Fluro, altered state, trance dancing is not a new social custom. The ancients have been doing it for centuries and the mid-80s-hippies of Goa used Euro-techno-beats to the same affect. Last year it seemed like London woke up to a new style of partying, something more mystical, cosmic, spiritual. A love sensation beyond the narcissistic, hedonism of pharmaceutical ectasy. This exotic, spacetribe, psychedelia, with its dance-drug-cult passions has hit the mainstream and everyone is in a spin about the politics of trance.
I have been DJing and facilitating, these cyberdelic dance parties for the past ten years in Tokyo, Amsterdam and Goa. A bunch of friends and I, going under the name 'Pagan Productions' were doing trance-dance parties in Europe, in 1987, through to 1991.
For the last few years I have been tailor making tracks, with various collaborators, for these ritualistic, non-rave, digital occult, occassions. Frequencies and beats that transport the dancer into a liberating, rebirth state of ecstatic oneness.
There has always been a difference between rave and trance. Higher minded metatekhno music is about the interface between technology and spirituality.
'Time Traveller' is an operatic, epic, Goa classic. The feeling is like a grand crusade across the universe, surfing on silicon chips of digital sound. I conceived this track with Masayuki Kurihara. This was released, on the 'Masaray-Cosmic Trancer' CD, on the Aussie, alternative electronic music label - 'Psyharmonics'- last year, and is on the recently released 'Flying Rhino' compilation - 'Boyd In The Void'. Also out last year on 'Psyharmonics' was the 'Sonic Sufi-Sacramental' CD, also created with Japanese partners - Susumu Yokota and Take Tokuda. 'Rhythmystec' is a Byron Bay collaboration with Nick Taylor, a former member of 'Prana'. Last year we released the 'Plasmatik' ep on 'Matsuri Records'. There is a new one out soon titled: 'Cathexis-Plutonica'. Since being back downunder new partnerships have been sparked with Nick Endusa and Mark Turner, this very antipodean, psychotropic, trance, project is called 'Insectoid'. There is an EP due out on 'Spirit Zone' records this year. I believe ambient and chill-out vibrations are an essential compliment to the frequency frenzy, dance dervish of trance. Last year, 'Silent Records' released an ambient work I did with Yokota in Tokyo, it is called 'Mantaray - Numinous Island'. Over the last 10 years I have been traversing the Indo Tribe, trance Euro/Asian circuit. The parties in India, Thailand and Bali, have been the inspiration for this recent 'Goa Trance' movement in dance music and style of partying. Now this sound is becoming rather generic, but I am so pleased that it is taking dance, party, music, consciousness into a more transcendent realm. The tropical sunrise parties on the beaches, and in the jungles of Asia, are a completely different ambience, to mix and play music. Much more exotic, mystical, with the potential to be quite transpersonal, spiritual, life-altering experiences, compared to a lot of the, hyped-ego, sensationalist-style-fetish of the club, warehouse, urban, music-culture, aesthetic. The travellers, techno-hippies and otherworldly, dharma, seekers have been the innovators for using this trance sound for more far-reaching experiences in partying.
Being originally from NZ, I left downunder 10 years ago, on an expedition of discovery for the ultimate party. This was realised in Goa, during 86 and 87, when it still was a bit of a secret. In the 70s I was running an art gallery and a punk club and in the early 80s I had been promoting different genders of mixed-media art, alternative dance music in Auckland and Sydney, but it was a bit before its time. On my return to
Aussie, I discoverd a flourishing, psychedelic, trance, scene. Its the 100th monkey affect, its time had come. There is a transcendental, peak-experience quality to these parties, that have the potential to be quite transformational psychic events; catalysing a collective, group-mind, interlocking, which is experienced beyond fashion, sex, ego and commerce (at least in India, where they are free, besides the bribe money to the cops). But equally can be experienced and seen as an escapist, drug-drenched need for chaos; the shadow side of the stiff upper lip of a moralistic society. My work with music and art has gone deeper and encompasses metaphysics and astropsychology.
I see my role as DJ and musician as a kind of channeller of frequencies and beats to massage and activate the unconscious and the superconscious via ecstatic, meditative, trance/dance; which becomes a form of euphoric, collective catharsis. A process of ascension. A vibrational voyage through the energy centers in the body (chakras) and a crowning climax when the first light comes. Astrology is a symbolic language which reveals the correspondence of universal rhythms with life on earth and the individual. In the celestial skies above we presently have Saturn in Pisces and Neptune in Capricorn, this cosmic confirguration is indicative of the politics of transcendental trance and bliss. Pisces rules drugs and music. Saturn symbolises structure and restrictive boundaries.
Trance dance parties are ecstatic 'religious' experiences, which have replaced going to church and social intercourse at the pub. This is quite threatening to the old dominator culture with its heirarchical need for law and order, as you have been witnessing with the criminal justice bill in the UK.
Just before the new year, a big outdoor rave, in Aussie, billed - 'Happy Valley', on a farm near Sydney got cancelled because the local council freaked. Prior to this a 15 year old girl had died from respiratory difficulties after attending a Sydney rave. The media and police speculated that she had overdosed on the drug, 'ecstasy', which she had taken that night.
