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[personal profile] earwall2012-05-05 02:07 pm
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Global Goa Party 2: Tree Tribe

When you make the connection, it's like the chemistry takes care of itself...

I want to call attention to what was, for me, the standout mix of Global Goa 2: Kunal AKA Tree Tribe's set. http://soundcloud.com/treetribe/ggp2

It really exemplifies what Goa Trance was about in the period of 1995-1997; hypnotic and tunneling, generous with layers but never overblown, carefully composed and engineered, and full of novel sounds and colorful melodies. Some tracks are more organic and tribal, others more futuristic and industrial, while some just defy classification (check the video-arcade cyber-rock of Masa's "Xembala"), and the DJ weaves the whole techno-tapestry into something that is -- it's a cliche, but for once it's true -- bigger than the sum of its parts.

Probably gonna post some non-trance, non-synthpop (egads!) for a while after this. In any case, enjoy the noise!

/plug/ BTW, my own GG mix can still be downloaded from here: http://goatranch.com/2012/03/24/global-goa-party-2-the-mixes/ /plug/
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[personal profile] earwall2012-03-25 08:05 pm
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(no subject)


Detailed (and very frank) interview with a founding member of Hard Corps.


I'm thrilled to learn that more new (well, new old) material is on its way! Hard Corps were ever so shiny.
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[personal profile] earwall2012-03-22 04:40 pm
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Announcement: Global Goa Party 2

In 2 days, there'll be a special event: the second Global Goa Party! And you can all attend :) For 15 hours, di.fm's goa/psy channel will be given over to retro psytrance from 1996 and earlier, with the flow of a 'real' nighttime party.

I think we have some fantastic sets in store; whether it's an evening, night, sunrise or morning timeslot*, these DJs know exactly how to deliver the right vibe, and it's a real honor to be included among them. Switch on, tune in and drop by!

(*note: the broadcast starts at 8PM British time, so it'll be an earlier or later Goa party for the rest of us)
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[personal profile] earwall2012-03-21 04:40 pm
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Telex: Raised By Snakes



Post-disco Belgian synth act Telex were one of the most innovative EDM bands of the late 70s/early 80s, prefiguring house and techno by a good half decade with their humor infused, four to the floor feel good anthems like "Moskow Diskow", "Soul Waves", "Brainwash", and "Euro-Vision". "Raised By Snakes", from 1984's "Wonderful World", is characteristic of their odd lyrical sensibilities and funky grooves.

Telex were remixed in 2 albums, "I Don't Like Music: The Remixes" and "I (Still) Don't Like Music: Remixes Vol. 2", by artists like Juan Atkins, Anthony "Shake" Shakir and Carl Craig; more recently "Moskow Diskow" received a whack of new remixes in 2010.
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[personal profile] earwall2012-03-20 09:10 pm
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Rofo: Flashlight On A Disconight



Italo disco record, and an early example of the 'spacesynth' sound.

One of the truly cult styles of EDM, spacesynth grew out of the Italo scene and related music like Hi-NRG, Giorgio Moroder, and the space disco of the late 70s. The basic ingredients are melodies with a futuristic, sparkling sound; repetitive, insistent basslines; 'cosmic' strings; and a 4/4 beat with various percussive fills. Vocals are fewer than traditional disco, and often digitally processed.

The Dutchman Michiel Van der Kuy (Laserdance, Proxyon, Rygar) is the most namechecked artist, and almost all modern spacesynth bears traces of his formula; before him, Italian producers like Rofo, Giorgio Spagna, and the late Stefano Cundari were crucial formulators of the style. While the focus on repetition and synthetic sounds made spacesynth a trance precursor, nevertheless, it still has its own identity and following; see spacesynth.net.

Other notable spacesynth records:

Hipnosis - Hipnosis LP
Koto - Visitors, Jabdah
Cyber People - Void Vision, Polaris
Laserdance - Future Generation LP
Syntech - By Trial & Error LP
Android - Aliens

An, ahem, blunter take on the style can be found here. :>
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[personal profile] earwall2012-03-18 01:35 pm
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Psytrance double feature: Johann Bley: Backup, Space Tribe vs. Johann Bley: The Bomb





Continuing the psytrance assault, here are the first contemporary tracks (2011!), and the first example of the "full-on" sound that has dominated trance dancefloors in recent years.

I don't normally post this kind of music -- it's "straighter" than the old school psytrance I love -- but the musical ideas herein lift them above the rest of the fodder. "Backup" is a surprisingly mature track, with lots of melody, no cheesy buildups, and a genuine sense of otherworldliness. "The Bomb", meanwhile, pushes the cheddar factor a bit, but still sucks me in with its liquid-neon melodic lines.
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[personal profile] earwall2012-03-17 08:02 pm
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X.I.S.: Broken Spirals



Nephilim Records released some classy (and very dark) Goa in their time. Xploring Inner Space was perhaps the darkest of their stable, with a no-nonsense industrial attitude. A track from their double CD, "Broken Spirals" will curl your hair and put toes on your chest. ;)
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[personal profile] earwall2012-03-15 12:37 pm
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Orichalcum and the Deviant: Where Are You



