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 previously (it could rightly be argued that Juno Reactor’s Transmissions is the real first Goa album, though many find their wide-ranging style beyond what became ‘Goa’).

The Danish project first featured Frank E Madsen and Peter Candy, who were later joined by Ian Ion of The Overlords (who helped mix a lot of their work). Their early work, such as the opening track of Forever After, ‘Point of No Return’, features beautifully aerated synth sounds, a wonderful harmonic and tonal framework, a heart-chakra level kick, and an incredibly meandering storyline that is at once holistic and structured.

The project would start releasing tracks on TIP as Psychopod in 1996 (later changing their name to Saikopod – ‘Saiko’ in Japanese means ‘awesome’, and the group had great success in that country) and membership would evolve (Peter left in 1998), as would their sound, which tended towards funkier, groovier, abstract, tribal soundscapes. Frank E released a new album as KoxBox in 2015 (fantastic stuff!) and Ian has been remastering the original Psychopod files (as well as The Overlords).

Their early sound, however, was a unique and important component of the early psychedelic trance language, providing a fascinating combination of celestial, alien-like sonorities with more organic melodic sounds. The opening track of the album, Point of No Return, features an incredible storyline that takes a long meandering journey with seamless synth lines, gorgeous effects, varied articulation to melodic elements, and unmistakable groove, which despite the title returns to the opening figurations of the track – a long, trippy journey through the cosmos back to the present moment. 

Timeless music!