08/06/2024
As with most electronic music, it all goes back to the hippies. Unlike most electronic music, what came to be known as Goa, Goa Trance or Psytrance started a world away from Sheffield, Frankfurt, Chicago or New York in the Indian state of Goa, an idyllic tropical paradise known for its lack of prohibition against hashish.
Goa is situated fifteen degrees north of the Equator, where temperatures do not drop below eighty degrees for six months of the year As a consequence, Goa dancers were more hard core than the average Glastonbury PLUR-head. Vinyl records melt in the sun, forcing Goa DJs to resort to first cassettes, then Digital Audio Tape. This embrace of technology led to a predilection for electronic bands such as Nitzer Ebb and Front 242, as well as intricately pre-produced sets using the primitive editing technologies of the late 80s and early 90s.
The intricate and ornate orchestrations of classical Indian music combined with the aggressive track selections of what can only be described as Industrial or proto-Industrial music led to a fast, hard style of music by a handful of artists on a handful of labels that, nonetheless, exploded onto the burgeoning techno scene right as ravers everywhere discovered the internet.
Unlike every other genre of Techno, however, Goa Trance quickly peaked and receded. It is widely accepted that as a genre, Goa existed from 1994 to 1997, with a lingering four-year hangover as pop culture endlessly regurgitated a flash that it had barely caught in a pan. But if you listen closer, you will hear the bifurcation:
Many Goa artists and DJs retreated into the Industrial batcave from whence they came, where they continue to influence a forgotten but vibrant underground scene. Many more mellowed and evolved into Psybient, one of the least-known but most-listened genres of electronic music today -
But that’s a whole ‘nuther discussion.
Goa Trance, we hardly knew ye. And yet, we still hear your refrains thirty years later… especially here, On The Edge.
11 track album
