Brainmachines – Psychedelic Trance

GLOBAL

Notice the mushroom shaman with the mushroom visions. 
These paintings are found all over Northern Africa, where 15,000 years ago the people lived on mushroom dotted plains that remained after climactic shifts made the fertile lands disappear and forced the jungle dwellers to strike out on their own and further refine language.

Archaic Trance Parties
Global trance is proof positive of Terence McKenna’s 21st Century Archaic Revival, spontaneously generating in Israel, India, London, Australia, Japan, Thailand, South America, and North America.

604 is a new term for GOA, as the letters will start looking like the numbers while hallucinating.

When Brits find a new hideaway go to vacation, hear new music and do massive drugs, there begins a new dance music scene. The local environment blends with mind-altering drugs to fuse into a lifestyle. Trance of course began when British vacationers in Goa India took hallucinogens and had a party and brought back the vibe, much as Balearic Acid House devotees brought took this new Ecstasy drug in Ibiza in 1988 and brought it back.  
Israelis, being the well travelled, 24-7 Vietnam environment worldly kibitzers that they are, started to Go to Goa and, seeking a release from always feeling the pressure to blow somebody’s head off with rubber bullets, ate it right up, and in a reverse diaspora cultural export, disseminated it throughout the globe.       

Terence McKenna speaks from the grave: “The music and the trance-dance drug-taking situation is the establishment of a ritual space outside the conventions of ordinary society, that is the new shamanism. And that’s again what makes it so suspect in the eyes of the establishment. They sense that this is something they can’t get a handle on and control, or that it takes them some time to get a handle on – they have to figure out how to co-opt each generation in a new way. My generation was co-opted in a very crude way, with money.
Your generation… The Establishment’s not interested in that, they’d rather keep the money for themselves. I’m hoping that the new trance-dance culture has enough integrity to resist being folded into commercialism and ordinary mass cultural entertainment. But we shall see.

Throw in Cap’n Crunch off in Goa wowing the masses with Goa Gil, and rest assured, it’s fractalizing outward. 

604 is a term for GOA, as the letters will start looking like the numbers in a chaotic environment – or on a chaotic email list.

In 2002 Greece was the place to be. 2001 had Morocco for New Years 2001… the Israelis were missing because of the troubles in Palestine.  Hats off to Amin, a true hero of global trance. 

 Trance has been spontaneously generating in Israel, Mexico, and Brazil.

The gathering of the tribes in Zambia for Solipse in 2001 made Morocco look positively softcore.

Here is a Full Moon Party in Thailand

Trance in Israel

Why have the Israelis taken to Trance? Israelis, being the well travelled, 24-7 Vietnam environment  worldly kibitzers that  they are, started to Go to Goa and Thailand and, seeking a release from always feeling the pressure to blow somebody’s head off with rubber bullets, ate it right up, and in  a reverse Diasporic cultural export,  desseminated it throughout the globe.  Click HERE for the full story on  Trance in Israel right now.   

Return to the Source became the  dominant force in London, run by Phil Roth and others.

TRANCE IN THE NEW WORLD

The lands of the New World had the longest time to develop an ecosystem outside the meddling hands of humans, which are only a recent addition, and it shows in the biodiversity in plants and animals and vibe.
Exogeneous DMT and Psilocybin mushrooms are both native to these lands, and it shows. Europe on the other hand had NO psychedelics – all the toxins like datura, mandrake, belladonna, (all of which offer dark truly demonic experiences – witches would rub datura on broomsticks and masturbate with them, ergo the Flying Brooms) and ergot mold causing hysteria with infected wheat (St Vitus Dance, Salem, etc etc), the “lesser” mushroom amanita muscaria all do not really count as psychedelics. So native Europeans had no other route to true enlightenment than Christianity. Anyway this is a report on the music.

Psychedelic trance is most actualized in New York, San Francisco, Nantucket, Philadelphia, Toronto, Los Angeles, Burning Man, and Florida, to a lesser extent.  Texas even has a nascent scene.

The rest of the world is ahead of the U.S. on this one, so  the less cosmopolitan an area, the less influence trance will be.

Getting Laid?  Not Here..
Some American girls get Sand Fever and troll the parties for the abundant Israeli men, who are somehow harder and harsher than their American counterparts, whom they make look like innocuous Swedish men.  As mentioned before, the Israeli girls are hard but not impossible to get for an American man unless they can deal with being a  Goy Boy Toy.

The rest of the world is ahead of the U.S. on this one, so the less cosmopolitan an area, the less influence trance will be.

The re-establishment of a true psychedelic neuronautic movement is impossible to ignore, especially as it has exceedingly refined and blended the definition of “counterculture” and “technology.”

Right Now
There is currently a trance takeover in process, with trancers shaking up a storm at the Northeast Rainbow Gatherings, evangelizing the trance lifestyle to an older generation of hippies.  This, coupled with the Burning Man over Labor Day, has accelerated the learning curves of novelty “cool.”  As enough cross-referencing digiterati coalesce into a critical mass of creativity they themselves will evolve into a new generation of process masters.

In February 2000 the nordamerikan tribes gathered in the sacred  jungle valley of El Finca Del Cuco near the geographic center of Puerto Rico.

It’s 2002 and Central and South America and Mexico are blowing up. Psy-trance is finding fertile ground in the native lands of the New World especially in Brazil and Mexico.. the wellspring is no longer Goa India which has aged like cheese to paraphrase Raja Ram. The recent Son Kite/Iboga Records event in Tulum was groundbreaking. New Yorkers were there in full force… Look to Mexico as the new Goa of the New World.

Another festival of note was the Fusion Festival in Northern California.

