What has become known as Goa trance, has, especially since about 1990, spread widely to other places through the movement of DJs, artists and partiers, through commercialisation in clubs, and by the release of recordings. The DJs from Goa have been performing Goa trance sets in other countries throughout the history of Goa Trance. Fred Disko did parties in Nepal in 1985 and Thailand in 1987. Ray Castle did a series of trance dance parties in Europe from 1987 to 1991 under the name of Pagan Productions. He has also worked a lot in Japan and has stated (in Cole 1996a, p. 9) that the main circuit for Goa trance since the late 1980s has been Tokyo-Goa-Amsterdam. Steve Psyko, who currently spends six months of each year recording in Sweden, recalls (in Cole 1996b, p. 7) attending some Goa Trance parties in Sydney in the late 1980s, and he started making them himself in Melbourne in 1991. Despite the fact that an identifiable musical style or range of stylistic approaches to music played at Goa trance parties has existed at least since the mid 1980s, Ray Castle (in Cole 1996a, p. 9) believes "it wasn't until 1991 or 1992 that people went back to Europe, or Japan, or even Australia, and began making music specifically for psychedelic trance parties".
Goa- style parties and music making have emerged in subtropical Australia, specifically in the alternative lifestyle region of Northern New South Wales. The scene is focused on Byron Bay which, like Goa and Kathmandu, is one of the World's most popular backpacker tourist destinations. Ray Castle (1996b), who lives nearby at Surfers Paradise, has described the cultural mix and the unique parties of the region:
The Byron Beach scene is a split between surfer, newage-sanyassin-yuppies, bohemian spiritualists and wholelistic-counterculture misfits, many who have drifted in from the Asia traveller circuit or are completely disenfranchised from urban culture. This psychotropic, rainbow belt, east edge, part of Aussie has been notorious for its Goa-style, tribedelic meltdown, beach and forest parties over the last few years. It's the full sunrise bliss experience in pure, untainted nature, in an extremely mellow, tolerant, country environment. There are many DJs, artists and musicians living in this bubble, enclave. There are starting to be many fusion, feral/techno groups like Trance Goddess and Curried Grooves. The parties are often quite ritualistic with much fire twirling and didgeridoo huffing and puffing, and the participants sport the most off-the-planet hairdos. A truly unique antipodean alternative, electronic music scene is mutating quite ingenuously here with its own idiosyncratic, exotic flavour to the freakquency tweakages and style of party production. An example of which would be the PsyHarmonics double compilation, "Dancing To The Sound Of The Sun.
The true spirit of the Goa Trance phenomenon is kept alive in these Australian events which are often non-commercial in their operation, in contrast with Goa parties in Europe. The outdoor atmosphere of a subtropical beach or forest is also impossible to achieve in Europe. None the less one of the main Goa trance events in Europe is an outdoor event, the Voov party. This grew out of the Amsterdam trance dance parties that Ray Castle was involved with from 1987 to 1991, and it was inaugurated in 1992. The locations change but are always outdoors on a farm or other suitable space. Ray Castle returned to Europe to DJ at the 1996 Voov festival near Hamburg to a crowd of around 10,000.
The European venues are otherwise indoor. There is a London indoor party called Return to the Source held in an old opera theatre but mostly Goa trance nights are held in clubs. Richard De Souza (1996) who is cynical about the validity of the term Goa trance, is equally disparaging of the clubs that have emerged:
The only link between trance music in the UK and the Indian state of Goa is that some DJs and people partaking of this activity have vacationed in Goa and may have attended the famed beach parties in Goa. In an effort to recreate some of the "magic" they experienced at A BEACH PARTY, they renamed some clubs in London and Manchester as Goan Trance clubs.
