Californian trance

I wrote this article a full twenty-three years ago for “Velvet”, the monthly magazine I edited at the time, and I'm still proud of it: not for the style, a bit clunky by my current standards, but for the fact that it turns out to be the only piece published in real time, in Italy and perhaps beyond, on this subject. It's paradoxical that very few others have been written since, which still keeps the scene it's dedicated to quite submerged on a global level. The piece is the same as it was in 1990, just cleaned up of a few typos and some rough patches in the writing, and supplemented with a few small pieces of information that were unavailable back in the pre-internet days.

There's another Los Angeles that has been making its voice heard for many years now to anyone with the right feeling to listen to it. A Los Angeles that whispers instead of shouting, that rejects the fake-outrageous posturing of certain metal, the all-too-often sterile iconoclasm of punk/hardcore, the escapist spirit of Sixties revivalism, the staleness of roots-recycling and above all the glossy clamour of mainstream music. It's an underground Los Angeles, somewhat withdrawn into itself and outwardly not very inclined to open up to the outside world. A Los Angeles that pulses with life and enthusiasm, that burns with a truly unforgettable fire of emotions and sensations which, though entirely private, can almost magically become collective. Sonic expression – and, more broadly, artistic, graphic, filmic, performative expression: in short, multimedia expression – is the most direct means through which the creative urgencies of this Los Angeles find complete and fascinating realization. From the early Eighties to today, hundreds of individuals have contributed to creating a scene that, although ill-suited to being framed as a “movement”, boasts somewhat common traits and a fairly unified identity, beyond the inevitable differences in language and intent. Most of them have had the chance to document their experiences on record or tape, and even though such artifacts have enjoyed only very limited distribution and promotion, it would not be wrong to say that they hold a role of primary importance within contemporary music, both in terms of strictly technical aspects (that is, the results of blending various influences, certainly rich in original and innovative ideas), and above all for their impressive power of communication on a physical, mental and evocative level. There exist a couple of hundred of these records, not always easy to find, split between 7-inches and LPs. These are extremely limited editions, often accompanied by splendid handmade artwork, made almost always without any profit motive, purely for the love of art and the desire to share the results of their own work with others.

Although it has not yet exploded, not even within the narrow confines of “mass” underground interest, this new Los Angeles scene has over time learned to make better use of its potential, in a process of natural expansion and professionalization. The number of “cult devotees” and simple admirers has grown considerably, as has the size of vinyl pressings and the echo of international acclaim, but the original spirit has not been lost: Los Angeles continues to weave its dense web of exchanges and contributions, to develop musical discourses built on cross-contamination, to cooperate – despite differences of opinion, failed artistic marriages, flings and stable relationships with the most disparate trends – toward a broadly shared project, evoking the idea of a “factory”, a creative commune where what matters is not the individual results but the whole, the vital flow of ideas. A flow from which, in this specific case, brilliant and incredibly lively, multicoloured and appealing insights have sprung, despite scarce financial means and the objective difficulties caused by not conforming to stereotypes.

The origins

Los Angeles, then. An immense city, broken up into a thousand neighbourhoods, cradle of constant ferment and meeting place for races, cultures, languages, philosophies. A city where anything can happen and where, indeed, everything does happen. It's not too difficult to trace back to the first, uncertain steps of the scene examined here, datable to the period between the late Seventies and the start of the following decade; far more complex, however, is discovering who the forerunners were, what stimuli, influences, practical as well as theoretical references these artists drew on. Without digging too deep into the sands of history, and simply recalling – to avoid any misunderstanding – the constant fertility of Californian experimental music, one might perhaps point to the “school” of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, an organization active in Pasadena as early as the second half of the Seventies, as one of the inspirations. Devoted mostly to abstruse electronic musings and united by a deep love for unconventional sounds – be they punk, avant-garde or dark – the members of the bizarre LAFMS congregation had brilliantly set up a highly dynamic alternative circuit, based on collaboration between the various entities and documented by a magazine (“Light Bulb Magazine”), by various performances and by a fair number of records and cassettes released in extremely limited numbers. Besides works by Pablums, La Forte Force, Doodooettes and others, the LAFMS produced three compilation LPs of no small importance: “Blorp Esette” (1977), with cover art drawn by Captain Beefheart and an unreleased track by the Residents, the equally obscure “Blub Krad” (1978) and “Darker Scratcher” (1980), the first to enjoy even minimal European distribution. All of it overseen by a handful of tireless characters who, in addition to their frenetic activity as musicians in various ghost bands and otherwise, took care of the association's management and contacts: Rick Potts, Dennis Duck (later drummer for Dream Syndicate), Tom Recchion, Fredrik Nielsen.

