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 fact that they had a tremendously varied range of styles, from harder rock-inspired tracks and high energy night-time stormers to beautifully lyrical morning music. While their sound was always recognizable, they were one of the few projects with such a wide array of styles.

The featured track today, Toxic Caterpillar, was issued in 1995 on Dragonfly single BFLT23 (Total Eclipse released their albums on the Blue Room label, yet also released tracks on Dragonfly and TIP) and was the first Goa trance track to be featured in a feature-length motion picture, Mathieu Kassovitz’s 1997 film ‘Assassin’.

The track features a nasal-sounding synth lead, a gorgeous glass-like sonority, a minor-second trill (something adopted by many producers at the time), creative atmospheric punctuations, and beautifully layered textures. The ascending figurations and myriad synth sounds, as well as the Asian-inspired harmony, together bring a mystical, other-worldly quality to the track.

A magical old-school classic that is ideally placed at dawn as the dark starts to transition to the light!