For a long time, Berlin was considered the center of electronic music, but that has been changing for some time now. Musicians and bands from all over the world are moving to Berlin, and the city is evolving into a global center for new forms of jazz, psychedelic, and indie pop. New microlabels, clubs, and festivals are emerging. And one of the most relevant and exemplary bands for this new Berlin music reality is Spiritczualic Enhancement Center. 18 musicians from 17 countries, almost all of whom live in Berlin, meet regularly for almost ritualistic psychedelic music sessions. Sessions where this new kind of psychedelic funk is created, which has taken the band to many festivals in recent years and has also earned them a wild reputation in the international jazz scene. “Spectral trance-jazz ensemble with a psychedelic-punk methodology,” the band calls their music. Music critics would probably label it a mix of Krautrock and jazz funk.
Spiritczualic Enhancement Center has caused a stir in recent years in relevant circles. Comprising musicians from Germany, Japan, Israel, Iran, USA, Turkey, Iraq, Denmark, Poland, Philippines, UK, Russia, Moldova, Romania, Czech Republic, Montenegro, and Macedonia.
The most famous fan is surely Gilles Peterson from Worldwide, who celebrated the band enthusiastically. But Damo Suzuki from CAN is also a fan and has already joined in at one of the collective's concerts.
The musicians of the collective are not only notorious for their shows but also run one of the most interesting studios and meeting points for the new scene in Berlin Neukölln. Amid old car repair shops and vacant barracks, a kind of new version of the former Krautrock Germany is taking place here. The studio is packed with old and sometimes very rare instruments, tape machines, and studio equipment. Nothing seems to have been built after 1980. All the devices have their own stories.
The current album was recorded partly in Berlin, but also largely in Bucharest, Denmark, and the Czech Republic. Often as part of tours that the group (often with changing line-ups) plays and then records on-site. The band, which is actually more of a collective, travels together to vacant farmhouses or factories, where they hold music sessions for 1 or 2 weeks. Thus, the new album was also not mixed in Berlin, but in an old, empty villa in Nice. Since their founding in 2017, Spiritczualic Enhancement Center has performed in 12 countries, including festivals such as Fusion, Outernational Days, Camp Cosmic, and Copenhagen Jazz Festival.
