• country:Norway
  • style(s):Electronic, Pop
  • label:Traumton Records
  • artist posted by:Traumton Records

Links

Sanagi's music can be described as organic electro
with a hint of trip hop, experimental edge and
humour. They have diverse range in material, which
goes from sweet and beautiful to upbeat with a hard
edge.


Sanagi – Mish Mash

„ To simplify matters we call it elctro-pop. Nevertheless, we
believe that everyone understands music that expresses more
than one mood.“

Electro-pop is popmusic with electronic instruments. If you
appoint a time for the start of the genre with the release of the
Hot Butter single „Popcorn“ in 1972, then Sanagi, in the 34th
year after „Popcorn“ at the very least accomplished the feat to
strech the list of possible influences to infinity in a very amusing
and not just ostensible manner.
This is not surprising, as Lene Toje, 25, vocals and Robin Sato,
22, until their graduation in 2005, spent 3 years at the Liverpool
Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) where they perfected their art
and at the same time found ideal conditions for the production
of their debut album „Mish Mash“. Following in the footsteps of
electro-pop- icons like Air, from the Eurythmics and Heaven 17
to Ladytron, Sanagi built their own PopSurround-Universe and
this is divers and very different from the forerunners just named.
The cosmos of the two of them is at first continuously based on
the minimalistic enthusiasm for all possible varieties of pop-
music and most of all the verve to perform and express this
enthusiasm.
In the beginning you don’t anticipate any of that as the opener
of the album „Rabbit Hole“ comes along as an enchanting, clear
and minimalistic-electronic fairy-tale-song about finding one’s
home or „one’s voice“ as Lene says.
But coming to „Porcupine“ the tempo already rises. You find
yourself on a dancefloor, partly based on the deepest roots of
House-Music dancing your heart out, while Björk as a nordic
fairy greets friendly from a distance. This – you might already
anticpate it – doesn’t remain that way for long. The following
„Bang Bang“ is a stirring song that begins somewhere between
Funkstörung’s „Disconnetect“ feat. Enik, then charms with a
Bangles pop-chorus before it finally decomposes to a nordic
shanty with rough Hip Hop aesthetics. To melt such diffrent
styles is the production principle on „Mish Mash“; as the name
actually already says. The aesthetics of a „Prince with a female
Voice“ (Bangles) is found again and humorously processed on
„Dirty“ at the end of the album. As so many friends in the run-
up reacted to that song, Sanagi topped it with „Our Way“ a
Dance-number clearly influenced by Timbaland. By the way on
„Dirty“ they completely trail away in the big top of electronic
wind instruments and remodel 50 Cent’s shout to Eminem „Yo,
M., you’re my favorite white boy!“ to „Yo, Rob, you’re my favorite
japanese!“.
Japanese. Sanagi’s style-mix in all its apparent impossibility
does sound japanese, like more Pop than Pop: Over-Pop. So it
doesn’t surprise that Robin Sato was born in London but grew
up in Japan. The at that time 16 year old student of the Osaka
International School became „fan of Psychedelic Trance Acts like
Hallucinogene or the infected Mushrooms“. In 2001 the
electronic musician, in those days still working solo ( with
passion for the whole armada of the new club-oriented varieties
of electronic music, from Funkstörung to the Shitkatapult stuff
to the english Grime scene), came to Liverpool to study music
and met the Norwegian Lene Toje. Sanagi was founded.
The japanese word „Sanagi“ means cocoon. So to say a sheath,
what might make you come up with the idea that Sanagi aren’t
as extroverted as they appear to be on big parts of the album.
Lene Toje is the accoustic organ of the cocoon and is quite
aware of this discrepance: “ When you do a very serious song
and then a funny one: how do you come back to seriousness ? I
like to be both of it.“
Some of the tracks in the middle of the album bring the
seriousness to the point in an insistent manner like for example
the charmingly dreamy „Lunatic“ as a homage to crazyness. It is
followed by „Manic Mind“ a radio-compatible Pop-song that tells
about the sleepless nights of demoniacs, interrupted by vocal-
collages, adorned with piano parts played backwards and a
subliminal reference to Acid Music in the time of the decline of
the Berlin Wall in the 1980’s and the 1990’s and also inspired by
a norwegian nursery rhyme called „Mikkel Rev“ (Mikkel the fox).
And finally „A childish cry for help“. This is a song that
undoubtedly brings the existing reminiscences to Björk to the
point. Lene Tojes singing gleams along the borders of surreal
angel-likeness, while Robin Sato becomes the reincarnation of
the long-term Björk producer and LFO mastermind Mark Bell –
with the full power of distorted highly compressed beats and the
sinus-bass of the TR-909.
„ Mish Mash“ the 12 track debut album of the japanese-
norwegian band Sanagi, comes out as a consciously diversified
and very stirring journey through half of the history of Pop –
with reminiscences to the great ones, also to the irresistably
creative production-madness of Outcast or someone like Brian
Wilson, concerning Electronics absolutely reminding of Matthew
Herberts explorative work around the electronic Pop music.
But the minimalistic Hiphop-Beats, the dirt, the shouting and the
impelling power don’t trail off on the big meadow between
songwriting and trackwriting without any questions as the album
comes to his end. As both of them know, it is about something
dramatic and they process this perception all the time as Robin
says: „I think it mainly comes out on stage. In the three years
while we we’re writing the songs we had space. But when we’re
on stage now , we start up very quiet and serious and in the end
we come up with rapping and Hip Hop and... That’s a dramatic
structure and a lot of people agee to that.“ Due to the fact that
it’s so easy to understand. For almost everybody and beside a
lot of niches of electronic music.
The whole thing worked so well during two already completed
Germany tours that Sanagi decided to settle down in Berlin
where they plan to work together with local artists, while
„Popcorn“ quietly plops in the background.
Beside others, at the moment Sanagi listen to: Joanna Newsom,
Lady Sovereign, Eminem and Kaizers Orchestra.

Sanagi at MySpace: myspace.com/sanagimusic