Shiva Joerg

Died: October 22, 2025 – 30 Tishrei 5786

Jörg Kessler — DJ, label founder, collaborator, and Goa/psytrance trailblazer — left us on October 22, 2025 (30 Tishrei 5786). The tributes pouring in from peers and fans say it plainly: a pillar of the early Goa movement is gone. Infected Mushroom remembered him as “our old-time dear friend… the Shiva warrior,” and scene outlets marked his passing with reverence for the man who helped define both a sound and a spirit.

Born in Germany, Jörg found his home on the beaches of Goa and the granite hills of Hampi in the late ’80s and early ’90s, where sunrise sets and all-night gatherings became laboratories for a new electronic rite. He was not just present — he was formative: a selector with a feel for momentum and a belief that trance could be both communal ritual and cutting-edge art. From those Indian roots through out the world, he remained a living link to the first wave of Goa trance.

Jörg’s legacy is inseparable from Shiva Space Technology, the label he founded in 1997 (and later expanded into Japan and Ibiza). SST gave early, essential platforms to future heavyweights — Infected Mushroom, Cosma, Skazi, Yahel — and captured the shift from Goa’s melodic mysticism to a modern psytrance edge. To crate-dig through those releases is to hear a movement professionalize without losing its soul.

As an artist, Jörg’s most famous collaboration was Shiva Shidapu, a project with a teenage Erez Aizen (who would later co-found Infected Mushroom). Tracks like India Spirit, Power of Celtic, and Wheels of Time became anthems — melodic, spiritual, and kinetic. Decades later, Power of Celtic continues to be remixed and rediscovered, proof that the DNA Jörg helped encode still pulses through psytrance today.

Part of Shiva Shidapu’s pioneering aura comes from how the music was made and shared. Erez Aizen has said their early trance was composed using Impulse Tracker, a DOS-era program that relied on sample-based sequencing. They distributed their compositions as .MOD, .S3M, .XM, and .IT tracker files — tiny, intricate mosaics of sound traded across BBS boards and FTP mirrors long before streaming existed. This tracker ethos — open exchange, precision programming, and raw innovation — aligned perfectly with Goa’s underground spirit. It allowed Shiva Shidapu’s sound to reach new continents even before they could through very low speed bandwidth.

Jörg’s productions were instantly recognizable: evolving leads woven through modal and Celtic scales, hypnotic basslines that moved like breath, and breakdowns that made the whole dance floor exhale together. His work exemplified the union of German engineering, Indian spirituality, and digital ingenuity — a synthesis that would define trance for decades.

Beyond the studio, Jörg’s role as a connector was just as vital. Through label work, compilations, and mentorship, he helped forge the international network that transformed Goa trance from a loose community into a global movement. Early Shiva Space Technology compilations like The Digital Dance of Shiva remain time capsules of friendships turned into history.

Today, new listeners continue to discover Shiva Shidapu via Bandcamp and Spotify, tracing the sound backward through time to those Goa beaches and tracker files. That endurance — of melodies, ideals, and friendships — is the truest testament to Jörg Kessler’s legacy.
He gave psytrance more than tracks. He gave it ethos: serious craftsmanship, generosity of spirit, and fearless curiosity at the meeting point of technology and transcendence.
May his memory and his music be a blessing.

– Anon