On closer inspection, the Trance Port Tapes of the enigmatic Barry “A Produce” Craig (a cassette label that had the merit of putting out two seminal compilations aptly titled “L.A. Mantra”) and Bruce Licher's Independent Project – the two labels that in the early Eighties began releasing material from the scene discussed here – share quite a few affinities with the Los Angeles Free Music Society, and not only because of the occasional overlap between the two labels' releases (some of the artists from the original Independent Project entourage, for instance, contributed to “Light Bulb Emergency Cassette”, a double tape compilation assembled by the LAFMS in 1981), nor even for stylistic leanings that were only sporadically in tune with one another: what united them was the will to break the chains of convention – expressive, discographic, attitudinal – by taking difficult and in some ways “new” paths. Not out of some thinly veiled snobbery, but simply to follow natural inclinations that were perhaps unusual but nonetheless full of interest. The pivotal figures of this current, and the not-so-grey eminences behind its later developments, were therefore A Produce, originally guitarist of Afterimage, and Bruce Licher, the mastermind behind the now-legendary Savage Republic and graphic designer/factotum of Independent Project (whose catalogue includes, among others, albums by Human Hands, Kommunity FK, Camper Van Beethoven, Party Boys and of course Savage Republic). It is to them that we owe the coordination of the various creative forms and the definition of the doctrine of what, with a genuinely inspired term, has long been celebrated as “trance music”.

Trance and transcendence

“The trance element crosses cultural boundaries and expands, while collapsing, the duration of time. Reduced to its primary elements it is rhythm stripped of melody, used in a hypnotic/evocative way in an attempt to place the listener and the musician in a different state” (A Produce). A sound, then, that is evocative and atmospheric, built on the repetitiveness of sonic textures, on a particular use of voice, on the unstable balance between harmony and dissonance, on the coexistence of relaxation and tension. In the “Trance Music Directory”, a booklet compiled by A Produce himself and published in 1984, some sixty “precursors” of trance music are examined. The list includes the most disparate names – from John Cage to Wire, from the Residents to the Velvet Underground, from Pink Floyd to Nick Drake, from Miles Davis to Joy Division – and although the list is incomplete and arbitrary, one can easily gather that trance, rather than a style or genre, is an attitude, an approach. Again it is A Produce who offers further clarification: “The concept of trance music is much broader than the name implies. We're not so much interested in trance music in its purest, most minimal state, as in the idea or element of trance as it manifests itself in different musical idioms. The trance element can be traced back to when Africans and Asians first began beating on homemade percussion, although back then its function was mostly tied to ceremonies and rituals. There are pedal-tone sounds in Bach's organ music where a repetitive tone permeates an entire passage. The piano music of Satie and Debussy was in effect the ‘ambient’ music of the 19th century. Rock'n'roll too, at first, was seen as a heavy hammering of percussion accompanied by unintelligible lyrics. Today it seems that trance elements have come full circle, in parallel with the fact that the idea of a certain minimalism has crept into popular music forms and that ambient has found its place in modern music, and the so-called New Age has become popular”.

Countless references, then, and countless sonic directions to explore. It's no surprise, therefore, that the various soloists and bands of that Los Angeles – to which, in light of everything discussed so far and what follows, the title of this article, “Land Of 1,000 Trances”, fits so well – interpreted the basic idea in different ways. Nor is it surprising that the trance music that flourished there brings together electronic minimalism and dark undertones, ambient temptations and near-primitive tribalism, noise and psychedelia; never in equal doses, giving rise to that variety of expressions and tendencies that makes the panorama so multicoloured and unpredictable. “The trance element is a skillful use of sound and/or repetition to evoke a mantra-like cadence, a bewitching influence, an obsessive quality or an absorbed meditation in which everyone's thoughts can wander. When the use isn't skillful, however, the results are monotonous and not worth paying attention to” (A Produce). Staying true to these principles, then, the musicians of Los Angeles have directed their efforts toward the most heterogeneous sonorities: entertainment, rupture, accompaniment to images, reflection. To escape reality by opening new horizons for the imagination.