Sydney has a seething, crusty, subculture, but the growing, underground, party movement is completely up against it with the authorities. Its the most difficult place in all of Aussie to do an alternative party. Sydney seems to have an Olympic Games complex, it is preening itself in preparation to be the host for this event shortly. Law and order must be maintained at all costs. There were fears that the state government would instigate a criminal justice bill in NSW, also. Thus, the scene there is very underground. It has been the sporing ground of a tenacious, shit-stirring collective - 'The Vibe Tribe'- many of its ranks are ex-Brit-pats, who exhort a techno, socialist anarchism. They have lit the fuse on some of the most politically provocative doofs, one of which was 'Frequency', last year, which was ignited in, downtown, Sydney Park, and had the Police out in full baton charge, to break it up. These parties and the 'Jelly Head' ones before them, broke in some of the alternative, techno party action here. Also there is an electronic collective called - 'Clan Analogue', who are a network of musicians, DJs and computor mixed-media-artists who instigate very cool, off the wall events.
In Aussie there is unlimited space, you can take a generator and a hefty sound system out into the expansive nature, or a bit of vast coastline for a blast, and get away with it, and not disturb anybody.
Melbourne is like Euroville in Aussie, with a schizophenic Southern latitude climate to go with it. The scene is very arty and cultured, but it is quite closeted. The best events are connected with the 'Psyharmonics'label, which is based there. Melbourne is more rave friendly than Sydney and has an awesome, multi-leveled, warehouse venue -The Global Village which 'goes off' every weekend with no cop problem. 'Psyharmonics'-'Psychic Harmony'- was a highlight event last year and there are lots of parties up in the hills further north in Victoria, near a lake district. These parties are called 'Earthcore'.
Adelaide has its own scene, and a progressive techno label called - 'Juice'. The sound is a more Detroity, minimalist acidic, groove.
Brisbane is very influenced by the Goa Trance beats radiating out of the Byron Bay, counter-culture, hinterland, which is only two and a half hours away across the NSW/QSLD border. Brisbane is going through a cultural rennaissance. There is a freshness and innocence to the parties there, without the big city, cynacism that has previously pervaded in the southern cities. There are some prime movers and sonic shakers making very exotic, troppo, alternative, trance parties there, and it has its own indigenous techno artists and a maturing style of its own, with some new labels starting up, plus the climate is good all year round for open air doofing and trancing.
Byron Bay is rather mythical and geographically lush, with a very left, greener than green political bent. This freak zone is typically inhabited with colourful, hippyish, traveller, hybrid, subcultures. All living different interpretations of a, back-to-the-source, cyborganic, lifestyle on the edge of the rainforest, in the hills; some in tippis and alternative abodes and farm houses. These rural bush dwellers see themselves as the idealists and purists, many of which purely drop out on the dole in 'paradise' because they can't cope with 'straight' society. The Byron Beach scene is a split between sufer, newage-sanyasan-yuppies, bohemian spiritualists and wholelistic-counterculture-misfits, many of which have drifted in from the Asia traveller circuit or are completely disenfranchised from urban culture. This psychotropic, rainbow belt, east edge, part of Aussie has been notorius for its Goa-style, tribadelic meltdown, beach and forest parties over the last few years.
Its the full sun rise bliss experience in pure, untainted, nature, in an extremely mellow, tolerant, country, environment. There are many DJs, artists, and muscians living in this bubble, enclave. There are starting to be many fusion, feral/techno groups like 'Trance Goddess' and 'Curried Grooves'. The parties are often quite ritualistic with much fire twirling and didgeridoo huffing and puffing, and the participants sport the most off-the- planet hairdoos. Even though the NSW Government is trying to put the squeeze on, the parties still go off. If the cops get called out, its because of a noise complaint, or some uptight, aging hippy is disturbed because they maintain that you have to have a koala impact report done before you make a techno party in the wild.
A party collective, of decorators, musos, djs and performing artists, calling themselves, 'Voyager Productions', orchestrated a monthly party event at the local university, at Lismore, last year. These nights were titled -'Beyond The Brain', and were a resounding success, until some parents of students were disturbed by their teenies' weekend, trance-excess, antics.
This year these mixed media productions, which include huge fire sculptures, will be staged at the Byron Bay Epicenter, which is a cavenous, ex-whaling abbatoir, and symbolic of the enlightened transformations within the regions' burgeoning eco-consciousness. All this summer, twice a week, the Epicenter, which is right on the downtown, glistening golden sand beach, has been the happening venue for trance, doofadelic events such as 'Waves and Particles' and 'Galactic Roots'. Extraterrestrials often appear and in the morning everyone strips off for a splash in the glassy morning surf.
A truelly unique, antipodean alternative, electronic music scene is mutating quite ingenuously here with its own idiosyncratic, exotic flavour to the freakquency tweakages and style of party production. An example of which would be the 'Psyharmonics' double compilation, 'Dancing To The Sound Of The Sun'.
I have spent quite a bit of time in Japan. The best parties there are the 'Equinox' events, organised by 'The Tokyo Tekno Tribe'. Their label is the stable of the most cutting edge Nippon trancewave. Masayuki Kurihara (Masaray, X-tron) was one of the first, and Kurosaki is producing consistently good, full-power, tripped-out-trance and is getting stronger with each release. Check out the recently released 'T.T.T' CD, compiled by 'T.T.T.' resident DJ Kuni.