Before Shpongle there was The Infinity Project’s Mystical Experiences, a full-length exploration of realms of sound that would eventually become “psychill”. Although ambient and downtempo electronic music was nothing new, seldom before had it been expressed in such a multi-dimensional fashion, with the sounds of galloping horses and samples about objects drifting through outer space vividly conjuring specific mental…
Boris Blenn’s only full-length release as Paradise Connection features an assortment of analog sound experiments spanning an enormous tempo range. Much of the album dwells at the deeper end of trance, with simplistic arrangements that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the ambient techno labels of the early 1990s. Highlights include the euphoric 160 BPM adrenaline rush of…
Hypnotic, tribal, and richly atmospheric, this pioneering techno-trance album from Danish producer Kristian Thinning remains one of the classics of the genre. There is an alluring softness to this album, a haunting sense of mystery that keeps me coming back year after year. Sampled chants, drums, and instrumentation give this album a worldly feel (ages ago we would have…
The First Orbit is the debut full-length release from Planet Rhythm Records, originally founded in Sweden in 1994. Gathered here is a solid collection of hard trance and fast, upbeat techno, most of which had already been released on vinyl. The track listing might seem unfamiliar at first—but behind these projects are some of the biggest names in Swedish…
Koxbox’s debut album Forever After is a beguiling collection of space age techno and psychedelic trance that transcends time. From the very second the needle drops on Point of No Return we are cast into the void between worlds, drifting on waves of warm bass and dazzled by alien melodies. There isn’t a weak track on the album, and…
Here we have an extremely rare compilation absolutely stacked with classics from some of the biggest names in Goa trance. Transwave appears here with two of their best, Cycles of Life and Rezwalker; Pleiadians provide three solid tracks (including their eponymous debut), of which Boarding Pass to Balangan is the highlight; while Rainbow Spirit (Boris Blenn…
Indoor was an early Israeli trance project uniting Avi Algranati (AKA Space Cat), Ofer Dikovsky (Oforia), and Marko Goren (most famously part of Tandu). Progressive Trance, their only major release, captures an innocence and naivety seldom heard in the genre today. Although the production quality is raw and the arrangements are often uneven this album still…
Welcome to my homepage, a newly launched blog organized around my activities in the electronic music scene. My intention is to pick up where I left off with my old blog, Ektoplazm, which evolved into a music distribution portal and record label group in 2008. Prior to that I had been sharing my mixes, local Toronto-area event listings, record…
Mountain Calling! Deep, sultry house and smooth progressive vibes define this set performed live at an outdoor event in the mountains on the edge of Taipei on June 17th, 2018. It was a half hour hike into the steamy, throbbing jungle to reach the site, a small patch of angled ground on a bare ridge-line with a fantastic view of…
DJ Basilisk returns with Prototypes 2, the second edition of a new mix series probing the depths of progressive trance history in a live setting. Expect to hear a smoothly mixed selection of classic tunes from the intersection of progressive house, progressive trance, and progressive psytrance at the turn of the millennium.