The first generation

And the L.A. experimental scene of the early Eighties truly did not lack imagination, even though the number of followers was certainly not as large as it is today: while on one hand, in fact, the standard-bearers of the minimal-electronic avant-garde tied to the LAFMS guaranteed – alongside a few isolated self-taught musicians reluctant to attach themselves to any kind of “movement” (for instance Monitor or Fibonaccis, and, why not, Wall Of Voodoo) – hallucinatory compositions capable of satisfying even the most extremism-hungry palates, on the other hand a new wave of musicians attempted to reconcile tradition with the urgency of “research”, native culture with new wave references imported from Britain, rock attitude with spirituality, exotic flavours with eccentric taste. Among them were the pioneering Human Hands, devoted to an original blend of pop and psychedelia that, despite its hypnotic strangeness, still paid homage to more classic roots without venturing into overly revolutionary contamination (the ensemble's two albums, assembled posthumously from released and unreleased tracks of various origins, are excellent and full of brilliant ideas regardless), and Alex Gibson's B-People, equally penalized in terms of success by their railing against clichés while still operating within a melodic framework.

Contemporary to the activities of Human Hands and B-People, though more isolated and submerged, were those of the two “gurus” of trance music, A Produce and Bruce Licher, engaged in projects divergent in form but not lacking substantial similarities. The former had founded Afterimage in 1980, a trance-rock band clearly influenced by a certain shadowy post-punk and creator of an atmospheric sound, torn open in its obsessiveness by brilliant interplay of guitar and keyboards and dominated by the dramatic vocals of Alec Tension; despite some naivety and a reliance on solutions with more “physical” than emotional-intellectual impact, the output of the original Afterimage – documented on a Trance Port Tapes cassette, a single (“Strange Confession”) and a mini-LP (“Fade In”) – remains to this day one of the most shining examples of Californian trance music. After the band's breakup, A Produce put his role as producer ahead of that of musician for several years, before surprising everyone in 1988 with his solo album, the splendid “The Clearing”: a largely instrumental soundtrack, meditative and captivating in its rarefied textures and in its calm reaching toward “spatial” horizons, in a fluid flow of pauses and sudden bursts of colour. Likewise, Bruce Licher also began his journey down a path of anything but relaxed and relaxing experimentation, first with short-lived pseudo-noise outfits (Neef, Project 197, Bridge, Them Rhythm Ants, each responsible for a 7-inch) and then with Africa Corps, formed in 1981 and, a year later, coinciding with the release of the first album “Tragic Figures”, renamed Savage Republic. Built on rhythmic patterns bordering on paranoia and on violent, abrasive blends of sounds and voices, “Tragic Figures” makes up for its evident stylistic uncertainties with its subversive power and spontaneity. Traces of that headlong fury would survive only in certain moments of the band's live performances, while in the studio the band – initially a quartet made up of Licher, Philip Drucker, Mark Erskine and Jeff Long, and later a fluid entity that would include many other leading figures of the scene – would prefer to launch into more elaborate and subliminally communicative compositions. More than the beautiful mini-LP “Trudge” (1985), or the nonetheless excellent “Jamahirya” (1988) and “Customs” (1989), the final releases before Licher and co.'s painful but inevitable farewell, Savage Republic's masterpiece remains the monumental “Ceremonial”, if only for its ability to elevate trance music to indescribable levels of hieratic mysticism, without ever fully severing ties with mother earth, across instrumental and vocal tracks of rare inspiration.

Not quite forerunners, but nonetheless among the very first to follow in the footsteps of the archetypal leading band, were 17 Pygmies, formed in 1982 on the initiative of Jackson Del Rey (alias Philip Drucker of Savage Republic, who would later launch his own label, Resistance) and Robert Loveless (also part of Licher's court in various incarnations of the group); their four records, all fairly different from one another (except for the first two, the mini-album “Hatiqua” and “Jedda By The Sea”, on which Licher and Erskine also appear), hold within their grooves the marks of an inventiveness oriented toward enveloping, dreamlike sonic settings, often illuminated by the adolescent, folkie vocals of the excellent Debbie Spinelli, even though “Captured In Ice” and “Welcome” suffer from a perhaps excessive tendency toward mannerism (the former) and a not always successful inclination toward visionary nonsense (the latter). Closer to “pop”-flavoured themes – though the term must be understood in relative terms given the overall context – is instead the sole LP by Paniolo, a project running parallel to 17 Pygmies that also featured Drucker and Loveless: “City Of Refuge”, from 1985, is in fact a collection of delicate, atypical songs that are not too demanding to listen to, made of effective electro-acoustic interplay and occasionally punctuated by the unmistakable notes of violin.

