ZALDONITE
Dark Psychedelic trance
2
songs
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KEMIC-AL PROFILE www.kemic-al.com
The Psy-Trance scene might be the preserve of a small bunch of like-minded people on the Maltese isles, but as Dansezee found out, it’s exciting, vibrant and rigidly underground. Meet Kemic-al, one of the scene’s leading lights and a producer/DJ to match
Music has always been a big part of Kemic-al’s life. He started learning the guitar when he was 10, forming a Ska/Punk style band when he was 16 called Gone Bonkers. Later renamed as Dark Doings, Aldo Lombardi (Kemic-al’s real name) had a few gigs which got pretty good feedback. “At the time (the 80’s), that was the Ska era, you knowMadness, The Specials, The Beat, BodysnatchersI loved that music, and I still do! I saw The Beat and The Selecter whilst living in London - it was really greatI still get goosepimples every time I mention it.” But then Kemic-al soon got into psychedelic Rock like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Hawkwind and Jimi Hendrix. “Just before I moved to London when I was 18, I wanted to be closer to touch music go to gigs and concerts like Pink Floyd etc. I started spinning Psy-Rock as a DJ five years after I got back from London I was 23.”
Kemic-al’s first contact with Psy-Trance was in 1995 when his brother started sending him some music from London. At the same time, a friend of his started handing out some good tunes, getting him hooked on Psy-Trance music: “I just couldn't let go of it...” Soon after, Kemic-al started organizing small outdoor parties for his friends, as well as boat parties - DJing & playing percussion at the same time. ”I was also getting invited to play percussion in legal parties, which in turn led to me being invited to DJ as well. Spinning Psy-Trance tunes was getting more and more interesting for me, leading me to attend festivals abroad just to bring the vibe back home.”
His first DJ outing was when Kemic-al was invited by Lovesexy to play at their Sunday events at Paradise Bay 3 years ago, where he had his own stage at the far end of the beach. “The place was great and so was the outcome!”, leading him to play non-stop 6-hour sets every Sunday. Exit followed, approaching him to play at the Tribu 2000 festival - besides DJing, he also organised the Psy-Trance arena at the same time. “I must say that it was too late for us to be on the flier of that event, but still the outcome was great, as was the vibea lot of people said that! The quality, not the quantity for a change. Well, that’s always been an issue for me that’s why I find it hard to go mainstream.” A support slot in April of last year at Space in D-Klub with Psy-Trance luminary Man With No Name together with Kemic-al’s cohort Sorted K was one of the high points in his career. Meeting him the day after the gig, Man With No Name took the time to come down to his studio to listen to his first ever track "Space Maan"
Extending the Psy-Trance sound even further on our isles, Kemic-al formed Los Bandidos Psicadelikos: a DJ collective consisting of his girlfriend Marie Claire (DJ Ladybird ) and Sorted K, organising outdoor parties surrounded by what Mother Nature has to offer. Based on the finest traditions of parties held on the Indian island of Goa, Los Bandidos Psicadelikos also collaborate with non-governmental organisations such as The Gaia Foundation in order to create more environmental awareness, a fact that Kemic-al strongly stresses on.
Kemic-al’s visits to Goa got him more involved in music production after meeting a producer from the UK called Mark and his German girlfriend DJ Anke from Germany. “You can imagine what our conversations were mainly about, but it's not just the music scene that makes Goa and India - it's also the spiritual side of it, the poverty and other things that only happen there - it's a mixture of magic and stark contrasts...” Coming back from Goa with a load of contacts and new music to play, Kemic-al slowly but patiently started producing tracks of his own, starting off with comparatively crude equipment until investing in a PC-based setup. “Since January 2001 things started to take shape when I converted my spare bedroom into a home studio where I could lock myself in and work on more tunes. I have not stopped working since and I don’t intend to either!”
Dansezee Magazine: www.dansezee.com
issue 12 - July 2003Band/artist history
KEMIC-AL Twisted Parameters
If I’m not mistaken, this is a first in the Maltese music scene a Psy-Trance album. Released by none other than Zaldonite a.k.a. Aldo Lombardi (featured on July’s issue), this album brims with confidence to the point of being innovative within international Psy-Trance circles, which is stunning considering that this is a debut album.
