Then there was another wave where we started as producers for big labels in Europe. “From pop, we went to the first wave of underground techno, in the mid-Nineties. Originally starting out as a pop band in Germany in the early Nineties, Merzinger and Kammermeier discovered techno that decade, which completely changed the course of their journey. Who can forget that seminal 2006 album, Movements with sexy, cinematic classics like “Mandarine Girl” and “Body Language.” Five memorable albums, and countless singles, down the line, Booka Shade continue to pack in clubs. We just changed it to an “a” and added something mysterious to it,” he says. The name was created in the mid-Nineties, “the high time of techno,” as Arno describes, where he and cohort Walter Merziger, “used to meet in the afternoon and started writing songs and recording them on this old cassette recorder with these little tapes!” This is after having met in high school, while playing in the band (Van Halen’s “Jump” was a favorite tune to perform, Arno laughingly reveals.) “I believe, in retrospect ”¦ there’s an organ player called Booker T.

The opportunity to speak to Kammermeier, via Skype, arrived due to the pair’s return to India (they played club gigs in Delhi and Bengaluru last year) for VH1’s new festival, Supersonic, which is slated to be held in the last week of December in Goa. That is: what are the mysterious origins of the name “Booka Shade?” It’s a name that’s been a highlight of the global underground electronica arena for over a decade. “It’s super mysterious! So mysterious that I don’t even remember how it came up,” Arno Kammermeier, one half of Booka Shade laughs in response to the one question we’ve always wanted to ask them.

Booka shade movements album