Encounters with Psychedelic Trance and the Ecstasy of Hearing Pure Trance for the First Time After Nearly 30 Years of Listening

I want to start by clarifying that I am not the type to go to clubs or rave parties and make a scene. If anything, I am a bit of a gloomy game geek.

When I recommend music to others, I wonder how many people actually listen to it properly?
With so many different people—some who like metal, some who like ballads, some who like hip-hop or lo-fi—when they are exposed to core music like psychedelic trance,
I think it is enough if one out of ten people I recommend it to feels like, "I want to listen to more of this music!" Furthermore, I believe even fewer people actually look at articles like this.
However, I have my own story leading up to that encounter, so this time, I will shift gears from the genres I've covered previously and write about the synopsis of how I came to encounter psychedelic trance, tracing my memories in chronological order.

Encounters with techno music like YMO, Underworld, and Aphex Twin

When I was in junior high school (1994-1996), I was listening to legendary techno masterpieces like Underworld's dubnobasswithmyheadman and Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works, influenced by my cousin. This is the origin of my 30 years of listening to psychedelic trance (though strictly speaking, it might be game music or YMO, which I will mention later).

Originally, as I have introduced in other articles, I was a game lover from a young age because I was part of the real-time generation of the Famicom, so my elementary school life was filled with game music entering my ears without me even being conscious of it.
At some point, I started to have questions like, "What kind of category does this game music fall into?"
When I asked my parents about it, I still remember them giving me a vague but insightful answer: "It sounds like YMO's music, doesn't it?"

I became curious about YMO. However, there was no internet back then, and although I could have just asked at a CD shop, I didn't think of that. Instead, when I went to play at friends' houses, I would ask their uncles and aunts, doing a sort of imitation of information gathering as a child (eventually, I learned it was YMO's music when "RYDEEN" was played for a dance at my 6th-grade elementary school sports day).

YMO - Rydeen
YMO stands for Yellow Magic Orchestra, a Japanese techno unit consisting of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Haruomi Hosono, and Yukihiro Takahashi.

Some time after that, when I was in my first or second year of junior high (my memory is hazy), I went to visit relatives in Hokkaido. There, I heard electronic music on a cassette tape my cousin happened to be listening to in the car (I don't remember the artist), and thinking "This is it!" was my second encounter with "techno."

However, I remember feeling uncomfortable with minimal techno (music that repeats the same phrase), which was not melodic like game music or YMO, but just monotonously repeated the same rhythm.
Yet, I felt a certain comfort in the beat that seemed to harmonize with that rhythm.

As I was leaving, what my cousin gave me were Dubnobasswithmyheadman, Selected Ambient Works, and one overseas techno compilation album.

By the way, out of these three albums I received, the one I listened to the most was Selected Ambient Works, but I also really liked the upbeat music of Dubnobasswithmyheadman.

Underworld - Dubnobasswithmyheadman
Overall, there are many tracks with vocals added to techno, and many tracks that could be considered house or breakbeats.

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92
The track "Tha," which starts around 4:53, is a particular favorite.

And as we parted ways, he also gave me the advice, "If you go to a place called Jimbocho in Tokyo, you might be able to find information."
I remember my cousin had much more knowledge about techno than I did at the time, but he also mentioned that he had never been to Tokyo.

※ Before that time, dating back to pre- and post-war, Jimbocho has been lined with long-established bookstores and record shops, and it is still famous as a sacred place for subculture.
One might think that such maniacal records and CDs would gather in youth towns like "Shibuya" or "Akihabara," but my view is that "you cannot talk about Shibuya or Akihabara without talking about Jimbocho."
Party-loving youth gather in Shibuya, and geeks gather in Akihabara. The origin of that is precisely in Jimbocho.

As an aside, my cousin passed away from stomach cancer last year.
He had lived a life drowned in alcohol since he was young, but I never thought he would pass away so soon. I regret that I never got to ask him about the techno artist I heard in that car, and I truly regret that I couldn't talk more about techno with him.