Belonging to the same lineage as 17 Pygmies are also Bay Of Pigs, active since 1982 but who only reached a mature debut in 1987 after a few worthy 12-inches – their “Plastic Pig”, a clever excursion into energetic, dark-hued rock, at times streaked with “mutant” funk and always marked by the unsettling voice of Colin Edwards (reminiscent of Andrew Eldritch of Sisters Of Mercy), is a work of considerable depth and charisma – and Party Boys, who on their third attempt created one of the most intense and evocative albums in the entire trance panorama. “No Aggro”, released on Independent Project, and the follow-up “Truckers' Strike”, put out by Iridescence (another important Californian label devoted to the most disparate experimentations), present sparse, minimal sketches, somewhat confused vignettes built around repetitive beats and dazed, off-kilter arrangements; “Daddyland”, by contrast, is a fresco that is coherent in its structure and multicoloured in its nuances, drawing out, as well as could be hoped, the coordinates of a psychedelic post-punk that paralyzes with its oppressive cadences and enchants with the insinuating feel of its instrumental litanies and above all of its “dragging” vocals, endowed with tremendous personality. With Savage Republic's “Ceremonial”, then, we reach the peak of a chiaroscuro, solemn kind of music, one that nonetheless found – in the work of numerous other bands – discographic realizations of enviable stature. And it is to these further protagonists that we will now turn our attention – summarizing as much as possible, so as not to risk repeating the same concepts over and over.

In the footsteps of the fathers

Of the middle generation — that is, the dense crowd of artists who rose to prominence (so to speak) around the mid-Eighties — the names worth remembering are Abecedarians, Drowning Pool, Fourwaycross and Psi Com, all of whom — except the last — released a fair number of vinyl records. While Abecedarians (unmissable are their debut 12" for the English Factory label and the album "Eureka", far superior to the flatter "Resin") and Drowning Pool (warmly recommended are their two records for Viva, the self-titled debut and the mini-album "Nierika", largely collected on the double anthology "Satori"; also worthwhile is the self-produced second "Drowning Pool", while the last, tedious "Aphonia" disappoints) don't stray far from the "typical" models of a majestic trance music with a naive air about it, Fourwaycross stand out as a different kind of proposition altogether. Initially limited by Tom Dolan's vocals, a little too dependent on Ian Curtis (heard on the first two LPs, "Fourwaycross" — the vinyl edition of a tape dated 1985 — and "Fill The Sky"), the group subsequently acquired more original traits once Beth Thompson took over on vocals, her voice soaring admirably on "Home", on the excellent mini-LP "Shimmer" and on "On The Other Hand", where an imposing rhythmic framework provides the backdrop to rather inventive melodic solutions, rooted in post-punk but possessed of a breadth unusual for the genre. Also part of the Fourwaycross "family" are the gloomy Blissed Out Fatalists (one self-titled album to their name) and Doubting Thomas, the project of the already-mentioned Tom Dolan and Beth Thompson (their LP, dated 1987, is titled "Another Way Of Knowing"). Last but not least, Psi Com, the shadowy ensemble fronted by none other than Perry Farrell, who would go on to achieve success as the frontman of the hugely admired and brilliant Jane's Addiction: their sole mini-LP, self-titled, lines up heavily percussive tracks in which guitar and voice launch into strikingly effective performances, free of any constraint as they alternate between harmony and dissonance.

The future looks bright

All that remains, then, is to mention the new talents. But not before underlining the importance that Bruce Licher and Philip Drucker had in the international rise — always at underground level, of course — of a scene they can rightly be considered godfathers of. It's thanks to this dynamic duo that Nate Starkman & Son came into being, a label that in roughly two years distinguished itself as a tireless promoter of both seasoned and emerging bands: even though today, while still existing as a brand, the label has been absorbed into Fundamental, one shouldn't forget how it operated (and hopefully continues to do so) always intelligently and shrewdly, releasing albums by acts already known to the scene's devotees (Savage Republic, Party Boys, Human Hands) while giving young ensembles a chance to prove their worth. White Glove Test, Shiva Burlesque and Red Temple Spirits seem, in fact, to say that the future is bright, and their LPs bear out the claim.

