Posted on May 1, 2009 - by alchemism

Essential Selections: A History of the Movement

The Best Goatrance & Psytrance, 1995-2009

DJ Basilisk’s Essential Selections is a project chronicling the goa trance movement as it evolved, marking it year-by-year with significant albums and tracks released in each.

The main focus of this project is psychedelic trance, with an assortment of downtempo, progressive, and techno releases. The scope is the entire history of the movement, from the dawn of psytrance history straight up to the modern day. I do not pretend that this is a definitive or authoritative list of all-time classics—it is simply a list of releases that reflect my taste in music—nothing more and nothing less. Expect my selections to change over time as I discover new music and reconsider the old. At the present time there are approximately 500 releases in the archive.

The idea for this project grew out of thousands of discussions I’ve been involved in over the years, particularly on Psynews (formerly goatrance.free.fr), Isratrance, the Goa / Psytrance Group at Discogs, TRiP (pre-2000), channel #goa on EFNet, and the 604 and CGT mailing lists. Recommendations are the basic currency of exchange in online communities like these. This project is essentially the sum of all the recommendations I might make on message forums, mailing lists, and so on. May these recommendations lead you to new and pleasant musical discoveries!

For the quick overview, check out the Hall of Fame (for lack of a better name), a list of what I think might be the top 5 releases for any given year.

Most of the music I would put into such a list is already in Basilisk’s. Highly recommended.

• Visit the Essential Selections project.