My encounter with Aurora Borealis's The Milky Way and the psychedelic trance album I bought in Jimbocho

In junior high, I didn't really buy new CDs, but
after entering high school, I started working a part-time job, which led me to buy CDs of various genres more frequently.

The local HMV only stocked famous Japanese and Western music, but I was still in a period of seeking out my preferred music by listening to techno from both Japan and abroad, such as DJ HONDA, DJ 19, The Prodigy, Orbital, and Denki Groove.

Regarding DJ HONDA and The Prodigy, they were a bit distant from techno,
and there were "failures" where I thought, "Maybe this isn't my taste," but I am truly grateful that listening to their music during this period is directly linked to the music I "prefer" now. In other words, thinking about it now, it wasn't a failure from the start.

Around this time, thanks to the release of compilation albums like Super Eurobeat and Dance Mania, techno music started to reach my ears more often than a few years prior.

Around the summer of my third year of high school (around 1997), when I went to a CD shop in Jimbocho, Tokyo, a certain CD caught my eye. The album was entirely in English, with no Japanese written on it, and it was clearly an "overseas album."
I don't remember the name of that album, but I recall it being a UK techno compilation album (I let go of that album a few years later, so I have no idea what the album name was).

After returning home, I listened to that album and was shocked by the music on the second-to-last track called
The Milky Way by Aurora Borealis. I don't know much about technical terms, but I was intoxicated by every beat of that song, and I felt that the music had a story. I listened to it on repeat many times, and I just thought it was so cool! I felt strongly that this was what I had been looking for.

I became desperate to find music similar to that, so I went back to Jimbocho to search for it, but before that, I want you to listen to it for a moment.

Aurora Borealis - The Milky Way

I immediately ran around Jimbocho with this UK techno compilation CD. Though, I only visited a few shops, so it was probably only half a day at most (I don't remember much).

At some of the first shops I visited, even when I said, "I'm looking for a genre similar to this CD," none of the staff would listen to it, nor did they seem interested. However, when I visited an old, seemingly privately-owned shop (it was more of a record store than a CD shop), someone said, "Let me borrow the CD, let's have a listen."

The older man seemed to be well-versed in old Western music (he seemed to like Pink Floyd and the early albums of The Beatles, so-called "psychedelic rock"), and he told me various things, but honestly, I don't remember the talk about rock music (lol).
I remember that after the man listened to the 7-8 minute long The Milky Way to the end, he said this to me.

"It's techno. The kick is cool. But I don't know this song at all, but I can provide you with some recommended albums now, young man."

After saying that, he brought me about three albums from the CD corner in a corner of the small shop, where records were packed up to the ceiling.
They were PURE TRANCE Vol. 15 and 16 released by Avex Trax, and a CD with a picture of a funky-looking dolphin called Super Eurobeat Techno.

"These are CDs that an acquaintance of mine who spins records bought, and he liked them too."

By the way, someone who spins records is a DJ (disc jockey). It seems they were called that because of the way they spin records.
The man asked, "Will you buy one?" while considering my budget, which he could guess from my age, and encouraged me to buy them (or so I feel).

However, perhaps contrary to the man's expectations,

"I'll buy them all."
Saying that, I bought three CDs for about 2,500 yen each.
Anyway, I wanted to hear them all. The hour and a half until I got home felt like an eternity. Furthermore, the PURE TRANCE Vol. 15 (Psychedelic Trance Techno Selection)I bought at this time would have a huge impact on my later life.

A phenomenal sense of ecstasy that made my body tremble

On my way home, I immediately put the CD into my audio system and started listening.
The first album I put in was PURE TRANCE Vol. 15.
Slinky Wizard's Lunar Juice (Hallucinogen Moon Strudel Mix) was the one that
started playing on the first track.

"It's different from the techno I've listened to before, it has a sort of muddy feeling."

That was my first impression.
The included CD obi also said "Psychedelic Trance (Goa Trance) Special Feature" in Japanese. *At that time, psychedelic trance and Goa trance were treated as the same thing, so it was only later, at least in Japan, that they began to be clearly distinguished.

