A New Beginning

[AmithabaBuddha]

Im posting this here cause i feel the same as Ukiro is feeling and i want to share it with people that maybe feel the same... ..

congragulations for his great article Ukiro.

 

 

 

A New Beginning

 

 

 

This is a rant. It's a largely incoherent and poorly structured attempt at putting words on my feelings towards the trance scene as it currently stands, both culturally and in terms of the actual music, and, primarily, my DJ'ing. It's a bleak view, far from the new agey positivism that often is mixed into the psy-trance stew. I feel that if things will ever change for the better, we need to stop with the PLUR-infested apologeticism and speak our true feelings, so this is straight from my heart. I try to be somewhat constructive here and I do think I come to a somewhat positive conclusion, so please try to get through the whole thing.

 

 

I've been listening to electronic music since 1991. That's not saying I've been an expert in this field since then (quite far from it, in fact) nor that I am one now - but I'd still dare say I have a rather respectable knowledge in what is commonly known as Goa Trance, having bough such records since 1994. I arranged techno & trance parties with some friends starting in 1995 and started DJ'ing in 2001, after finally managing to cut back at buying records for long enough to afford some mixing gear. While I strongly recent being labeled a raver or trancer, I guess in a lot of ways, it is what I am. It's the music of my life, at least so far. Picking up DJ'ing after all those years as a listener and dancer was a natural step, as I wanted to share the fantastically intense experiences I had recieved through this music. The psychedelic trance dance experience was something I wanted to make reachable for more people, and I was at a point where I felt I had gained enough experience in this field to be able to add my own accumulated knowledge and ideas into it and offer a new flavour to the party crowds. Typical for me, and probably for most enthusiasts entering a new field, I put tremendous amounts of effort into every aspect of my DJ'ing. Recording mixes and listening over and over trying to improve technique and storytelling, planning my sets sometimes weeks ahead, adapting to the time slot, venue and rest of the lineup. I was doing what I felt I wanted the DJ's to do when I was just another guy on the dancefloor. To me, psychedelic trance dance is dead serious. It's not "partying", it's not just dancing to a different type of music; Whether you call it spiritual or religious, this music can do very powerful things to the human mind, be it open and the setting appropriate. I chose to take the scientific approach on explaining this, by decoding and analyzing the musical structures and their effects on the psyche. Over 10 years after discovering this type of electronic trance music, I still keep learning about its effects and potential.

 

The human hearing is technically far inferior to that of many other mammals, and how it connects to our intellect is incredibly primitive. The enormously intense emotional effects sound can have on us is proof of this; abstract smells or sights doesn't stand a chance against sounds when it comes to altering our state of mind. The decoding process seems to short circuit and the brain releases all sorts of signal chemicals depending simply on what frequencies we hear and in what combinations and patterns. While visual art certainly has a strong entertainment value, I have yet to find proof that it can make as lasting impressions as those of music. As much as this is completely useless and possibly even a handicap from a crude Darwinian perspective, the strong emotional response to sound gives us humans the possibility to alter and control our bodies releases of neurotransmitters simply through music. This is something I find enormously exciting and interesting, partially due to my own medical condition which, withough going into too much personal detail, is sorted under autism and thus is a personality disorder with occationally strong emotional effects. In my struggle to understand how my mind and the world works I have gained huge pleasure and reward through this music, that the desire to pass it on drove me to start DJ'ing.

 

When reading on-line articles about the golden era of Goa parties (i.e. in the physical location in India), which can vary from the early seventies to the mid nineties depending on who's telling the story, something that almost always gets a mention is the collective trance, the dancing to music tailored and mixed/performed for the purpose of bringing the audience into a higher state of mind - entire dancefloors just snapping into the same brain wavelenghts all at once, swaying back and forth like a unit, just like the wind creating a single big wave in a field of crops. The performers - whether a DJ behind his DAT decks in 80's or 90's, or a psychedelic rock band in the 70's, didn't play individual tracks like some jukebox of meat and bones. They unravelled a story, telling a tale though their choice of tracks and progression, leading the dancers along previously untravelled emotional paths. To quote Goa Gil, "[it's] not just a disco under the coconut trees, it’s an initiation".

 

The evolutionary step from guitars and flutes to electronic music makes sense from the perspective that unearthly sounds are more suited at evoking unearthly emotions, while at the same time there is something to be said for the psychological effects of the more natural overtones of acoustic instruments. The human voice, which is practically impossible to mimic perfectly through synthesis, has the strongest effect on us of all types of sounds, when used right. Still, while it may be an aquired taste, for me personally electronic music can do more to my head that traditional music can, given that the composition and recording is of equal quality. So when the first DJ's started bringing electronic music to the winter season in Goa I think it was a step in the right direction for those eager to explore the human mind outside of its normal range and not just, well, have a disco under the coconut trees.

