RhoDeo 1309 Beats

Hello, the beats go on....  drop in a twining helix of sounds, feeding and kicking off each other in an infinitely refined aural saturation. . .... NJoy

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Hallucinogen aka Simon Posford is a pioneer of electronic music and founder of the psy-trance scene. His early work is as an engineer on the T.I.P.(Raja Ram) and Dragonfly(Youth) labels. His first album, Twisted, was one of the most widely influential electronic music recordings which helped to define the psychedelic trance genre. The follow-up album, The Lone Deranger, only cemented his influence.From then on, Posford ventured into numerous collaborations with other artists. His most notable projects involve artists such as Raja Ram (Shpongle), Martin Glover (Celtic Cross) and Prometheus a.k.a. Benji Vaughan (Younger Brother). Mostly the vocalists of his music are Michele Adamson and Abigail Gorton. Though pooling his talent from a host of worldly influences, many of his fans will attest that he has the "Posford Touch", a certain unmistakable quality to the sound of his music, that is revered by psychedelic and electronic enthusiasts from around the world.

These days he is just as likely to be entrancing crowds around the globe with a throbbingly epic live set as he is to be dribbling ambient delectations in the Hallucinogen Soundlabs in the West Country. He is co-director of Twisted Records with Simon Holton, ex-label manager of Dragonfly Records. Their label is one of the hottest underground gatherings of talent this side of Mars. Hallucinogen's second album "The Lone Deranger" blew the lid off the musical scene that had built up around his influence. Not only did it have more of the killer musical riffs but also was a feat of clean production and professionalism previously seen with the likes of The Floyd, one of Simon's major influences. Another tune that influenced Simon was "The Age of Love" by Jam & Spoon and this can be heard in some of his earlier releases. More recently he has produced tracks with Benji Vaughan as their band Younger Brother, Simon Posford has completed new sounds with Dub 'Ott' & Hallucinogen and is currently collaborating with the Twisted Allstars and touring the world spreading his music to all sorts. Simon is the musical genius behind Shpongle and for this latest orgy of brain fluid he gathered 4 other talented musicians, as well, of course, as Raja Ram- Druid of Psy.

Though his music has been described as "heavily driven by psychedelica", he always performs while sober due to the complexity of operating computers during his events.

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It’s hard to imagine now just what Twisted really meant to an entire enclave of music lovers, born under the light of the full moon beach parties of Goa, India and given life in the dark, laser lit club rooms of London’s underground. In a way, Twisted almost killed the very scene it set to spawn, as its breathtaking atmospheric scope spanned further than most other acts could even conceive. For a genre so riddled with rubbish, it’s probably no wonder that Twisted stands among trance’s most magnificent releases.

Of course at this point you can almost feel the slight nervousness of a to-be-listener – yes, the act is called Hallucinogen. Yes, the cover is a psychedelic mess of colours. And yes, the opening tack is named after the mother of all psychedelic drugs. And yet, to write off the genre’s highest selling album as simply another shallow, drug-addled rave fest would be to miss out on some of the most tightly produced and immaculately conceived electronic outings ever set to disc. That said, the opener itself is nothing if not a perpetual high – warbling in with a set of eerie set of crystalline swirls of noise and a vocal sample from drug aficionado Ken Kesey (Author of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest), “L.S.D.” broods and bubbles it’s way into psytrance’s defining moment, as it’s pulsing bass and dark, swirling synths wobble their way forward in a divinely inspired stupor, hazy with it’s own daze laced sounds, but scripted with a mechanical grace unmatched within the genre.

It’s psytrance in all it’s blazing glory, with tunes working their way into the subconscious, like headworms with a slow but inevitable goal of simply devouring the mind whole. While Hallucinogen’s formula for music isn’t a complex one, it’s pulled off with such stunning precision that it’s impossible not to be spellbound by Posford’s craftsmanship. Perhaps it’s in the menacing lyric sample which underscores “Shamanix” that captures the essence of Twisted, with an unknown man shouting though the sharp sounds: ‘The way I feel I don’t expect to expect to go to sleep for a year… I’m on f'ucking fire!’. It’s here, in this dark absurdity, caressing and embracing with it’s mystical that Twisted defies any ear to turn itself away. By the time tacks like the energy crammed “Grand Magus” and the rave party of “Fluoro Neuro Sponge” reach their subtle climaxes, their bodies are so thoroughly entrenched in their perpetual, pulsing headspace, it’s almost impossible to be but simply caught unaware by the moment, with time only to stand back and watch the waste of their electronic trails before being carried forward by Twisted’s ever enveloping sounds. Pill popper or not, here’s one to f'uck with your mind.

