We’ve got two more recorded elecTONIC.tv sets for your listening pleasure. One’s an hour of bass-laden dubstep and drum & bass from the very talented DJ Mezzanine, and the other’s a flowing psychill journey from musical connoisseur ebjo.
The first time I heard psytrance, it blew my mind.
I repeat, my mind = blown.
Until one night a long time ago when I was in middle school, my exposure to music had pretty much been limited to my mom’s Yani and Mariah Carey cassette tapes as well as random pop stuff I heard on the radio. That night, I was sitting at home, a bored 6th grader surfing the internet during the time when mp3′s were the hottest new thing in town. I had been randomly clicking around different music sites and stumbled across a list of 100 or so mp3s under a category called “electronic”. After about a half hour of haphazardly clicking through this list, i stumbled upon a track called “Roll Us a Giant” by Infected Mushroom. At that point, my life changed. I must have listened to this track for the next 4 hours straight, looping it over and over again, sitting in my room, paralyzed in amazement by the stuff bombarding my ears. I had no idea that music could have so much energy. I had no idea sounds could be so warped, twisted, and mangled, yet still be musical. I had NO idea music like this could exist. At that moment, I transformed from a casual music listener into a person whose passion is music.
What is Psytrance? Crank up the tempo, take the intentions and feel of 70′s style psychedelic rock and slap it together with trance and you’ve got it: a trippy whirlwind of a genre very distinguishable from everything else. Initially, this music was an offshoot from a style called Goa Trance (popularized in Goa, India in the late 60′s), a very tribal sub-catagory of trance characterized by a common lack of an apparent main melody that often utilized “trippy” and “twisted” sounds, often boasting erie and ominous moods. The classic psytrance scene is absolutely nuts! Cram the hippy crowd into an action packed trance venue, then set off a color bomb full of chakra, and this is what you get! LOOK! just LOOK AT IT!
this is how psyaddicts do it!
Who is Psytrance?Infected Mushroom , Hallucinogen, and GMS , are just a few of the monsters who ran the scene in the late 90′s and early 2000′s, and just so you get a feel for what the heck I’m talking about right now. Here is a couple of psytrance tracks that rocked the scene at the beginning of the new millenium!
Now days, most goa and psytrance artists have moved on from this genre either to other unrelated musical paths OR immersed themselves in a newer offshoot of psytrance called “Full On”. Full On trance is like psytrance’s hyper little brother; It’s got the same trippy and wild vibe, but it’s generally much more structured in terms of user-friendly melodies and track arrangements. Full-On tracks generally have much more “memorable” melodies and have a more aggressive in-your-face type of energy. Today, some people say “psytrance” to refer to all 3 genres: Goa trance, Psytrance, and Full On all together. No problem with that, but it’s cool to be able to make the distinction, as early Goa sounds different from late Psytrance, and Psytrance at its peak in the early 2000′s is very distinguishable from today’s full-on. Here’s some solid full-on examples. Check’m out O_O
- KAIFENG
If you want to drop me a line or chat, then here’s how you can contact me…
web: http://www.myspace.com/kfeng
email – thecreamfilling@gmail.com
aim – GraphX Prince203
