After being invited to submit a retro mix for the Old Dogs, New Tricks programme on Strummer Radio, I thought back to my first experiences in the scene as inspiration. My first years of attending Goa-style parties in mid-90s Tokyo, where I first encountered this genre of electronic music, were formative influences of which...

This film footage from a 1992 party in South Anjuna in Goa features DJ Antaro Ahrens, who would later create and run the brilliant label Spirit Zone. There are several things worth noting here, one being the wide array of musical styles presented, some works being more organic in nature, others being more overtly...

This week – the final Flashback Friday of 2016 – a beloved artist’s 1997 release that encapsulates the essence of our global movement: Shakta’s classic track ‘Spiritual Beings in Physical Bodies’. A versatile musician producing various styles that include breakbeat, world music, psychedelic trance, and more orchestral downtempo music under projects that include Kaya Project,...

This edition, two long-time producers and DJs with distinctive sounds in a classic early track: Kristian Thinning Andersen & Jean Borelli with their amazing Sheyba track ‘Into the Fourth Dimension’. A long-time DJ and producer of various styles, Kristian used the moniker Chris Anderson to get around a contract with Nova Zembla in the...

This week’s Flashback Friday features another formative project from psychedelic trance’s early years with their unique style: KoxBox. While Hallucinogen is often thought of as having produced the first psychedelic trance album with his classic Twisted, KoxBox’s incredible Forever After was released on the Harthouse label (far from being a Goa label) several months...

Today’s Flashback Friday features another incredibly important project on the psychedelic trance scene that was active in the formative years of the movement: the Italian group Etnica. Originally consisting of four members – Max Lanfranconi, Maurizio Begotti, Carlo Paterno, and Andrea Rizzo – who had known each other since the 1980s, Etnica released their first...

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...

This week’s Flashback Friday features a tremendously important project in the evolution of psychedelic trance: the French trio known as Total Eclipse. The band was formed in 1992 by Serge Souque, Stephane Holweck (who was a member of Juno Reactor at the time), and Loic van Poucke. What is most striking about Total Eclipse’s output is the...

This week’s Flashback Friday is a tribute to one of the formative influences in the popular Goa sound, Man With No Name (who does have a name: Martin Freeland). Freeland started out as a techno producer but soon became one of the leading artists in the emerging Goa scene, with a style that fused anthemic...

This week, one of the most popular of all Goa trance tracks: Hallucinogen’s LSD, first issued as a Dragonfly single and then on the legendary Order Odonata compilation in 1994, a year before his ‘Twisted’ album was released on the same label. Simon Posford had been working as an engineer at Youth’s Butterfly Studios...