Audio Chicken

Psychedelic trance music and culture (psyculture) is explored as a culture of exodus rooted in the seasonal dance party culture evolving in Goa, India, over the 1970s/1980s, and revealing a heterogeneous exile sensibility shaping Goa trance and psyculture from the 1990s/2000s. That is, diverse transgressive and transcendent expatriations would shape the music and aesthetics of Goa/psytrance. Thus, resisting circumscription under singular heuristic formulas, Goa trance and its progeny are shown to be internally diverse. This freak mosaic was seasoned by expatriates and bohemians in exile from many countries, experienced in world cosmopolitan conurbations, with the seasonal DJ-led trance dance culture of Goa absorbing innovations in EDM productions, performance and aesthetics throughout the 1980s before the Goa sound and subsequent festival culture emerged in the mid-1990s. Rooted in an experimental freak community host to the conscious realisation and ecstatic abandonment of the self, psyculture is heir to this diverse exile experience.

The music has its roots in the popularity of Goa in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a hippie capital, and although musical developments were incorporating elements of industrial music and EBM (electronic body music) with the spiritual culture in India throughout the 1980s, the actual Goa trance style did not appear until the early 1990s.

The music played was a blend of styles loosely defined as techno and various genres of computer music (e.g., high energy disco without vocals, acid house, electro, industrial gothic, various styles of house, electronic rock hybrids). The music arrived on tape cassettes by fanatic traveler collectors and DJs. It was shared (copied) tape to tape among Goa DJs, which was an underground scene, not driven by labels or music industry.

The artists producing this 'special Goa music' had no idea that their music was being played on the beaches of Goa by "cyber hippies". The first techno that was played in Goa was Kraftwerk in the late 1970s on the tape of a visiting DJ. At the time the music played at the parties was live bands. Tapes were played in between sets. In the early 1980s, sampling synth and MIDI music appeared globally and DJs became the preferred format in Goa, with two tape decks driving a party without a break, facilitating continuous music and continuous dancing. There had been resistance from the old-school acid heads who insisted that only acid rock should be played at parties, but they soon relented and converted to the revolutionary wave of technodelia that took hold in the 1980s.

Cassette tapes were used by DJs until the 1990s when DAT tapes were used. DJs playing in Goa during the 1980s included Fred Disko, Dr Bobby, Stephano, Paulino, Mackie, Babu, Laurent, Ray, Fred, Antaro, Lui, Rolf, Tilo, Pauli, Rudi, and Goa Gil. The music was eclectic in style but nuanced around instrument/dub spacey versions of tracks that evoked mystical, cosmic, psychedelic, political, existential themes. Special mixes were made by DJs in Goa which were the editing of various versions of a track to make it longer. This was taking the stretch mix concept to another level, trip music for journeying to outdoors.

Goa Trance as a music industry and collective party fashion tag did not gain global traction until 1994 when Paul Oakenfold began to champion the genre via his own Perfecto label and in the media, most notably with the release of his 1994 Essential Mix, or more commonly known as the Goa Mix.

By 1990–91 Goa had become a hot destination for partying and was no longer under the radar: the scene grew bigger. Goa-style parties spread like a diaspora all over the world!