This week’s Flashback Friday features a formative artist with an immediately identifiable sound signature: Joti Sidhu aka Psychaos.

Involved in the London underground music scene in the early 1990s, Joti turned his attention to the psychedelic trance scene after heard Mike Maguire of Juno Reactor and Serge Souque of Total Eclipse in 1993. After making a few Ayahuasca tracks with Dino Psaras and Steve Ronan that year, he started up his solo project Psychaos – which appears to be the first time ‘psy’ was used in an artist name in the scene.

Joti brings to his tracks an unparalleled groove, with syncopated (varying from the 4/4 beat) baselines that give a strong rhythmic momentum and a funky quality. His tracks are always hypnotic, with loops whose melody and rhythm are utterly captivating, resulting in both an introspective and uplifting vibe.

Soundbeams is one of his first released tracks, which appeared in the 1995 compilation ‘Deep Trance and Ritual Beats’, produced by Return To The Source: deep, growling, driving, yet also funky and expansive in a self-reflective way. Utter brilliance!