Photo by SuperblastaPhoto by digitalex
I recall reading on the refreshingly irreverent psyreviews.com about an unconfirmed report that the former Portuguese colony of
While the renaming of the exotic locale in the East which gave birth to an electronic music juggernaut now convulsing with sub-genres, neo-styles, fluid labels and more DJ name changes than can be tracked by the human eye, might capture the ambience of the particularly cosmopolitan sophistication of a dance music scene with counter-cultural pretensions, what would we relabel the Indian state in a further five years? Will ‘Progressive’ still be progressive?
The issue of commercialised communitas aside, the quip evokes an underlying dilemma. That is, while sound might evoke sensations similar to the original experience, may even be engineered in efforts to reproduce it, and party goers might seek to recapture the original experience, sound doesn’t tend to be experienced in exactly the same way again.
Photos by Vapours
Though this seems the case for all musical experience, a ‘progressive’ music is a (sub)cultural recognition of this tendency. To become committed to the progressive experience, literally living on the edge of the progression – where nothing remains the same – is to commit to a lifestyle as ephemeral, perpetually upgradeable and permanently unfinished as the intended character of the sound.
While ‘progressive’ is (arguably) impossible to capture due to its necessarily shifting audiotronics, and variable interpretation, I’ve recently encountered something of a rock in the quicksands of the present, a mountain range towering above the arctic tundra of Goa trance, the wastelands of ‘full on’ and much of which now holds ‘Progressive’ pretensions – a veritable Gibraltar of the genre. You can’t deny the body’s desire to respond with the wildest trouser-splitting gesticulations known to human-kind. Blue Planet Corporation’s (Gabriel Masurel) Cosmic Dancer performed this trick on me and, unlike my pants, should withstand the intense pressures of time and interpretation (well, perhaps a couple of years) marking a ‘novelty wave’ in the progression. This will be the soundtrack of a remake of Dr Seuss’s The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T. Or it should be. Performed in the right context, such functional dreamsonics, familiar yet novel, effect
a strange gnosis. And such was the experience of the uncanny enveloping me in Paradise Canyon on the fast flowing Koprulu Canyon River near the Mediterranean city of Antalya in Southern Turkey for Soulclipse, a celebration of the eclipse, when, as Hallucinogen appeared to have flicked the switch, the sun was engulfed by the moon and Venus burned bright in the clear mid-afternoon sky. A three minute cosmic snapshot, the dark flash of which left an indelible imprint on the thousands of naked retinas belonging to the howling massive (around 7-8000 people) - all the weirdest kids in the classroom.Photo by deadreamer
et times gone into orbit, the main stage was operational by Friday night. In the meantime, the Liquid stage and chill – a lush area on the river, graced by a gallery of amazing art works and tall luminescent mushrooms - were puls
ing. Given the many difficulties holding an event of this kind and magnitude in this location, my hat’s off to the Indigokids for building the context for the vibe.
Photo by deadreamer
And this brings me back to my rather indulgent tangent. The Zen phrase ‘nothing remains the same’ indicates that the trance experience is as much about permanence as it is about movement. There appears to be a deep-seated paradox at work here. Perhaps the closest we might get to resolving this is demonstrated by the commitments of those who rise from their deep-seatedness and gravitate in numbers to
aesthetically evolved nodes of progression manifesting at the earthly junctures of major celestial events across the globe. And perhaps the nearest and most eloquent designation for the optimum experience sought within what is a largely non-textual and non-vocal socio-sonic space (i.e. the dance floor), is the phrase identifying an experience most recognise but are hard pressed to articulate any further: the good ‘vibe’. These parties reconstitute the sixties ‘vibe’ in what is possibly its most evolved contemporary state (regardless of whether Vibrasphere is playing). Having made transit to such sites of ineffability at remote locations in a fashion resembling the now mythical Goa Full Moon parties, habitués will camp on the edge of the progression, remastering themselves under the pressure of the bass. At least that’s the potential, for these are uncertain realms pregnant with possibility – digital-chemical interfaces whose outcomes cannot be predicted. Emersed in black light baths and probed by laser light, undone by the crankingest sounds of unreleased ‘acid’, even as sensoriums are aswamp in liquid LSD, the interfaced and off-their-faced yield to the threshold, potentially re-programmed in the mix.
Photo by Marc
Photo by Vapours
In a place where everything potentially unravels, nothing happens. Perhaps this explains why the experienced labrats of these digital-chemical laboratories are troubled describing – and maybe don’t seek to describe - what they’ve experienced (beyond statements of ‘avin it’, being ‘out there’, going ‘crazy’, ‘mad’ or in near-heroic tales of munterment). And perhaps this in part also explains why trance critics are so disapproving of the apparent vacuous, empty and ‘non-politically’ progressive characteristics of psy-trance. Is Progressive little more than a treadmill? Trance festivals psychedelic theme-parks? Mindless escapades? Given the branded bottling and resale of ‘experience’ as Trance (btw. participants were required to sacrifice up to 180 euros before entering Souldclipse), you can’t ignore the criticism, but there is something wearing about the moralism in the motives of detractors, replicating in some ways those who’ve mobilised against subcultural contexts for accessing alternative states of consciousness, who’ve sought to eliminate or domesti cate the ‘savage trance’ (a term attributed to researcher of Brazilian and African trance rituals, Roger Bastide, in Frank Gauthier’s translation in his chapter in Rave Culture and Religion), triggering epidemics of puritan self-discipline along the way.
Photo by digitalex
eophytes, they are travellers who, in a fashion consistent with those populating what D’Andrea calls the transnational techno ‘freak-scape’, do not move. Perhaps it’s just this promise of an indescribable familiarity, that drives these vibe-fanatics to converge from points across the globe – like Israel, Japan, Russia, Italy, Brazil, Sweden, Poland, Peru, Spain - since for them, nothing is sacred.Photo by Robin
In revisiting such an experience, trancers relive a time-out-of-time frame so often reported to parallel the experience of ancestral forebears who, if traced back far enough, are believed common to all (as far back at least as those high times when primitives enjoined effervescent happenings in Day Gloed torsoes). An ongoing commitment, the party constitutes a cosmic housekeeping ritual, ultimately ensuring that nothing does in fact remain the same.
The total solar eclipse psy-trance festival, Soulclipse, was such a return. Many had stepped through space and time from previous eclipse festivals like Outback Eclipse in South Australia in Dec 2002 (I travelled from Istanbul and camped with one of the makers of the documentary film The Outback Eclipse Story, Gareth Moon). Perhaps this was because many of the pilgrims to
It takes planning, resources and a good social support base to potentiate abandonment. Campsites and campfires are nexus points for exchange and support – like that provided by the crew I travelled and camped with in
Photo by digitalex
Possibly the biggest Aussie (and Kiwi) landing since Gallipoli (around 700 Australians present and most of those from Melbourne Antalya
Photo by Kata
Photo by Kata
Photo by Marc
Thanks to Superblasta, deadreamer, Digitalex, kata, Marc, Mfractal, Michinio, Robin and Vapours for all the eyecatching images. Tristan White has an excellent and amusing photo and video journal), and MALEX has great shots (see Performance section especially).
