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By the end of the 1990's dancefloor trance - a mutant off-shoot of techno which originated in Europe - had unquestionably become a mainstream phenomenon. But a more psychedelic strain known as psy or "Goa" trance, a multi-coloured world of ethnic sounds, fast beats and overtly trippy grooves, has remained resolutely underground. This sub-genre has clearer melodic and harmonic roots in the old German ambient of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and Ashra. So it's only natural, then, that some artists from this scene have put the fast tempos aside and picked up and continued to develop the downtempo psychedelic tradition. Some perfectly formed examples of the style come from the Austrian-English duo Entheogenic (Helmut Glavar and Piers Oak-Rhind). Their magnificent self-titled debut release is an inspired blend of dub grooves, trancey arpeggios, drum 'n' bass madness and Eastern and Arabic sounds, all fused together with immaculate production. Its a bit like Shpongle without the jokes. The album so rich in texture that on first listen you might find yourself turning away, in the same way that you avert your eyes from overwhelmingly bright, colourful lights. But repeat listens soon reveal depths, and some dark corners, too. The duo's third album Dialogue Of The Speakers from 2005 contains only a few new compositions, instead focusing on remixes of tracks new and old by a stellar cast of scene producers. It's a successful move. The previous album, the non-essential Spontaneous Illumination (2003), exposed a tendency to overcook arrangements, packing in so many layers on several of the longer tracks to the point where a coherent thread was lost and the music nearly collapsed under its own weight. In contrast, most of the remixes on Dialogue strip back the layers and focus on a smaller number of elements, resulting in re-inventions that are simpler and ultimately make for a much better album. Vibrasphere adds a short acoustic guitar loop and rolling bassline to "Pagan Dream Machine" to striking effect. Best of all UK dub genius Ott takes two simple vocal ideas from an older Entheogenic track and proves that less is more. His remix of "Ground Luminosity" is a heady, euphoric masterpiece that surges and sighs in exactly the right places and boasts his unmistakable trademark in its enormous, punchy bottom end. The music of the following year's Golden Cap suggests that handing over mostly-existing tracks to remixers for the previous album gave the duo breathing space to rethink their direction and work some fresh angles. Golden Cap is more obviously percussive, less layered and a little more informed by the language of the dancefloor. The title track is a song, a folk tune in fact, based around a sweet Anglo-Irish love song and its unlike anything they've done before. "Kashmir Day Trip" benefits from its organic drum sound; this and several other tracks suggest the use of more live instrumentation in the mix alongside the usual samples. Those lovely Afro and Arabic vocal wailings remain, but gone are the tiresome reversed cymbal crashes and most of Terrence McKenna's psychedelic sermon samples, the latter by this stage being an awful genre cliche. Flight Of The Urubus from 2008 is a significant leap in style and offers further evidence of the duo's continuing creative development. The sampled Eastern wailing of yore is completely gone and most of the album is darker in tone than anything else they've done. Some of the arrangements are stripped back, even stark at times, with powerful, tuneful basslines coming to the fore. "Tarra" and "Araras" are lean, tough, psychedelic dub grooves is a dark minor key. "Microcondians" has a great whistling Moog synth melody echoing mid-70's Pink Floyd. There's lots of new synth and keyboard sounds and, in the album's last quarter, an incongruous jazzy lounge element with pianos and guitars. The lounge tracks don't really belong there, but the rest of the album is strong and distinctive, making it a recommended release. |