Good old Goa for today... this time it's a French-Danish production from 1997. Deep as you like, with the sort of baroque sonic design, squeaky analog melodies, and didg-like bass groove that you don't hear much of in psytrance anymore.
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[personal profile] earwall2012-03-11 01:17 am
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Ken Ishii: Low



From his early experimental releases in 1993-94 up to the present day, Tokyo's Ken Ishii is one of the most critically acclaimed techno artists in the world. His music takes influences from Detroit techno, traditional and electronic Japanese music, and visual art to create a colorful sonic canvas. A track from one of his first EPs, "Low" is a haunting slice of future blues.
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[personal profile] earwall2012-03-09 05:11 am
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Mittelstandskinder Ohne Strom: Early Bird



Tech-trance emerged in the late nineties as an alternative to the more organic and cluttered psychedelic trance sound. Here, German tech-trancers Mittelstandskinder Ohne Strom bring us a darkly melodic track from their 1999 album "Bug", with cold string washes and layers of buzzing, snarling, electric noise. Tightly interlocked percussion keeps the proceedings funky, synth bass bobs and weaves through an assortment of patterns, and it all gets down in a peculiar post-apocalyptic kind of way; if the T-800s from the first Terminator movie ever threw a rave, this is what they might shake exoskeleton to.
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[personal profile] earwall2012-02-07 09:03 pm
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A Certain Ratio: Spirit Dance



A Certain Ratio are a post-punk funk band from Manchester that delved into rave territory around the end of the eighties. This is probably the best of those flirtations, a sort of ambient-techno take on the electrofunk coming from American producers like Mantronix. Around a snappy 808 groove, drifting synthesizer voices snake in and out alongside melodic percussion, tribal chants and screams, all topped off by a catchy steel drum riff. The overall effect is narcotic.

For DJs, this record had a feature that made it a bit of a secret weapon; when pitched at +8, it transforms from a (relatively) sedate, 115 BPM or so toe-tapper into a midtempo dancefloor monster. I first heard it at this speed, in a mix online, without knowing what it was and spent weeks hunting for that "crazy electro track".

ACR have kept releasing music and playing over the years, with a catalog stretching from 1979 up to the present day and straddling many genres. There's much to explore! In the meantime, I'll just be hitting repeat on this one more time... ;)
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[personal profile] earwall2012-02-02 10:53 am
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Red Flag: If I Ever



Here's another 'proto trance' track. Though commonly thought of as a techno/house offshoot, trance also grew out of this style of melodically busy, rhythmically intense synthpop dance music.

I'm not normally big on vocals in electronic music, but I have to say that I love the singing here. The music has a dark quality to it that works well against the vocals, with a chugging bass synth and sinister atmosphere that remind me a little of 90s-era Leather Strip. Joseph Watt and Art Maharg of Razormaid! had a hand in the production; it's punchy and gets straight to the point, like most of what they did.
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[personal profile] earwall2012-01-31 10:27 pm
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Goa Vibes (part two)

And here's the later period. At the end of the 88-90 videos you can hear where techno started to become trance, and at the end of the 91-94 videos you can hear the beginnings of psytrance, with a harder acid sound driving the synth layers.

1988-1990 )

1991-1994 )
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[personal profile] earwall2012-01-31 12:43 pm
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Goa, psytrance, and DJ Laurent: where the adventure began.



A musical role model of mine, little known outside of the psytrance scene, is Laurent, the French DJ who introduced electronic music (1) to the beaches of Goa, India and played there regularly during the years of 1983-1993.

Part of the hippie traveller wave that flocked to Goa beginning in the 60s and 70s, Laurent took the early sounds of electronic dance music and, through a combination of clever track selection and customized digital tape edits, turned it into a futuristic form of sixties psychedelia. The extended edit wasn't a new thing (it had been done back in the days of disco), but he realized that by cutting out vocals and extending passages with nothing but synthesizers and drum machines you could create a ritualistic atmosphere, one especially suited to the Goa environment. An environment that was awash with acid and chillums, shot through with mystical trappings, and set outdoors in beautiful nature. As well as his editing skills, his collection and knowledge of music was beyond extensive, tapping a global network of friends for music that came from everywhere and every style. He drew from rock, dub, electrofunk, disco, new wave, industrial, house, experimental art-pop, and American techno from Chicago and Detroit. He would also incorporate European forms of techno -- like trance, the genre he helped create -- and in doing so, he eventually became part of a feedback loop going from Goa DJs to studio musicians and back again.

By the beginning of the nineties, artists were travelling to Goa, hearing Laurent and DJs influenced by Laurent, coming home, and making music based on what they had heard. Trance, and what would become psytrance, owe much to his expansive attitude. He was a pioneer of the 'party as journey' concept... dark, inward-focused music at night would fuck with the dancers' heads, and at sunrise, dreamlike reveries would bring them gently back to Earth. For those who dropped acid, this seems especially appropriate.

