Daily Iowan

Issue date: 4/10/08 Section: 80 Hours

---

Click here to view photo slideshow (with audio)

---

No matter where you are in the world, psytrance parties always begin as the sun sets. Psychedelic electronica booms from enormous sound systems, and black lights illuminate walls covered in neon-painted tapestries. Attendees enjoy an environment engineered to accentuate personal freedom, stripping the emphasis on sexuality and throwing it on self-discovery.

Parties in Iowa City are no exception. The music is loud, booming away at an enticing tempo and coercing the body to dance until the sweat is flying. Black lights flicker at key points in songs, sending the brain into force quit, shutting down everything except the ability to move to the beat. Women and men dance apart from each other, with no moves made toward the traditional bump and grind. Volunteer performers travel through the crowd, swinging neon Hula-Hoops on their hips and twirling florescent twirling glow sticks like nunchuks. DJs join the dance floor as soon as their sets end, eager to participate in what they helped to create. Dancers travel through the numerous rooms, experiencing different trance tracks, occasionally stopping to rest and converse in the "chill room."

Uninhibited dancers from an eclectic mix of cultures and ethnicities come decked out in Day-Glo clothes and face paint. Some dress in belly shirts and wide-leg pants circa the late-90s, and others choose all-black clothes to hide from the flashing lights.

These freeform parties can be inside or outside, last for three days or just one, be in small towns or a huge metropolitan city, but one thing remains consistent - a focus on the music and individual exploration.

On Saturday night, DJs from both U.S. coasts and India will gather to remix their music live at this month's Mindoutpsyde psytrance party "Rain Dance." The $20 event will start at 7 p.m. in the Karro Athletics Hall of Fame, located on the intersection of Melrose Avenue and Mormon Trek Boulevard, and it won't stop until the sun comes up on Sunday morning.


The scene is just getting started

Born on the beaches of Goa, India, during the time of hippie love and draft dodging, psytrance enjoyed a long underground evolution in Europe, Australia, and the United States. It evolved from the early psychedelic rock to a more electronic focus in Germany in the '80s. By the early '90s, psytrance had gone even more international, making its way into Japan, South America, and Israel.

Even though the movement spans many continents, the culture remains mostly underground. But now, with a lot of hard work and enthusiastic promoters, the electronic fusion is making a stronger appearance in small pockets of the United States - and Iowa is quickly making a name for itself in the underground psytrance scene.

"[Psytrance] hasn't gotten big in the United States because it's not marketed or played on MTV," said Chris Stark, one of the three main promoters of the Iowa City psytrance parties. "But that makes it that much more powerful, because you have to go out of your way to find it."

Mindoutpsyde's founding members - Abraham Rodriguez, Nick Nichols, and Stark -sponsor all of Iowa City's psytrance events, beginning the endeavor in 2005 by maxing-out credit cards and hoping to break even in starting a scene in Iowa City.

With every new party, the trio splits up responsibilities: finding the venue, commissioning the tapestries, finding the venders, confirming the artists, booking plane tickets, decorating the venue, knowing all the while that if the event isn't a success, the loss can only be split three ways.

Two and a half years later, the three are a legitimate branch on the psytrance tree, throwing parties every three to four weeks, with "Rain Dance" being their 24th event. Previously, the events have been held at various bars and clubs around Iowa City, but after venues started falling through, they moved on campus, shifting the focus away from the drinking and toward the dancing.

"[Rodriguez, Nichols, and I] really felt the need to start throwing these events," Stark said. "So far, nothing new has been created in Iowa, and because of that, psytrance could be powerful here. Now, in the psytrance world, Iowa is known as Psyowa."


The music makes the magic

From the outside, a psytrance party might look identical to the more commonly publicized rave scenes. But the focus of the Mindoutpsyde promoters is in a different direction, emphasizing the spirituality and the individual freedoms the music allows, rather than sexuality and drug use.

"The difference between a rave and a psytrance party is the intent," Stark said. "There's nothing wrong with raves other then people's preconceived notion of what it's going to be - dark corners and people being very openly sexual, maybe eating lots of pills. It's a very easy way of avoiding stereotypes by just calling our events parties."

An electronic-music rookie might have a hard time distinguishing between psytrance tracks and other electronic music, but those close to style see very distinct differences.

"[The construction of the music] has a lot to do with meditation," Rodriguez said. "If you have a repeating pattern that's very predictable, your mind can synchronize with it, allowing you to explore yourself."

The tempo is the heart of every psytrance track, speeding along at 145 beats per second. According to the promoters, the pace is meant to synchronize with alpha waves, the brain frequency associated with closing one's eyes and relaxing.

Another key component of psytrance are the all-night shows. This duration of time allows a natural progression and full realization of the music, easing the dancers in and out of the night with different beats.

"The set of music is meant to resemble the cycle from night to day," Rodriguez said. "The events start when the sun sets, with artists mixing slower, more melodic beats. Then it's kind of like the werewolves come out, with the intensity peaking between the hours of midnight and 3. Toward sunrise, the music becomes more melodic and rejuvenating again."

Minneapolis-based psytrance producer Primordial Ooze has been a big supporter of the Iowa movement, continually performing at the events and providing networking possibilities for Rodriguez, Stark, and Nichols.

"I specialize in the 'groovadelic' music - the faster, crazier stuff," said Scott Collins, a Primordial Ooze co-producer. "There's a lot of stuff going on in my music that generally doesn't go over well at the beginning of the party, so you have to ease into it and out of it. Later in the night, things are a lot more complex."

After discovering the psytrance movement online, Collins started producing his own music in his at-home studio after work. Now, he and production partner Igor Vazhenin are flown all over the United States to perform at the peak hours of the psytrance parties.

Primordial Ooze is just one of many examples of people who travel to attend these all-night parties. In a crowd of more than 300, more than half will be from out of town. With very few psytrance scenes in the Midwest, fans of the movement make a point to attend the all-night parties. Locals open up their couches on the party weekends, letting performers and out-of-towners crash instead of paying for hotel rooms.

"Most people want to contribute to [our parties] and get some recognition, rather than starting their thing and creating segregation," Rodriguez said, emphasizing the focus on unity in the movement.


Dancing into dawn

"One thing I noticed that made me uncomfortable at the bars was that in order to dance, it felt like you needed a member of the opposite sex," Rodriguez said. "With trance music, you're using every limb of your body to make whatever shape or motion you want."

Overcoming the fear of being judged can be challenging, especially in a climate focused on the movement of the body, but respect runs deep in the core values surrounding psytrance parties. Emphasis is placed on the individual, and dancing to express rather than to entice others.

"I think people discover themselves when they come to these parties. People are used to walking into a room and being perceived - stared at and stared down," Rodriguez said "But [at psytrance parties], the focus is the music. So even if you don't know anybody, you can go and dance, and you'll know people by the end of the night."

Using the intensity and the repetition of the music to block out thought eliminates separation, leaving only the body's honest reaction to its environment. Promoters and supporters make a conscious effort to create a comfortable environment for everyone, bringing together a huge cross section of ages, ideas, and backgrounds.

"We're not trying to promote [the idea] that this music will change people," Stark said. "But the environment is a place for people who are already looking for that change to find it. Here, all create their own way of dancing in their own space and own area. It's almost like chaos within unity."

E-mail DI reporter Whitney Warne at:
whitney-warne@uiowa.edu

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools