Booka Shade

From their beginnings as a trancey house duo to their more mature post-millennial work that incorporated pop, ambient, techno, and funk influences, Frankfurt, Germany, duo Booka Shade maintained an elegance of style that owed little to whatever current dance music trends were on the scene. However, before they were Booka Shade, Arno Merziger and Walter Kammermeier had an early-'90s synth pop duo called Planet Claire, which in the tradition of Underworld and Ministry mutated into something very different after their early direction petered out following two mildly successful albums. Abandoning dance-pop in favor of heavier club beats and trance electronics, Merziger and Kammermeier changed the name of their project to Booka Shade, debuting with the 1995 single "Kind of Good." After several years of releasing singles on various American and European labels, Merziger and Kammermeier started their own imprint, Get Physical, in 2001. The original intent behind the Get Physical label was that Booka Shade would be the shadowy producers, writers, and remixers behind other artists, but in 2004, Booka Shade released their first proper album as artists, Memento. Following two more club hits in 2005, "Mandarine Girl" and "Body Language," Booka Shade released their second album, Movements, in 2006. It was followed by DJ-Kicks in 2007 and a pair of additional production albums for GP, The Sun & the Neon Light (2008) and More! (2010). Throughout their career as performing artists, Booka Shade maintained a separate line in high-profile remixes, including work ranging from Yello and Depeche Mode to Moby and the Knife. ~ Stewart Mason, Rovi