This week’s Flashback Friday features a collaboration between a few artists who would become major players in the psychedelic trance scene.

As explored last week, in 1993, Joti Sidhu – inspired by the playing of Mike Maguire of Juno Reactor and Serge Souque of Total Eclipse – turned his attention to the emerging Goa sound of electronica. He teamed up with Dino Psaras and Steve Ronan [both of whom would later be members (with Iain Rive) of the project Cydonia] to form the project Ayahuasca. They produced only a few tracks before they went their own ways, one of which is this epic collaboration with Man With No Name that was first released on the Concept In Dance series, ‘Propella’.

The slower tempo in the 130 bpm range was not unusual for the time, and the tension and energy builds remarkably from the inside in this full-power stormer. The oscillating baseline – a typical Man With No Name feature that Joti would evolve into his unique syncopated baselines in his Psychaos tracks – combined with a massive kick, a quasi-distorted upper-frequency melodic arpeggiated figuration, and massive ‘whooshes’ – give the track a tribal march-like feel. The harmonic element used in this track adds a mystical quality, while the whooshes (something that seems to be found less and less in the music of today) on a large system could create the effect of wind or cosmic gusts of energy moving through dancers who find themselves in a transparent state of mind.

A wonderfully eerie, mystical, powerful track from the early days of the scene by a group of musicians who each had a powerful effect on the evolution of the musical form we still enjoy today!