I like psychedelic trance music. I like it a lot. I listen to hours of it every day at work, in fact, and have done so for years. I used to maintain a constantly growing collection of albums, but these days I mostly just listen to Radio Progressive or Divbyzero.

A friend with similar tastes related a conversation he had with his wife. “Why do you like psytrance so much?”, she asked; “it’s so driving and repetitive!”. “Exactly-” he replied, “it’s so driving and repetitive!”

Good psytrance really is driving and repetitive, but that’s just the foundation. The steady pulse of the 4/4 kick and the robotic throb of the rolling 16th-note bassline that define the style free the composer up to go completely nuts in the higher registers. When it’s really hitting the mark it feels you are riding some giant machine, surfing on a railway engine as it roars down the track. Underfoot it’s massive power and rumbling vibration, overhead it’s all lightning and meteors, a crackling network of interlocking arpeggios hissing and sparking and melting together. It’s power and clarity and unstoppable energy, and at its best it completely swallows you up.

Of course all music ebbs and flows, but the most satisfying moments when listening to psytrance are the points where it feels like the music has found a steady state: the entire sonic spectrum is full, the machine is powered up and roaring away, throttle wide open. I stand in front of the PA system and it feels like standing in the waves at the beach – endless, they roll in, lift you up, push you back, pull you forward, and all you can do is ride.