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 melodies, upbeat figurations, repeated-note baselines (which could have a deeper effect than one might initially think), and melodic stems that mirror one another, creating a ‘call and answer’ pattern.

In early collaborations, he worked with Joti Sidhu of Psychaos (who spoke to me reverently about him) and Dino Psaras (with whom he has recently spent time in the studio), influencing them both strongly (I will feature one of their collaborations in coming weeks); he also did studio time with The Infinity Project, co-producing their classics Superbooster, Brain Bokka, and Alien Airport. While there are those who have found the clubby influence in Freeland’s style to be superficial, there was a great deal of depth in his music – ‘Tarantula’ from his 1998 album [though it was produced in 1997] is an absolute head-bender – and we would do well to remember that the uplifting quality of his music should be an essential ingredient in psychedelic trance and in the journey presented by a DJ.

The track presented here – Energy Level 137 – was released on the Phantasm label in 1994, at a time when Freeland was also issuing tracks on Dragonfly, Concept in Dance, and TIP Records, and it has often been missed by fans of the genre since it only appeared once unmixed on CD. I used to hear it a lot in my first year of partying in Tokyo in 1994-1995 at the legendary ‘Odyssey’ parties when Jay (aka DJ Spoo) played it frequently. It was in the first mix tape he gave me, and I paid tribute to him by sequencing it much as he did in my Global Goa Party 1995 mix.

This track has all the classic hallmarks of MWNN’s early style: an uplifting anthemic melodic subject, lots of whooshes, wonderfully layered polyphonic voicing (all the varied parts feature distinct instrumentation yet fit together beautifully), up-and-down figurations, and geometrical arpeggiated patterns. If you listen closely, you can hear skillfully placed echoes and pre-echoes to some of the patterns, and several of the ‘lines’ can sound like voices speaking an alien language (another key element to successful psychedelic music). While there are shadows of club music elements (which if anything made his music more accessible to those ‘on the fence’ about this more psychedelic genre), Freeland successfully cranks things up several notches from the more superficial medium, creating an uplifting stormer that reflects his musicality and craftsmanship.

A classic track by one of the formative masters of the genre!