Throwing something a little different at the blog this week. Trance music. Yes, you welcome.
Beijing’s hardest working and ubiquitous Psytrance promoters Goa Productions are hosting an event down at Mao Livehouse on Saturday, celebrating the release of their latest compilation record, Kui 2, which features tracks from a global host of trance producers — Braincell, Audioform, Ohmnidrive, Karna, Blue Lunar Monkey, Black Noise and more.
So. Trance music. If you’re a bit foggy on the genre, Trance is huge heaving swells of spazzoid, hyper melodic synth arpeggios into mid-song breaks, into huge, euphoric, climactic eruptions of exalted sound and energy. On ecstasy. On a shitload of ecstasy. So, so, so much ecstasy. You’ve definitely heard Trance music. Either blaring out of speakers set up outside ridiculous hair salons, pumping out of the tricked-out rides of village gangsters, or blasting out of your German co-worker’s headphones at work. Rock people, you know how you “fucking hate that bullshit techno music”? You’ve probably actually just been exposed to that sweet, sweet Trance music. When it blew up in the ’90s and beyond, the mainstream face of dance music around the world was pretty much Armin Van Buuren (cousin of Dave Van Buuren, FYI) and Paul Van Dyk — two of the genre’s most influential figures.
Anyways, Trance music is something you get or you don’t. Even in dance music circles, Trance is a much maligned genre. The prevailing opinion: it’s cheesy as fuck. And you’ve got to be gacked to the gills to even appreciate it. Taking it a step further, Psytrance or Goa trance, which is more of what you’d hear on Saturday, is a sub-sect of the genre, which sees the general Trance idiom imbued with elements of EBM (industrial), tribal, and psychedelia. Comes from off-the-grid zonked hippies in Goa and is even more of an inscrutable subculture with its own sound, iconography, and… je ne sais quoi.
Hence the video above, which is a great-looking Psytrance party. Crazy tent shit all over the place, day-glo aliens, tie-dye shit everywhere, glow sticks, tweakers tweaking out large, and a thoroughly blissed out crowd in the midst of a big ol’ trip. A real beatific scene indeed. Niiiiiiice.
Anyways, Goa Productions are pretty much the big game in town for this kind of rager. And they put in the real effort to pull it off. Respect. The video is them doing one of their shows in Wuhan. They’re on a national tour behind the release of Kui 2, and they’re celebrating in Beijing on Saturday at Mao Livehouse. 50 beans to get in. Starts 10 pm.
You should go, maaaaaan.
Morgan is the editor of Smart Beijing and fake DJs around town. Suggestions for Friday Music Send Outs and feedback to editor@smartbeijing.com.
Where can one get E in Beijing?
-your faithful reader
Trance. Wow. People in Beijing are just so cool. Any chance of you offing yourself by jumping into a pit latrine?
I’ve always loved the names they give their “genres”… “Trance”, “house”, “progressive house”, “regressive house”, ad nauseum…