Today for Flashback Friday, another formative influence in the evolution of psychedelic trance: Prana, with their classic track ‘Starchild’.

Prana’s first incarnation featured Tsuyoshi Suzuki and Nick Taylor, who had previously written music under the project names ‘Blissed’ (with Takehiro Tokuda) and ‘Taiyo’. Tsuyoshi and Nick were living in Tokyo and were profoundly influenced by parties spent dancing all night to DJ Kudo’s revolutionary electronica sets at the nightclub Yellow in the Nishi-Azabu district of the city.

Tsuyoshi and Nick would move to London to collaborate on tracks as Tsuyoshi founded his label Matsuri Productions, and after Nick moved to Australia in 1995, Tsuyoshi paired up with Andy Guthrie for the second incarnation of the Prana project. The early tracks, however, have a particularly distinctive energy, with a cosmic, otherworldly, cyber feel.

Starchild, which was on the flipside of the Kiba EP in 1995 and later was included in the first Prana album ‘Cyclone’, features many of the trademark Prana elements: a fast tempo, laser-like sounds, a nasal-sounding minor-second trill, tribal drum effects, dissonant figurations, and an uplifting mood that seems to portray the night sky filled with shooting stars.

The spoken sample in this track came about because Nick’s son Jyaz, at the age of about 2 or 3, was listening to some music at home when he said ‘This isn’t music – this is energy’ – hence the name Starchild in his honour. (Nick recorded the sample with his own voice, however.) And Prana’s music certainly is the definition of ‘energy’!

An ecstatic, cosmic, psychedelic masterpiece from two profoundly influential musicians!

And if you missed the report about the first ever live performance featuring the three musicians of Prana that took place in Tokyo New Year’s Eve 2013/14, check it out here – https://djsolitare.com/prana-re-generation/