Melbourne-based Goa DJ Steve Psyko (in Cole 1996b, p. 6) maintains that Goa raves in European cities are now attended by "a very mainstream crowd", and that he and his friends are dissatisfied with the way the genre has been stereotyped and commodified. Psyko claims that "the English... have decided that Goa trance is just one kind of music." This he believes is very "un-Goa", that "in the beginning the feeling from Goa music is...anything goes." (p. 8). The current popularity of Goa Trance raises other aesthetic and cultural issues for Psyko:
The parties are made for money...the music is made for money....It reflects the Western mentality. What attracted me in the beginning of electronic music was that it didn't reflect the Western mentality. I am not really interested in any music that reflects that...where consumption is the basis of the mentality. (p. 6)
Melbourne-based DJ and recording artist, Ollie Olsen (in Cole 1996d, p. 8), has provided some clues as to how this commercialisation has occurred. He claims to have introduced Goa trance recordings to Paul Oakenfold, a very popular DJ, remixer, artist and label owner on the current English dance music scene. Oakenfold began to spin Goa Trance recordings, and the style received a real boost with the presentation of his "Full Moon Party" Essential Mix on BBC Radio 1.(Clubdub/Cybernia webpage) He also arranged to have some of the small label Goa recordings reissued on his influential dance label, Perfecto, creating a sublabel, Perfecto Fluoro, dedicated to Goa Trance. The fact that the music was then available on Perfecto legitimated it for other big-name DJs in England.
Olsen (in Cole, 1996d, p. 6) has noted the commercial success of certain artists and labels:
In England in the last year the trance thing has got really big.....bands like T.I.P. and their label.....becoming very big over there. Man With No Name is like the commercial end of the Goa thing...but he sells incredible amounts of records now. I think that every 12" that Tsuyoshi puts out he's probably selling 5000 now, which has grown remarkably, and getting stronger all the time.
Sharif (1996) reports that "Goa trance has now become the latest vibe of city clubland- with tracks like Robert Miles' Top 5 hit "Children" signalling its march into the mainstream". He also quotes French DJ Yohann as saying that the Goa trance "craze [is] dominating house parties, pulling more than 4000 people to each rave".
Below are lists of Record labels, artists and DJs who are currently commercially active in Goa Trance. Although containing substantial numbers of names the lists are far from complete.
Labels include Dragonfly (UK), Perfecto Fluoro (UK), Flying Rhino (UK), Blue Room Released (UK), Matsuri Productions (Japan), TIP Records (UK), M Track Records (The Netherlands), Psychic Deli Records, Symbiosis (UK), kk Records (Belgium), Krembo Records (Israel), PsyHarmonics (Australia), Trust in Trance Records (Israel), Orange Records (The Netherlands), Fairway Records (France), BooM Records (The Netherlands) Orbit Records, Joking Sphynx Records (France), Platipus Records (UK), Pyramid, Harthouse (Germany), Eye Q (Germany), Phantasm, 23% Records (US), Celtic, Transient, POF (Germany), Tunnel Records (Germany), Tokyo Techno Tribe Records (Japan)
Artists include Doof, Kox Box, Prana, Hallucinogen (Simon Posford), Astral Projection, The Infinity Project, Man With No Name, Green Nuns of the Revolution, Juno Reactor, Etnica, Total Eclipse, Slinky Wizard, Bass Chakra, Kode 4, Black Sun, Insectoid, Boris, Rhythmystec, Sonic Sufi, Masaray, Mantaray, Disco Volante, Cosmosis, Joking Sphinx, Technossomy, Tomahawk, Transwave, The Auranaut, Sirius 2, Arcana, Shaktra, Miranda, SYB Unity Nettwerk, The Pollinator, Les Diaboliques, Genetic, Ayahusca, Reflecta, Phreaky, Orichalcum, Synchro, Kuro, Johann, Witchcraft, Transwave, Psychaos, Voodoo People, Mandra Gora, Voodoof, Einstein, Paul Jackson, Masa, Ree Kitajiima, Har-el Prussky, Nordreform Sound System, Robert Miles, Kurusaki, X-tron
DJs include Paul Oakenfold (UK), Goa Gil (USA), Ray Castle (New Zealand), Steve Psyko (Australia), Fred Disko (France), Richard Ahlberg (Sweden), Hugh James Sharpe, James Munro, Dominic Lamb, Sven Vath (Germany), DJ Yohann (France), Tsuyoshi (Japan), DJ Lestat (France) Sven Dolise (Germany) Planet B.E.N. (Germany), DJ Kuni (Japan), 333 (USA), Mark Allen (USA)
Many DJs are also involved in recording tracks for commercial issue often in collaboration with other artists or DJs. For example Ray Castle is a member of Rhythmystic, Masaray, Insectoid and Mantaray, collaborating with different people for each project. Another good example is Psyko Disko which is a collaboration between two DJs (Fred Disko and Steve Psycho) and a musician/DJ (Ollie Olsen).
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