Slinky Wizard - Lunar Juice (Hallucinogen Moon Strudel Mix)

If you can think of such Goa trance as "cool" when you first start listening to it, then downtempo probably suits you better.
Since I prefer a slightly faster BPM, I didn't think it was that "cool" when I first started listening to this song, and my initial impression was, as I mentioned earlier, a "muddy feeling."

And then, when I got to the third track, I felt like "something" inside me was welling up.It was a song called Wicked Warp by Mandra Gora. With a song style that repeats more techno-like phrases than the first Lunar Juice,
I found a song that I thought was "cool" for the first time since putting the album into the audio system. I wanted to know about this song and the person who made it, but even when I read the manual, there was just some
weird manga (pardon me), and it didn't explain anything about the person who made it (maybe I missed it, or maybe I just don't remember).

Mandra Gora - Wicked Warp (Remix)

The manga "Pure Trance" drawn by Junko Mizuno and Myaku-Myaku-sama

The conversation abruptly goes off on a tangent, but the aforementioned strange manga refers to the manga "Pure Trance" by artist Junko Mizuno, which was serialized in the accompanying booklets of the PURE TRANCE album series from Vol. 11 to the final Vol. 20, and was later published as a standalone book.

Also, here is a side note: when I saw the official character Myaku-Myaku-sama at the Osaka Expo 2025, I thought, "Oh! This is exactly like Pure Trance!"
I don't know if that thought reached Junko Mizuno, but it seems she was also curious about it, and the Myaku-Myaku-sama she drew herself became a topic of conversation among fans.

She seems to be active in the UK now, and it appears she holds personal exhibitions regularly.

Now, let's return to the original topic.

I remember sitting in front of the audio equipment the whole time while listening to PURE TRANCE Vol. 15, thinking about doing other things, but my consciousness was so focused on the album that I couldn't do anything else. That is how significant my encounter with this album was for me.

And then, the song that could be called the biggest main track on this album began to play. It is the song included as the 7th track.
It is a song called Psychofunk by Cosmosis, and from the very beginning, whether you call it a strong sense of ecstasy or subliminal music, it's hard to describe, but I still vividly remember the chills—no, the positive goosebumps—that ran through my entire body, thinking, "What a cool song!"

Cosmosis - Psychofunk

This song is actually slightly different from the one included on the album; the phrase from 2:28 to 2:54 is not in the original version, meaning it was a reworked track. However, since this version is also cool, it remains a memorable song and one of my favorites to this day.

Having finished listening to PURE TRANCE Vol. 15, I felt something like a strong light, or the feeling of "I've finally found it," though that is just an image.

By the way, strangely enough, since then I have never once thought about wanting to create music myself. This is an answer I derived later, but my parents are quite literary-minded. Because my parents are literary, I have come to believe that I had an innate literary brain that preferred to accumulate knowledge and insights in this field rather than wanting to create music myself.

The psychedelic trance I have listened to for 30 years will certainly not end here. At my current age, I am standing at the halfway point of my life, but I think it is natural that I will continue to listen to this genre until I die—or rather, until I can no longer listen to music on my own when I go to bed at the end. The fact that it has become so naturally integrated into my life is, I believe, another innate "something."

Finally

I intended to talk about the other two albums as well, but since it would become too long, I will end this article here for now.
Also, regarding Super Eurobeat Techno, I still own the albums, but since it was such a maniacal series and there is little information circulating on the internet, I cannot deny the possibility that I might not be able to write an article about it, so I am thinking of introducing it while giving it a bit more thought.

After that, I ended up buying other Pure Trance albums, and I will continue to write about them in future regular articles.
Also, since the number of cool songs I have listened to over these 30 years easily exceeds 500, I am thinking of making these recommendations—or rather, introductions to the psychedelic trance and goa trance that I personally find super cool—into paid articles. Thank you for your understanding.

(Why am I using polite language at the end?)

See you later!

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10 tracks that I felt were especially cool among the psychedelic trance and Goa trance I've listened to for 30 years!! | Marunouchi Tsukida