WOMAD

Salt Tank

From United Kingdom

"WOMAD was a big influence on us," says Salt Tank's David Gates. "When that festival first went off, we started to think about rhythms a lot more." Well, now they're playing at WOMAD, still cruising on the success last year of 'Eugina', their soaring, adventurous club hit. Salt Tank have one advantage over many other acts with a foot in the ambient/trance end of dance: they know how to put together a strong tune. Gates and Malcolm Stanners have been playing together for six years and early own-label EPs and mini-albums made the indie charts. In 1994, their 'Charged Up' was one of only four techno tracks in John Peel's Festive Fifty. But it was the 1996 reissue of 'Eugina' on Internal Records, the home of Orbital, that gave the Salt Tank bandwagon momentum. It was a single of the week in most dance magazines and hit the national Top 40, eventually selling 20,000 copies. After the big single came the 'Science and Nature' album, which makes use of all those changing drum patterns they found at WOMAD, but is also big on tunes and simple structures. There's some Balearic in there, a lot of trance (the trusty old 303 keyboard is well-used) and some older, breakbeat-influenced tracks such as 'Gaza Strip' with its suitably Middle Eastern feel. The current live line-up is David on guitar synth, 303 and Prophecy keyboards; Malcolm (keyboards/mixing); Geraldine (ethereal vocals); and percussionist Keke, who also gets going on electronic drums. This line-up allows for plenty of movement on stage and more of the feel of a traditional gig.