14 Feb, 2021

A Brief History Of Psy-Trance

Psychedelic trance, psytrance or psy is a music characterized by arrangements of rhythms and layered melodies created by high tempo riffs. The genre offers variety in terms of mood, tempo, and style. Some examples include full on, darkpsy, forest, minimal, hitech psy, progressive, psy-chill, psycore, psybient, psybreaks, or "adapted" tracks from other music genres.

Psychedelic trance has a distinctive, energetic sound that tends to be faster than other forms of trance or techno music with tempos generally ranging from 135 to 150 BPM but some psytrance songs can also reach 190BPM, 200bpm, 210bpm and even 300bpm. It uses a very distinctive bass beat that pounds constantly throughout the song and overlays the bass with varying rhythms drawn from funk, techno, dance, acid house and trance using drums and other instruments. The different leads, rhythms and beats generally change every eight bars. Layering is used to create effect in psychedelic trance, with new musical ideas being added at regular intervals, often every four to eight bars. New layers will continue to be added until a climax is reached, and then the song will break down and start a new rhythmic pattern over the constant bass line. Psychedelic trance tracks tend to be six to ten minutes long.

In the beginning, there was Goa...

Goa trance preceded psytrance. A legendary artist from the 90's, Martin Freeland aka Man With No Name is one of the best goa trance messenger of all time. Listen to his most famous title: "Teleport". Other legendary artists like Astral Projection, Hallucinogen, Talamasca, Infected Mushrooms, GMS, Electric Universe, just to name a few, were the best ambassador of Goa Trance music in the year 90-2000's. Goa continues to develop alongside the other genres and will never die, with a large community all around the world.

Listen to "Teleport" by Man With No Name:

In 2000, Fullon Psy was born...

When digital media became more commonly used, psytrance evolved. This was the emergence of new artists from Israel such as Astrix, Atomic Pulse, 1200 Mics, Juno Reactor, Sesto Sento, Ticon, Vibe Tribe, Tegma, Atmos, Oforia and many more...

This subgenre was called Fullon Psy (or Fullon Goa), due to its rhythm and melodies power. Festivals, Radios and all sort of trance music events were dominated by this subgenre, over the 2000 decade. Israelians artists were highly responsible for the commercial success of this subgenre.

There are some related styles that are derived from this style and are distinguished as different varieties of Full-On: twilight and night full-on (or dark full-on), having bolder and lower notes in their basslines, morning (light and kind of happy), and uplifting.

Listen to Astrix & Domestic - Solaris Part II (Originally released in 2005):

In 2010, ProgPsy was born...

Prog-psytrance is among the common party themes, normally played during the afternoon or on a different stage. It has grown in popularity since the mid-2010s to the point where it is often also labeled "psytrance". Artists working in the genre are Astrix and Protonica.