.