 

But somewhere between the mid 80's with the introduction of electronic sounds and todays state of the psychedelic trance dance scene, something has gone horribly wrong. The whole purpose of the music was, from the beginning, that of inducing trance, hypnotising the listener & dancer through whirling patterns. The psychedelia and mindfuckery was initially crude at best, but evolved along with the scene and refined itself with the increasing potential of the electronic gear available to the producers. Along any evolutionary path there are bound to be branches, exploring alternative routes and ideas. But in psychedelic trance, the entire main river has decided to flow off into the land of simplistic clichés, boozy party music and a strife for mass appeal through lowest common denominators. Although still refered to as psy-trance, there is nothing psychedelic nor trance-inducing about it any more. While everyone is free to make whatever music they desire, it's astonishing how finding music that deserves the name psy-trance has become nearly impossible. Everyone forgot their roots, misplaced their roadmaps and abandoned their goals all at once, it seems. Ritualistic trance dance parties became colourful disco's and asexual, introvert journey dancing was swiftly replaced by shallow socializing hoping to score with the music as a mere backdrop. All of this may be a pessimistic exaggeration as there are still alternative branches that are alive and well, but I can't help wondering how something as comparatively noble and deep could be knocked off its throne by the shallow joke nonsense that is psy-trance's current main stream, the so called full-on. Seeing the standards plunge into the putrid abyss of mediocricy makes me very, very sad.

 

I want the trance back. The psychedelia, the shut-your-eyes-and-travel-within-music, the music I came for in the first place. I find very little of this among the new releases, so I've been on a crusade to play the older stuff, the great music of the nineties that I still find to be artistically superior despite such nitpicks as louder background noise and weaker kick drums. I've had certain amounts of success, too - Waking up the day after a party and seeing a forum thread grow page after page with praise for the party and my name being the only one mentioned has fed me with the energy to go on, convincing me that there are people who hear the difference, who still come for the music and the dance, and not for sitting by the side of the dancefloor for a few hours, chatting up someone of the opposite sex and occasionally nodding to the music. There will always be people who want something more, who sees the doors to these amazing experiences and are willing to accept the help of people like me in going through them. But sadly, the more half-assed parties I play at, the more I realize what a puny minority we're in. The party scene, at least in Stockholm (and I would assume, the rest of Sweden), has crumbled into some sort of breeding school for indentity-seeking kids with a weak spot for bright colours and corny "stomp music" by artists operating under childish names like Infected Mushroom or Alien Project. What was once the aesthetics of psychonaut freaks devoted to pushing their minds and ideas to new frontiers through music, dance and drugs has now been mainstreamed into just another teen subculture. Pepsi or Coke? Goth or Raver? Leno or Letterman? Punk rocker or Trance stomper? There is nothing alien about it anymore, nothing exotic or extreme. And thats not because society has caught up, but because psy-trance has degenerated and adapted in what I can only guess is the result of an infiltration by commercialism, non-psychedelic drugs and people who never understood the term trance in the first place. Trance has been taken over and it's treasures thrown overboard by cultural pirates who failed to appreciate its value.

 

As I've mentioned, there are people who "get it", that see things through eyes similar to mine. People who don't come to show off their new, pricey fluoro pants or fancy dance moves. Those who come for a deeper experience, to dance themselves into a state of mind otherwise unreachable.These are the people I want to play for, but with me taking whatever gigs come my way I also play at many parties where pretty much noone is there for the trance dance, and no matter how much I prepare for my sets, no matter how much effort I put into finding those magic combinations of music, they still won't care. So for each set I care less and I'm eventually ending up slapping together routine sets of tried and tested tracks mixed with insufficient effort, practically making me stoop to the same low as the DJ's I originally wanted to raise the bar for. I've become what I set out to fight in the first place.

 

So this is my conclusion after thinking about it for a few months and after writing this - I will no longer take just any gig as long as it pays. I will value my artistic integrity and try to give the trance dance experience the respect and attention it deserves by only taking gigs for organizers that feel right, when I feel right myself. I'm not a jukebox or some kid competing to play the latest tracks, DJ'ing to be cool. I'm a DJ trying to guide the dancers through a world of trance, emotions and psychedelia inside their heads. I can only do this if I put my full effort into it, and that in turn requires me to recharge my spiritual batteries and my lust for trance inbetween each event, chosen carefully to avoid the generic crap. I was once under the belief that if I only showed up with my old records at any trance party people would get it and the world would be a better place, but I've come to realize that some people don't want to be reached by this, and my efforts come to much better use elsewhere. So no more highschhol disco-style parties for me, no more "I could use the measly 50 euro payment" gigs (I'm charging more now, partially to avoid getting booked for crap events). I play psychedelic trance music for the brain, activated through the dancing body, and I do it for people who want to dance themselves into trance. The others can dance to something else, I hereby stop caring. It's my new years resolution.

 

 

/Ola, January 4th, 2005

 

My message to DJ Ukiro :

Dont lose your hope , Goa will come back again im sure of it , i as an artist and one of the pure goa artists in portugal i felt the same when i played at the parties i played live but people simply ignnored me so i quit playing for them , ill keep producing and working for the Goa movement , i just hope that someday it will grow up and i hope someday i or someone can make a 100% goa party with real Goa people and bring the real trance and psykadelia spirit again.

until then im and i will be always with you as long Goa lives.

 

GOERS UNITE!!!!!