Today’s Flashback Friday features a track by another formative artist in the psychedelic trance scene with a highly individual sound: Quadsep by Voodoo People.

Paul Jackson, the brilliant musician behind this project, released his first single in 1993. In addition to solo tracks as Voodoo People and Genetic, Jackson also did some terrific collaborations with Joti Sidhu (an unreleased track called ‘Compound’ is the one Joti opened his epic Boom set with a few years back) and Nick Doof (with the awesome project name ‘Voodoof’).

The current track comes from the first Blue Room compilation ‘Outside The Reactor’, issued in 1995. The booklet notes hinted at a Voodoo People album in the works and indeed one had been assigned a job number (I have a Blue Room spreadsheet of issued and planned releases that indicates that this was scheduled to be their 7th release, though that catalogue number would eventually go to Psychaos’ single ‘Science Fiction/They Tried to Grab Me’). Unfortunately a Voodoo People album was never released on any label and Paul told me in 2012 that he got rid of all of his DATs, so unless the tracks for the planned album got shared out, it looks like some of his brilliant work may have been lost …

The title of this track has often been misunderstood and misspelled. Quadsep (as opposed to Quad-step) refers to a 4-step purification process for LSD whereby chemists dissolve and recrystalize the LSD four separate times to remove impurities left over from its initial synthesis (the ‘sep’ in the title refers to ‘separation’, while the ‘quad’ is ‘four’).

The track itself features a robustly-EQ’d syncopated baseline that has a clear voice-like quality, over which are placed a number of figurations of varied textures yet simple and uplifting harmonic structures that together produce a kaleidoscopic effect with a euphoric tribal feel. The engineering and voicing of this track are remarkably different from the norm even at the time, reflecting Jackson’s personal approach and distinctive sonic framework.

A remarkable, unique track from a creative and important producer of Goa’s heyday!