All in all, psy- and goa-trance has shown no signs of commercialization, which has preserved its integrity.

NU JORVIK

Trance first started very small with DATs and Sony MiniDiscs from travellers bringing back what they found from small parties in Canada, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco.
In NYC, APTP (Acid Physics) had been getting involved and a number of local DJs in NYC were spinning it since 1994-95. Gula and Miko spinning at 3:30am at Save the Robots, with sand on the floor, in the East Village.

The first major trance event in New York was Return to the Source at The Liberty Science Center in 1996, a mega trance extravaganza with 3,000 people, many waiting outside… Return to the Source consisted of Matthew, Gerald, and John Emmanuel Gartmann.

Click image to enlarge:

Incidentally it was the first time I set up the brain machines.
I rollerbladed to the Liberty Center before the show and showed them the devices, which I had just encountered at Mega Buzz  One in Oakland, and a British guy called Gerald said, oh, yeah, Brain Machines, and that’s how I got the name.  It was an unprecedented event, a mind expansion that set the stage for trance in the USA. 

Many ravers couldn’t handle the freedom of being let loose in a museum, and they trashed it; for example, they put E in an aquarium and killed very rare fish. 

John Emmanuel Gartmann began organizing the Tsunami parties at Roseland, the Asbury Park, the Cooler, and the Metropolitan Pavilion.  Then  Lushia with In-Trance-It started throwing parties.  Not long after that Gilles Clement & Krisztina Végh started their acclaimed Synthetic Saddhus events at the Marc Ballroom in Union Square.   Dalit from Paradox then slammed Limelight in a Machiavellian vein “declaring war” on Tsunami.

So Trance was a self-policed scene, a safe haven for the nicer weaker ectomorphic nose-picking  nerds who just want to have fun and not get beaten up.

The Israelis were hardcore. Fresh out of serving in the military, they came to  New York looking to let go. In 1999 when Sound Factory closed a trance party they got their money together and rented a generator and threw a wild Saturday party underneath the George Washington bridge. Gula, Asher, Dudi, Jecky, Eddy, Nir, Ron, Sharon,  Doron, Napo, Shabo, the whole lot – get all their  names together and they start to sound like the 13 dwarves in the Hobbit.  The ones that work in construction were a little different than  the ones who work in moving companies- movers have a big day Sunday so they didn’t trance on Saturday nights.  Their musical tastes seemed to be different as well, why , not even an  Israeli could tell you.

Also common were Russians (the nicest people), former Eastern Bloc countries, and Scandinavians plus a local assortment of  neuronauts, Travelers, music  industry people, hackers, hippies, Zippies, models with bottles and ravers-turned trance kids. 

Top Players in Trance in New York

1. All the Israelis, Gula, Asher, Dudi, Jecky, Eddy, Nir, the whole lot – get all their  names together and they start to sound like the 13 dwarves in the Hobbit.  The ones that work in construction are a little different than the ones who work in moving companies- movers have a big day Sunday so they don’t trance on Saturday nights.  Their musical tastes seem to be different as well, why, not even an Israeli could tell you.

2. The Organizers Subtle Chaos for the incredible outlaw bridge parties, John Emmanuel Gartmann for Tsunami, Gilles Clement & Krisztina Vegh for Synthetic Sadhus.  Gilles is into the music, so make sure you know what you’ve read Dream Creations and all the press releases before talking to him, Dalit and the Paradox people,  Luchia, In-Trance-It, wild Brooklyn parties, Joel and Jason Jordan, Pure Children

3. The Artists Japanese girls – Kura, and Risa, 3D Hanging Sculpture Artist

4. DJ’s: India Drop, Ofer coming back from Acid Physxs…  Matthew Magic, Project Beyond,  DJ, was wandering around Matsuri back in ’97 in Asbury Park amidst many displaced Japanese and handing out mix tapes.  Polymorphous (Chillout Masters) candy ravers made good %-), Hugh Sharp DJ even though fucked with you if you were out of it.  A very nice guy with a following amongst fellow Columbia students.  Looked disturbingly like Ofer.

The best parties in New York were outlaw, under a bridge in the north tip of Manhattan.  Once, the power generator blew out and a road work crew on the bridge above saw our predicament and let us use their power. Throw in Cap’n Crunch off in Goa wowing the masses with Goa Gil, and rest assured, it fractalized outward. 

The “K” in New York comes from the same root as the “K” in  “Viking.”  York in England used to be a Viking town and the word came from Jorvik (Pronounced with a “Y”) which means Horse Bay.  Jor means Horse. The word Viking comes from Vik, which means Bay. 
And today, modern sonic Viking Atmos is shaking up the trance world with his hard minimalist beats.

If you missed the SPECTRA Mayan parties  drinking the Virgin Maria’s blood pulled from the heart of a live virgin and mixed with the urine from Montezuma’s medicine drummer, from the sacred skulls bought with pieces of eight from (or captured in manacles by) the ghost of Cortez el conquistador and help summon the spirit of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent who will deliver the natives from the alien White Man, and innoculate the new trance natives from the diseases of the Old World, you will miss much my friend.

The Devotional Ministry of Trance had a DMTski Tekno Sweat Lodge in the Poconos, with CD Burn-ins and Flash workshops multitasking with snowboarding, and psytrance spun 24/7. 

Sid Shanti lived in John Emmanuel’s basement.

Getting Laid?  Not Here..  Some American girls got Sand Fever and trolled the parties for the  abundant  Israeli men, who were somehow harder and harsher than their American counterparts, whom they made look like innocuous Swedish men.  As mentioned before, the Israeli girls were hard but not  impossible to get for an American man unless they dealt with being a  Goy Boy Toy.

More on Israelis in New York