Mark Spoon (nèe Markus Löffel), Pioneer of trance music, dead at 41
Independent Online Edition
Mark Spoon, one half of the pioneering trance music dance duo Jam & Spoon, has been found dead in his Berlin home. He was 41. According to unconfirmed reports, Spoon (real name Markus Loffel) died of cardiac arrest.
In the early Seventies, German groups like Tangerine Dream and [/tag]Kraftwerk[/tag] and the Italian-born producer Giorgio Moroder pioneered various forms of electronic music, such as ambient, robotic pop and disco, which influenced the next two generations of soundtrack composers and rap and dance artists around the world.
Twenty years later, the German duo Jam & Spoon (respectively Rolf Ellmer and Markus Löffel) put a new spin on house music from Chicago and techno from Detroit - two genres heavily indebted to Kraftwerk and Moroder - and created a mellower hybrid called “trance” after the hypnotic, trance-like effect it had on club-goers.
In 1993, Jam & Spoon scored a hit across Europe with “Right in the Night (Fall in Love with Music)” featuring the female vocalist Plavka, a tune so infectious it charted in Britain twice and became a club favourite over the next two years. Tripomatic Fairytales (2001), the duo’s début album, also made the British charts in 1994 while two follow-up singles, “Find Me (Odyssey to Anyoona)” and “Angel (Ladadi O-Heyo)”, reached the UK Top Forty.
Ellmer and Löffel also recorded under the names Tokyo Ghetto Pussy and Storm and created dance-floor fillers with “Everybody on the Floor (Pump It)” in 1995, as well as “Time to Burn” and “Storm Animal” in 2000.
Technorati Tags: Mark Spoon, trance music, Jam & Spoon, Markus Loffel, Tangerine Dream, Giorgio Moroder, robotic pop, Rolf Ellmer, music, Moroder, club-goers, Plavka, Tripomatic Fairytales, Tokyo Ghetto Pussy, Time to Burn, Storm Animal
