I Dislike 'psytrance'...change My Mind?

Schpongle is not true Psytrance. His original work as Haluicnogen is. Well it's really "Goa" which is similar. Psyrance evolved from Goa but the have the same idea a psychedelic vibe. I love all his work though. I am lucky to live in one of his major markets for fans in America so he plays often here.

These guys are really getting big. Even seen them play festivals with other mainstream trance artists.


Compare with true Goa from 20 years ago. You can see how the sounds are alike.


Before 1:23 could be Schpongle's sound. You can still hear roots of Psytrance in his work.

 

And DARK is even better

 

Why try to force yourself to groove to a beat that doesn't resonate with your soul, man? Just follow your own flow and vibe with whatever tunes speak to your heart. You don't have to dig psytrance to be a true free spirit, man. Peace and love, always.

 

It can be done well. Los Angeles' Christopher Lawrence used to be a heavyweight in a more traditional sounding trance. That changed at some point and the mainstay now of his catalogue seems to be psytrance.

Psytrance when I've heard it either from Lawrence or Goa Gil and others has been a guided journey. It reminds me of a bad experience, fear emotions, and problematic thinking, stimulating the wrong ethos within the mind, and producing something unmanageable and unsustainable in the listener.

Better times have been Israeli duo Infected Mushroom, DJ Brian's 'Hardesertrance' albums from the nineties and early 2000s, and times when DJ D:Fuse took the decks and delivered with the 'Psychotrance' releases. (EDIT: he featured on one or two of these but there were more DJs if I remember now).

Hard Trance is always problematic though with Psytrance also always being an outlier. It doesn't have productive priorities, and for that reason it isn't entertaining; at least not for me.

If you want a good experience, reach for Infected Mushroom's "Return to the Sauce" (no pun intended you stuffy alcoholics!). If you want to further bolster your catalogue, you'll probably feel good about anything with Goa Gil's name attached. There are also plenty of awesome psytrance compilations from the late nineties and less so from the early 2000s that are aimed at entertainment.

The newer stuff in my professional opinion is not trying to entertain, which to me is an indication either of malicious intent by the artist or that the genre no longer makes social sense and needs time rather than another meaningless hour of counterintuitive gibberish.