By his own estimate, Laurent played around 10,000 different tracks during his years in Goa. It's not entirely clear why, by 1994, he had quit DJing. (2) The changing nature of the music may have contributed to it: Goa had coalesced into its own musical style by then, one that had been streamlined into a fast techno/trance hybrid. Full moon parties, trance dances, or just Goa parties were the terms before then, but now artists were making "Goa Trance" with its own particular motifs and aesthetic. This was incredible music, IMHO... it brought much-needed color, nuance and experimentation to a techno that too often limited itself to dystopian gray or was content to pound its listeners into submission. Still, Goa Trance (later called psychedelic trance or just psytrance) was too uniform for some old-schoolers, who missed the days of even wilder experimentalism. LSD was still the drug of choice, but some complained that you just couldn't dance all night to 140 BPM. (3)

Perhaps, though, Laurent had simply done everything he had wanted to do as a DJ and decided that it was time to move on. He remains an enigmatic figure, posting on the occasional forum when it strikes his fancy. In a massive infodump, posted on discogs.com, he revealed 1,000 of the tracks he had used; all commercial releases, ranging from the extremely obscure to the very well known. I learned so, so much from that tracklist: it gave me many happy weeks on Youtube, swelled my record collection, and led to a tribute mix.

Looking at the list, I'm struck by how counterintuitive much of it seems. I picture juxtapositions of the most bizarre kinds... The B-52s and Front 242; Blancmange and Afrika Bambaataa; Thomas Dolby and Italo disco. Laurent's genius, I think, was to identify the shared transcendental impulse behind much contemporary music, and to put that under a sonic magnifying glass for all to hear.

I have to qualify that by saying that I've never heard a whole set by Laurent. I've seen a clip of a party (the video at the top) with him playing, and I've heard several tapes and mixes in 'his style', made by his friends and his fellow Goa DJs. I've read stories from him and from people who knew him. Through Internet soundbites and textbites, I've been able to piece together a picture of what his playing was like. But I've never actually been to Goa, and all the interesting stuff happened before my time; by the late nineties, Goa was a fading scene. I started with the post-Goa psytrance movement, that had its epicentre in Israel and the UK -- in the deserts outside Tel Aviv and the nightclubs of swinging London, not a beach in southern India -- and that itself disseminated to Southern California, where I live. From there I worked my way backward to learn the music's history and why India was so damn important, anyway.

Very important, as it turns out. The story of Indians from Goa, some of whom grew up with this music and later became producers of it, is another tale waiting to be told; from what I've heard, Goa is rife with both wonderful examples of coexistence and cross-pollination and less-wonderful examples of conflict and exploitation. But in its heyday, Goa was a case of First World spiritual seekers and party animals living in symbiosis with a newly independent Indian state. It was hot, dusty, and rough, and it created a new musical culture.

The early Goa scene took the artificially imposed distinction between 'head' electronic music and 'body' electronic dance music and took a sledgehammer to it, flattening it out into an open experiential field. It showed that EDM could be as transformative, complex, and confrontational as a psychedelic trip; that it could provide, not just an escape from reality, but whole new ways of engaging with it.

In the next post or two, I'll embed my (totally subjective!) top picks from Laurent's playlist.

(1) Fred Disko (whom I know less about) was another pioneering figure in the early eighties; after DJing in Goa and Thailand, he became part of Aussie trance act Psyko Disko.

(2) Eight-Finger Eddie also cited Laurent's health concerns, having inhaled too much dust/sand at outdoor parties. Unfortunate, if that's the case, but understandable.

(3) See this post. Also, something I find interesting about genkigroove's comment is that the attitude towards DJing is the opposite of mainstream rave culture, where the DJ is thought of as a virtuous performer and a musician in their own right, rather than a behind-the-scenes facilitator. Some of this is probably due to the fact that vinyl never hit it off in Goa (too bulky, heat would warp the records), but I think there's a basic philosophical difference in terms of how the party is approached. In Goa, one person would often play all night, something that would seem insufferably egotistical if the 'spotlight' was on the DJ. This difference may help explain why, up until the late nineties, psytrance records were usually not heavily mixed.
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[personal profile] earwall2012-01-24 01:20 am
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Welcome to the former Tumblog mind_like_a_laser!

To kick things off, I'd like to (again) post this remarkable 1989 set by Liaisons Dangereuses. It's quite long, but over the course of its three hours it encapsulates much of what I love about dance music. You'll hear synth-pop (Simple Minds - "League Of Nations"), dark electronics (The Normal - "Warm Leatherette"), EBM (Portion Control - "The Great Divide"), hip-hop (Time Zone - "The Wildstyle"), acid house (The Children - "Freedom"), electrofunk (Newcleus - "Automan"), early breakbeat (Renegade Soundwave - "Cocaine Sex"), and early proto-techno and proto-trance (Pete Shelley - "Witness The Change", Grauzone - "Film 2", Logic System - "Unit").

This music is from a time period when artists were out to make a statement and break boundaries; with limited technology and less divide between musical genres, experimentation and invention were the order of the day. This is strong, strange brew, and a harbinger of things to come in the rave, industrial, and trance scenes of the 90s and beyond.

Credit for the upload goes to http://www.youtube.com/user/Whirlytunes; if you like this, I highly encourage you to peruse more of their channel! I'm linking to this video without permission, and will remove at the OP's request.