Bella Gaia is the latest multimedia project from Kenji Williams, an artist that continues to impress me with the scope of his creative vision. I first saw Kenji perform alongside Medicine Drum and Irina Mikhailova in 2001 when they opened for Juno Reactor in Toronto. A few years later I fell for Kenji’s excellent album Faces Of Epiphany and I’ve been following his work ever since.

As much as I enjoy a good CD, nothing I had previously experienced prepared me for Kenji’s next project: Worldspirit. Released on DVD, Worldspirit is an astounding multimedia collaboration with the world-famous artist Alex Grey. Incorporating theatre, spoken word, visual art, and live music, it is a complete conceptual package. During the performance there is a visualization exercise in which attendees (and, by extension, viewers) are invited to imagine the vast web of interconnections girdling a little world cupped in their hands.

Bella Gaia sounds as if it expands on the spiritual presentation of Worldspirit with a more scientific–yet no less emotional–appeal. Using high-definition visuals provided by NASA, Kenji seeks to recreate the powerful experience of viewing the Earth from space. As stated on the Bella Gaia homepage:

Many of those lucky enough to view the Earth from space have described a sense of wonder and delight that can hold life-changing power, as Mike Fincke described first hand. Known as the “Overview Effect,” this experience is characterized by a dramatic cognitive shift in which the significance of man-made boundaries is eclipsed by a deep awareness that life on Earth operates as a borderless, interconnected whole. The striking clarity of this realization often triggers a keen sense of stewardship that seeks community beyond the limits of nationality and religion. The strength of this conservation instinct tends to grow even after the return to Earth, driving those who share this experience to reach out, and become highly active participants in the preservation of our common heritage.

This precisely aligns with my present world-view. I truly hope I have the opportunity to see this project in action some day.

Last night Ektoplazm reached another big milestone: more than half a million releases have been downloaded from our servers since July of 2007. If, instead of downloads, these numbers represented physical CD releases in jewel cases, we’d be talking about a stack 5 kilometres high. That is a lot of free psytrance! We’ve also eclipsed 2,000 downloads a day at this point–due, no doubt, to the recent spate of releases that has included Cybernetika’s Nanospheric album and our official debut compilation, Organic Circuitry. Although no one can be sure what people are doing with the music they download (unless, of course, they sign up for last.fm), these numbers still impress the hell out of me. As always, I wonder how my commercial “competitors” fare selling individual tracks online, but this is difficult to determine–neither Beatport nor any of the other big shops seem keen on publishing sales figures. All we have to go on are unsubstantiated rumours. It doesn’t really matter anyhow–that is just my insatiable curiosity speaking. All I know for sure is that everything is going extremely well around here, and I really appreciate everyone’s sustained support for the Ektoplazm concept. I wonder how long it will take before we reach a million?

Paul Baguley and Sonya Bailey have been producing music as ManMadeMan since 1994, operating in both the commercial and underground dance scenes. They came from completely different musical backgrounds–Paul was working with bands and Sonya was a wayward young girl with a keen ear. Coming together they partied hard at some of the most legendary events back in the early days: Cripps Barn, Dragon Fly, The Fridge, The Rocket, and Space Hopper, the club that launched them. It was these experiences that inspired them to create music within a scene that was totally different from anything they had been involved in before.

And so MMM was born: one EPS 16+ and away they went until they had a live set. Whilst playing in the clubs where they had partied in earlier days, DJ Tsuyoshi Suzuki heard them and soon after they released their first single on London-based Matsuri Productions. Later they released their first album, Love Technology (2000) on Flying Rhino Records and followed this up by gigging around the world. This led to meeting loads of new people who were starting labels and soon ManMadeMan were releasing music globally with many record companies around the world. Several albums followed: Cell Division (2002), Creation Myth (2004), The Legend Remixes (2005). In 2007, ManMadeMan entered uncharted waters with the independent release of Free To Listen, the first major release by a psytrance artist to be completely legal to freely download. The response from the album has been phenomenal and ManMadeMan are planning a follow-up in late 2008/early 2009.

Today the studio consists of a Mac G5 and numerous analogue synths as well as a plethora of virtual tools. Logic Pro is used for sequencing–a far cry from their old Atari. Having two children during the last four years has brought many new things to MMM. It has been a learning experience and one that has cut both ways: making music through the night and then doing the school run isn’t always conducive to making trance, yet they have never given up and continue to show an unerring dedication to the scene. ManMadeMan remain hard to pigeonhole–they can turn their hand to many types of music–but trance is where their hearts lie.