Transmissions From Meropis ⁄ DJ Basilisk

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DJ Basilisk rewinds the tape to profile the shifting sound of psychedelic trance on the cusp of the new millennium with Transmissions From Meropis. Featuring 32 tracks released between 1998 and 2001, this embryonic cocktail captures a global movement in flux, as technological change ushered in a new era of experimentation, and the golden age of Goa trance came to a catastrophic end. Many strands of modern psytrance that would emerge from these tumultuous times can be heard here: the gritty rawness and anarchic dissonance of the emerging minimal wave; early hints of what would evolve into darkpsy and forest music; ecstatic, fist-pumping precursors to full-on psytrance; more stripped-down progressive beats with ample groove and swagger; and an enchanting trace of what would become psy dub. Where were you in Y2K?

Track Listing

01 Black Lung - Downtime Disco Dementia Nova Zembla, 1999
02 Synchro - Magnetik Liquid Audio Soundz / GTN, 2000
03 D.I.M.O. - F-Invasion Bochumer Ton Manufaktur, 2000
04 Magus - Digital Silence CreamCrop Records, 2000
05 Codex feat. Ganja - Subliminal Puff Nephilim Records, 2001
06 Noma - What's Out There? Transient Records, 1999
07 Spiral Active Project - Grand Liden Krembo Records, 1999
08 Yumade - Fluffin In Side Flow Records, 2000
09 Lunar Plexus - Ugglor I Mossen Spirit Zone Recordings, 1998
10 Parasense - Boomerang TIP.World, 2000
11 Sensphere - Disorder Implant Recordings, 2000
12 Psychaos - Techno Logical Atomic Records, 2000
13 Phoetus - Sparkling Soup (Tarsis Remix) TIP.World, 1999
14 Oforia - Maximiser Dragonfly Records, 1998
15 Bypass Unit - Lunar Senses Music Research, 1999
16 Tim Schuldt - Red Hair Hospital DR Recordings, 1998
17 Pigs in Space - Visitors (Part 1) Phonokol, 1998
18 Jaïa - Time Machine Cross Records, 1998
19 Logic Bomb - Fairlight Spiral Trax, 2000
20 Children of Paradise - Concrete Canyon Velvet Inc., 1999
21 Orion - Solid Phantasm Records, 2000
22 Shakta - Something Happened Resonoise Records, 2000
23 Moons - Sneaky Suspicion U.S.T.A., 2001
24 Eternal Basement - Taking Place in You Blue Room Released, 2000
25 Chi-A.D. - Biocandy Blue Moon Productions U.K., 1999
26 Passenger - Sundance Phonokol, 1999
27 Astral Projection - Nilaya Trust in Trance Records, 1999
28 Blue Planet Corporation - Alidade Flying Rhino Records, 1999
29 Saafi Brothers - The Deep (Part 1) Blue Room Released, 1999
30 Kit Clayton - Nele ~scape, 1999
31 üNN - Stone Elektrolux, 2000
32 Shpongle - Shpongle Falls Twisted Records, 1998

Notes

Conceived, arranged, mixed, and mastered by DJ Basilisk in Taipei, Taiwan, November 2023.
Recorded with Traktor 3 and a Korg Nanokontrol.
Mastered in Ableton Live using TDR Nova and LoudMax; wave surgery conducted with Audacity.
Cover image: Terror Antiquus, Léon Bakst, 1908.
Several of these tracks were edited for inclusion in this mix: F-Invasion, Fluffin In Side, Ugglor I Mossen, and Alidade were all lightly remastered and, in several cases, slightly rearranged.
Black Lung’s Downtime Disco Dementia is essentially the same as The Human Germ (Black Lung Drops The Disco Biscuit) on this release.
The version of Sensphere’s Disorder that appears here was taken from Axonal Takeover, the retrospective collection released by Unreleased Goa Records. The original I have from the Chapel Perilous compilation was poorly mastered, but this new version sounds pretty good.
I’ve been looking for an excuse to include Red Hair Hospital in a mix for ages. This used to be a staple of my sets when I began DJing in the late 90s.
Matching Maximiser with Lunar Senses was revelatory; pairing a track that ends quickly with another that explodes out the gate made that particular transition sound like it was meant to be!
Something Happened was taken from the original CD release on the EskiMO compilation, not the more recently released remastered version.
The version of Sneaky Suspicion that appears in this mix was taken from the artist’s 2022 remasters, available here.
Taking Place in You is the 2000 remix from Magnet. Why it was never identified as a remix is something of a mystery. Michael has remixed this four or five times over the years, but this version remains my all-time favorite.
The version of Biocandy released on Destination Goa 9 contains several glitches but I didn’t really like the remastered version that appears here. Unfortunately I didn’t patch the glitches while curating the mix, so I just ended up patching the problem in post-production.
According to PsyDB the sample in Biocandy is taken from the BBC’s Future Fantastic: Underneath a Purple Sky: “Can you take this ecological systems that has evolved on a planetary scale and stick them in such an incredibly small container with this proportion in amounts of atmosphere and soil and water and ocean and have the same principles basically functioning. We can take these animals and systems and fit them into an incredibly small container and it still works.”
Blue Planet Corporation’s Alidade has a variable BPM, and given the idiosyncratic production style, I wasn’t able to properly fix the entire track in Ableton Live. For the purposes of this mix I ended up forcing a grid only on the lead-in and lead-out. It’s still one of the very best tunes of 1999 but I was reminded why I always reached for the Jirah or Wizzy Noise remixes when playing it out in the mid-2000s.
Although the time period profiled with this mix overlaps my entry into DJing, I never would have played any of the more minimal tunes when they were new. I was a die-hard Goa trance purist (and vinyl fanatic) when I started out, and I was contemptuous of the more minimalistic sound becoming popular around the turn of the millennium. A few years later my taste broadened to the point where I began to enjoy more progressive and minimal sounds, and I started to look back on releases that I had overlooked. With the benefit of 20+ years of hindsight I can now say there was plenty of great music I missed out on at the time!