Gil The DJ aka Goal Gil grew up in California through the sixties and was attracted to the San Francisco concert scene ‘s sound & light shows. By 1969 he grew fed up with the number of junkies who had crowded into San Francisco so he moved to India, where he encountered the sadhus – Hinduism’s wandering holy men. Gil followed them around to live in caves and he even wore the same robes. He continued to make his way to Goa every winter where he banged on acoustic guitars at drum circles. Eventually a man named Alan Zion smuggled a Fender PA to Goa and live guitar and pre-recorded band music became the soundtrack.
The crucial transition from guitars to electronic dance music came in 1983 when two French DJs named Fred & Laurent got sick of rock & reggae music. This was around the same time that “techno” had been proclaimed as well as “house music.” These two French dj’s used two cassette decks to cut and paste nightlong journeys of industrial music, electronic rock, Euro-disco and house. The mixes were designed to amplify the experience for psychedelic partygoers. Soon these dj’s were able to acquire underground music from the west. Sven Vath, a German trance producer/dj, showed up in Goa as one of the first booked nationally known dj’s.
Unfortunately the partygoers were not transitioning entirely well to full-on techno. They were very attached to Bob Marley and Santana and The Rolling Stones. The dj’s who were playing primarily techno were often assaulted by people demanding rock music. Goa DJ’s were soon able to plug the functional needs of heavy psychedelic trance dancers into the musical picture. Within a few years a distinct sound emerged. DJ Laurent admitted in an interview that people took a very strong disliking to electronic dance music in Goa, but once a formula was conceived for producing music that catered to people on psychedelic drugs there was a better response.
Towards the end of the 1980s the tracks played at Goa parties were produced primarily in the West with the colony of Goa in mind. Some trance records were made in Goa but not many. As time went on the evolution of the Goa trance state of mind continued as the word spread about the parties in this tiny state. Artistic developments began to emerge as visual artists displayed tapestries and paintings at events. Such art was visually stimulating to those who delved into the entire experience of “psy-trance.” The hypnotic, pulsing melodies & rhythms of psytrance mixed with lights, visual artwork displays and the hallucinations caused by psychedelic drugs created a blend created out of this world experiences for those who succumbed to the experience.
In 1993, Juno Reactor released their first single titled “Laughing Gas.” Shortly following this came a full on release titled “Transmissions” which is considered to be one of the first official goa trance releases. They also remixed a tune which became the theme for the Mortal Kombat movie in 1995.
By the end of the nineties, the psytrance culture had developed a large following worldwide. The music was not considered maintstream and often events were hosted which catered specifically to psytrance. By the year 2000 an Israeli group called Infected Mushroom became one of the most widely known acts of this nature. Their breakthrough album came just a year earlier titled “The Gathering.” Other artists such as Astral Projection, Hallucinogen, Man With No Name and Shpongle had become popular. Around that same time frame a record label named Tip World was pressing releases by artists like Logic Bomb, Yahel, Bio-Tonic, and Absolum.
While psytrance had gained much popularity, the genre was not a major feature at raves in Europe or America. It was also very rare to find a club that catered to psytrance. The genre was very limited to festivals, however this was not the case for countries like Brazil, Israel, and India. Psytrance in those countries became part of the majority of genres featured at events, if not the most widely represented by dj’s and show promoters of their regions.
The visual artwork at these events which included paintings and tapestries were often created using fluoro (fluorescent paint). The fluorenscent paint was used to reflect off of blacklights. The artwork often associated topics like aliens, Hinduism, or other religious images. The religious images were often eastern traditions. Mushrooms, Shamanism, and technology were also other topics used in the artwork.
Investigating deep into the spiritual realm of psychedelic drugs such as mushrooms indicates that human beings have been combining music and hallucinogenics since the Paleolithic Period. The oldest representation of mushrooms were produced as rock paintings in the Sahara Desert which date back to about 5000 BC. Images of enormous mythological beings of human or animal form were often depicted side by side with a host of small horned and feathered beings in dancing poses. One of the most important rock painting scenes was found in the Tin-Tazarift rock art site at Tassili, depicting a series of masked figures in line and dressed as dancers currounded by geometrical designs. Each dancer in the painting is holding mushroom-like objects with parallel lines extending from the mushroom into the head of the dancer.
In modern tribal areas the concept of shamanism is still prevalent. Shamanism is an ancient form of healing but shamans also excercise using hallucinogens to invoke shamanic spiritual journeys. The connection that we have in modern times at festivals and parties where hallucinogens are prevalent is that we are carrying on a tradition that dates back to prehistoric times. The psytrance methodology encompasses both musical and spiritual aspects of the rave scene, taking it to a level that is not necessarily the norm for other genres.
This mix was recorded sometime in 2002. In early 2001 a dj named Swayd from my hometown introduced me to psytrance at a rave I hosted called "Let's Roll." Since then I followed many psytrance parties and collected records. My aspiration was to become a psytrance dj around that time but my collection remained fairly limited. I made several mixes just for fun but never followed through. This is one of the better compilations that I put together.
Walhalla - Beathe In
Talamasca - Telepathic Atmospheres
Logic Bomb - Frequent Flyers
Opus Magnum - Three Elements (Mental Remix)
Delirious - Mushroom God
Alien Project - Artificial Beings
Atomic Pulse - Psychoactive
Absolum - Recovery
Twister - Venom
POTS & Chris Organic - Tuna Salad
Pixel - Black In, Black Out
