CHUTNEY SHARES A CULTURAL COLLISION FOR THE AGES VIA NEW SINGLE TOXIC MOONLIGHT
“Chutney have brought the sampled songs – born hundreds of years apart – together to make something excitingly modern” – Rolling Stone
Britney Spears and Beethoven collide in dark and beautiful whimsy today in the hands of Sydney klezmer punk collective CHUTNEY. Teaming up with The Potbelleez vocalist Ilan Kidron on guest vocals to conjure Toxic Moonlight, the hypnotic melodics of Britney Spears’ 2003 hit Toxic fuse with Beethoven’s melancholic masterpiece Moonlight Sonata alongside CHUTNEY’s trademark Eastern European and Middle Eastern flair. Or, as CHUTNEY themselves put it: “It’s the illicit love child of Britney and Beethoven in a raucous Balkan bar – it’s bonkers”.
The equivalent of The Cat Empire partying in pop and classical territory, with a hora dance in its chorus thrown in for good measure, Toxic Moonlight welds two equally iconic yet exceedingly diverse songs, with over two centuries elapsing between Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and Britney Spears’ Toxic being released into the world. Growing from a seed planted by Kidron, with The Potbelleez front man noting the klezmer-esque qualities of Toxic, as well as CHUTNEY violinist Ben Adler exhuming Moonlight Sonata, the end result for Toxic Moonlight captures the urgency and catharsis of both originals, while also transforming the source material into a modern and daring reimagination. “It was 2021 and we had a gig lined up with Ilan,” shares Adler of the Toxic Moonlight origin story. “We were in a reprieve between COVID lockdowns so we’d developed a certain nihilism that, in retrospect, was highly conducive to unfettered creativity. I was talking with Ilan about songs he’d like to sing with us, and he observed that the string riff in Toxic sounds “really klezmer” – we only discovered years later that it’s actually a Bollywood sample! Anyway, Ilan’s suggestion was all I needed to klezmer-ify Britney’s song. Something about its darkness and (toxic) romance then led me to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, especially after I realised that importing Beethoven’s descending bassline might open up a whole new set of possibilities for the otherwise pretty harmonically static ‘Toxic’ verses. I sketched up a chart and we tweaked it in rehearsal, at a gig and in the studio into its present form”.
For Kidron, it was a no-brainer to tackle the global Britney Spears hit into new and uncharted waters with CHUTNEY, as he explains, “I was always really impressed with Mark Ronson’s version, and although Toxic had been covered plenty of times, I knew CHUTNEY would translate it really daringly and originally. They have an unashamed ability to bend the rules; but somehow it works. This version plays between a dark oceanic void and a western bar fight. There is emotional drama and a dance between tension and release that I love here.”
Opening with the moving solitary piano line of Moonlight Sonata before swelling with driving percussion and swooning strings, Toxic Moonlight flits between moody verses and vigorous, upbeat choruses with dark and wholly innovative abandon, with Kidron also placing his own unique spin on Toxic’s original lyrics. Dan Natoli of AKA Music produced, recorded and mixed the track, and is responsible for the epic expansion of CHUTNEY‘s live sound in post. CHUTNEY bassist and second keyboardist Ralph Marshall also worked as a de facto assistant producer on the track, as Adler reveals, “He coaxed an outsize number of ‘electronic haze and mechanical fart’ noises out of his synths and Moog”. “It all felt super easy, it was well rehearsed” says Kidron of recording Toxic Moonlight. “I had fun in the ad libs, though when I’m performing or recording everything kind of dissolves into the performance. If I’m really enjoying it, it becomes kind of amnesiac. Toxic, if you will. It was all set up really live, although it’s a studio album, the method is really genuine, what you hear is what you get. I loved the old school approach.”