Stumble, ripple, roll off equilibrium’s security into instability’s blissful stability
The warmth and the success of a party are very subjective and depend on many aspects.
Legal, illegal, in clubs, open-air, festivals, small parties with a bunch of friends… we all have our favourite.
…endless morning conversations, which one is better and why, long debates on what has gone wrong and why…
Whichever the opinion, interaction is the key; it’s what makes the difference. Interaction means connection and brings about communication. Interaction, connection and communication with the venue, the dance floor, the music, the atmosphere, your feet and emotions…
Wildthings Records came to Gabrio in Turin, Italy, on January 27th to present Error Corrective’s first album “Fade Instincts”. The party was organised by Looney-Moon, a crew active in the Italian psytrance underground movement.
So, Error Corrective’s album is coming out…
WildThings: “Yes, in March. We’re pretty confident: it’s been a work in progress since 2001 when Error Corrective got together. It’s something that we’ve always wanted to do. It’s slowly flowing and getting to the stage where we’ve got a small collection of tracks that kind of relate to each other nicely, that we can put together.
What is it that links artists within the Wildthings Record label?
WT: I think our label kind of reflects the underground style, we tend to stick to the same artists and then follow them. Although each one has a different flavour, they all, naturally, like the same kind of underground music. This gives a certain style to our label, which itself is a platform. It’s actually a way to make an artist heard.
You’ve been in the London psychedelic underground scene for quite a while now. You must have seen it change…
WT: We have always been in the underground scene, that’s where we come from. Even before we met we were all involved in the underground scene in one way or another.
In the UK, psychedelic music has been around for more than thirty years and there’s always been stuff going on, it’s always been a big party scene. There used to be a lot of club parties, for a long time, but then costs started to be very high. It’s true, in London, clubs are very expensive. I guess that’s why the UK is the country where there’s the highest number of people in the world jumping off fences to get into festivals!
Costs get higher, and people find other ways to go to parties…
WT: Yes, people stopped going to clubs and started to go underground. There were still a lot of people going to clubs because they were calling big names to attract more people and meet the budget. But because prices were so high and everyone was going pretty commercial, people started having a lot of squat parties. I think it was around ’97. Between ’95 and ’97 you got the first wave of the trance movement. It was there before, but that’s when it really boomed. At that time, the music was really psychedelic and parties were quite underground and full of people… at some parties there were up to three thousand people! I guess that was when the real underground scene started to have a real audience. Parties where you don’t have to pay, parties that anyone can afford…
What about your music and your audience…
WT: Our music kind of reflects the UK underground scene, as we have always been there. The London crowd doesn’t mind if you get a bit dark, but after a few hours of dark and hard music, you lose them. They actually like more groove, warmer sounds, kind of friendly and more psychedelic. Half of the crowd will want psychedelic sounds and people won’t stay all night if they are not having a good time. And you can get to the point where you try to do both. On the one hand you try to keep it psychedelic, and at the same time you try to maintain the groove.
How does your music evolve during a party?
WT: There is not a part of the day in which our music should be played. Of course there are parts that are more dark, others more full-on, but it’s not music that has to be played at certain, specific times. Some music that is very psychedelic but that is not necessarily progressive doesn’t have a precise time in which it should be played.
I think our label kind of reflects the underground style, but at the same time each artist has a different flavour and they can all play….at any time.
Do you think in general people tend to think that certain music should be played at specific times?
WT: Yes, there is a lot of preconception about what should be played and when… really dark at night and relaxed during the day. It doesn’t actually have to be like that. For instance, many festivals tend to follow the same format, full-on, dark at night and then more relaxed music during the day. In the morning you get progressive and then after progressive they move to progressive house! You tend to have a lot of that, music that goes at 130 bpm, to me that’s far too slow for dancing! They say it’s more relaxed, but at the end of the day it kills the dance floor!
Do you feel let down by festivals?
WT: Sometimes I wonder how you can organize a psychedelic trance music festival and end up playing progressive house all the time…half the public is probably too high to realize it, but the other half is wondering “what have I come here for?”
Actually, I love festivals. They bring people from all around the world, allow people with a limited budget to attend big events. In that environment underground music as well can get on stage and perform on a scale it would never reach otherwise. Of course, there is a lot of commercial music. As in all styles of music, you always have the more commercial end and the more underground, but I think it’s all valid. Commercial music is very good at bringing music to people and then eventually pushing them to go deeper. Without the big names, you wouldn’t have all these festivals.
What about today’s mainstream trance music?
WT: In the trance music that is coming out now there’s a lot of remixing of old music. I don’t understand this…now, advanced technology has made a lot of progress and it’s possible to do a lot with technology, you can actually take people on a journey. You can’t regurgitate 1990’s pop music to make people dance! There should be something else for all these people who have given all that money and travelled all that way…they’re there and they just say “come on, give it to me, make me dance and listen to good music”. And what do they end up doing? Dancing remixes of music they’ve heard on the “Top of the Pops”. I mean, to me that’s not really psychedelic. There are a lot of artists at the moment who are pushing for more commercial music, going beyond that threshold to get to a bigger market. That’s not our style.
What about in the rest of the world? There are a lot of countries where the scene is pretty new…
WT: Trance is becoming a global phenomenon. I don’t want to call it a revival of the psychedelic movement, but more like a growth, an evolution. There are a lot of places in the world where the scene is completely new and it’s still very small. We’re seeing that the energy is the same no matter where you go, the people you meet at parties are on the same frequency everywhere, there is a driving force that leads the evolution and the growth of the psychedelic movement: positive thinking, openness, creativeness, non-violence…that’s maybe the only thing that makes us have faith in the human race!