Hallucinogen - Twisted ( flac 438mb)

01 LSD 6:43
02 Orphic Thrench 7:22
03 Alpha Centauri 10:16
04 Dark Magus 7:31
05 Shamanix 9:59
06 Snarling Black Mabel 7:45
07 Fluoro Neuro Sponge 6:41
08 Solstice/Angelic Particles (Remix) 11:43

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Simon Posford can be considered an excellent musician and composer when it comes to dance, techno, and trance music. While 'Twisted' earned him a position as the creator of one of the most influential trance albums of all time, 'The Lone Deranger' can only be described as the album that cemented this well-earned status.

The album begins with the hard hitting 'Demention', a psychadelic mixture of strong electronic beats, pounding bass, and interesting vocal samples. This track is very reminiscent of Pink Floyd's 'On The Run', with the backing electonic effects weaving back and forth, almost resembling the sensation of running. The following tracks 'Shakey Shaker' and 'Trancespotter' both seem to mirror one another at various points in either song. 'Shakey Shaker' carries a much deeper, bass leaden groove, while 'Trancepotter' has more high pitched sounds as well as several samples of laughter (also similar to many songs found on 'Dark Side Of The Moon).

'Deranger', the penultimate song on the album, manages to sum up the whole trance experience as a whole, with vocal samples, catchy drum loops, interesting effects, and wonderful synth rhythms. 'Deranger' stands out as the strongest song on the album and manages to remain interesting and catchy throughout it's seven minute duration. The final tune here 'Jiggle Of The Spinx' contains some eastern influenced instrumentation, including what sound like a sitar, it likely crossovered with the Shpongle debut which was concieved at that time.

Hallucinogen - The Lone Deranger ( flac 415mb)

01 Demention 7:17
02 Snakey Shaker 6:22
03 Trancespotter 8:36
04 Horrorgram 7:32
05 Snarling (Remix) 6:47
06 Gamma Goblins Part 2 8:47
07 Deranger 7:33
08 Jiggle Of The Sphinx 6:40

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The pedigree of this album is a bit complicated. The source material comes from releases by Simon Posford, who records under the name Hallucinogen. But the versions of those tracks contained here were dubbed up by Ott -- and that seems to be the only name he goes by, except that he also records in a more trancey mode under the name Eco. As the admirably straightforward title of this album would indicate, the mixes Ott designs for Hallucinogen are deeply rooted in classic dub-wise reggae, though you would never mistake them for the genuine article. For one thing, he manages to employ all the standard studio tricks of dub -- echo, delay, phasing, and instruments popping up out of the murk and then submerging again -- without ever creating the mystical, spiritual quality that characterized most Jamaican dub of the 1970s. Even on tracks like the "Wicked Bassmonkey Mix" of "Solstice" and the "It's Turtles All the Way Down Mix" of "Gamma Goblins," which are nothing if not trippy and sometimes downright pretty, the grooves are hard and clean rather than smoky and trippy. And the "World Sheet of Closed String Mix" of "L.S.D." sounds attractively like a summit meeting between Strange Parcels and Mad Professor. Most pleasantly surprising of all is the fact that even with an average track length of just over nine minutes, not a single one of these tunes sounds too long.

Hallucinogen - In Dub ( flac 401mb)

01 Mi-Loony-Um! ('A Floating Butterfly Stings Like A Bee' Mix) 11:54
02 Solstice ('Warwick Bassmonkey' Mix) 8:59
03 Gamma Goblins ('Its Turtles All The Way Down' Mix) 10:53
04 Spiritual Antiseptic ('Minty Fresh Confidence' Mix) 8:16
05 L.S.D. ('World Sheet Of Closed String' Mix) 9:19
06 Angelic Particles ('Buckminster Fullerine' Mix) 10:25

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