As a lover of all kinds of Dance music in general, my only usual fault with music of this ilk is that not much innovation is to be found, and the innovators within this scene are very few Hallucinogen and Infected Mushroom come to mind. Kemic-al might just be joining this elite club though, as what we have here is an album that is daring and danceable in equal amounts. Opening tracks “1888 A.C.” and “What Lies In The Shadows” set Zaldonite’s manifesto in full swing: low, growly, voices, dark swooshes and innovative drum programming. “Piskumany”, Batidas Por Minuto” and the title track are buzzing dancefloor drivers which should be commended for their use of sounds far removed from the perception of Psy-trance. But two tracks stand to attention for their sheer innovation “Klassic-al” is totally loony and very exciting with shades of Jazzy sax lines interspersed with a recognizable Beethoven piano line to amazing effect, whilst the winner here is “Wake Up Call”, with its Maltacom wake-up call sample in English and Maltese leaving me in no doubt as to bless this track as the best of the bunch.
If Kemic-Al/Zaldonite keeps up the dynamics of this stunning debut album on his future releases, we’ll be hearing a lot more from him in international circles. In the meantime, if you really want to know what innovation sounds like, obtain this album and revel in the fact that the future of Psy-Trance might just lie on this island we live in!
(reproduced by kind permission of Dansezee magazine - 2003)
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Homegrown beats and hypnotic rhythms!
Kemic-Al Twisted Parameters http://www.kemic-al.com
His may be a relatively new name on the Maltese dance scene, and yet Kemic-Al, under his Zaldonite alter ego or as part of the Los Bandidos Psikadelicos DJ posse, has been etching out quite a following for himself, particularly in the trance scene. His musical roots actually hail back to ska and rock, but have always been broad enough to embrace any music that is exciting and stimulating. His first ventures into the dance scene came via various percussion performances at numerous events and parties, following which he progressed to DJ-ing and organizing his own parties.
The response of the discreet but sizeable trance following in Malta encouraged Kemic-Al to branch out and work on original productions, the first batch of which quickly picked up a steady following via his MP3.com website. Some of the tunes also made their way into the playlists of several internet radio stations, and this positive vibe was certainly crucial in motivating Kemic-Al’s output and the eventual completion of this debut album.
Contrary to what many may be expecting of a trance artist, Twisted Parameters actually presents an alternate perspective of this global genre, largely revolving around the artist’s particular taste for sounds and rhythms as opposed to the formulaic synthesized (and swirling) prototype that gave trance its initial appeal. As such, Kemic-Al’s approach on this album has been to construct and develop all the sounds from scratch, straying from this ‘homegrown’ philosophy only where vocal samples are involved. The basis of the album was in fact constructed from mutated and manipulated percussive sounds, as most of the nine tracks here will attest.
Aural accessorizing was in fact kept to a minimum, with the result that the music often dwells inside a gray area that owes as much to trance as it does to techno, with the common (and only connecting) factor being the hypnotic psychedelia-laced rhythms that Kemic-Al is clearly attached to.
Of particular note here are the tracks Wake Up Call, whose nifty samples are a clear example of Kemic-Al’s favoured quote that ‘Sound is the art of seeing invisible things’; Klassic-Al, where musical interludes are meshed and fused together to great effect (and possibly the album’s most mainstream moment); and Batidas Por Minuto, whose warped sonic groove (subtly tinged, I thought, with a Liam Howlett electronic accent!) was a valuable stepping stone for Kemic-Al’s prominence on internet radio. Psy-trance and psy-tech, apparently are the coined phrases for this brand of dance music, and indeed, there are elements here of both. Adding a third dimension to the album is closing track Z-Zora, which opts for a chilled approach to bring the feast of beats and rhythm mesh to a cinematic end!
The parameters of the music may be twisted, but Kemic-Al nevertheless retains the spirit that gives this album its vitality!
Mike Bugeja
The Malta Independent
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