There's no need to dwell too much on White Glove Test, except to note that "Look" (1986) and "Leap" (1989) reveal a certain lack of originality, though they still impress favourably with the richness of their instrumentation, poised between melodic trance rock and keyboard-driven new wave/pop. Far more original, by contrast, are Shiva Burlesque, whose self-titled debut has already received deserved attention: theirs are surreal ballads, sonic watercolours with exotic embroidery and a melancholy mood, magnetically lysergic in their visionary electro-acoustic constructions. Last but not least, Red Temple Spirits, whose two albums "Dancing To Restore An Eclipsed Moon" and "If Tomorrow I Were Leaving For Lhasa, I Wouldn't Stay A Minute More" are milestones of a trance music that is psychedelic in attitude, inspired by the Sixties yet projected toward expressive universes where time is a runaway variable. Guitarist Dallas Taylor and singer William Faircloth, with his wonderfully ambiguous, cavernous timbre, are the pillars of a band among the greatest ever produced by this fertile corner of the Californian avant-garde. And "If Tomorrow…" completes, alongside Savage Republic's "Ceremonial" and Party Boys' "Daddyland", an ideal trio of masterpieces of the genre.

The rest

For the sake of keeping the piece focused, we haven't discussed many other facets of the fascinating new sound of Los Angeles. Take Mark Nine, for instance, a brilliant multi-instrumentalist who has kept fans waiting years for his first LP (those interested can nonetheless hear him, alongside William Faircloth of Red Temple Spirits, on "Wide Awake And Dreaming", the sole mini-album by Ministry Of Love; or, better still, on the compilation "Viva Los Angeles II", where he contributes the splendid "Sun And Shadows"). Or In The Distance, A Produce's latest creation, also featured on the aforementioned compilation. Or, again, the eccentric poet-performer Randall Kennedy, versatile artists such as Scott Fraser, Chas Smith, Partly Cloudy and Steaming Coils, old, "forgotten" ensembles (Kommunity FK, God And The State, Food And Shelter), and current bands like Gothic Hut, Downy Mildew and Black Tape For A Blue Girl, each with at least two LPs to their name. And finally, skipping over the lively, more rock-oriented offerings of Camper Van Beethoven, Radwaste, The Rub, Trash Matinee, To Damascus, Ten Foot Faces and Trotsky Icepick, whose ties to the scene, however incidental, still warrant at least a mention.

Viva Los Angeles!

How bands and records of this quality could have been ignored for so long by critics and fans alike is a mystery. In old Europe, however, someone had already turned their attention to the phenomenon as far back as the first half of the Eighties, well before it reached its present-day proportions: the attentive French label Sordide Sentimental, who had chosen Savage Republic's "Tragic Figures" as the first release in their "Sacrifice et strategie" series, and a few young Romans forever devoted to the cult of unconventional music, responsible even back in the late Seventies for a fanzine notable for the extreme care put into its scant, irregular issues. Struck by what was unfolding before their eyes, the people behind "Viva" (the magazine's name, initially mimeographed and gradually growing richer and more original in both design and content) wanted to commit to an ambitious record-label project involving these Angelenos snubbed by the world, probably out of sheer ignorance: the first result was the compilation "Viva Los Angeles" (1986), featuring tracks by Drowning Pool, Savage Republic, 17 Pygmies, Bay Of Pigs, Randall Kennedy, Carl Stone and Koichi Nagai; the second was Drowning Pool's debut album. Two years later the enterprising label was behind another excellent operation, reissuing (with two extra unreleased tracks) 17 Pygmies' mini-LP "Hatiqva" and putting together a new Drowning Pool mini-album, "Nierika". Finally, February 1990 saw the release of "Viva Los Angeles II", an imposing compilation (two LPs or one CD) comprising no fewer than eighteen tracks, mostly unreleased, by an equal number of "historic" and emerging ensembles or solo artists, from the ever-present Savage Republic to Red Temple Spirits, from Afterimage to Kommunity FK, from 17 Pygmies to Drowning Pool, from Shiva Burlesque to the immense Mark Nine. For sharp critical observations and detailed bio-discographical profiles of the artists mentioned in this piece, we refer readers to the extremely thorough, meticulous booklets accompanying both volumes. In closing, two further compilations deserve a mention: "The October Country", featuring still largely unknown talents (Autumnfair, Dark Arts, Soul Brothers and ex-Party Boys member Marnie Weber) and "Ultraviolet" (subtitled, on a sticker, "The compilation ultraviolet postnuclear psycho acid sound"), which places the well-known Drowning Pool and Abecedarians alongside the obscure Death Ride '69, Electric-Cool-Aide, Homeland, Prison Of Socrates, 3D Picnic, X-1 Whiteman and the great Man From Missouri, whose self-produced self-titled album — also released by Nate Starkman & Son Greece with a different cover and the title "Bwanger Tatalingus Debase" — is an astonishing collection of unpredictable, at times aggressive, trance tracks (almost entirely instrumental). Will they become famous? Reason says no, the heart hopes otherwise. Why not hope for new, exciting adventures in the mysterious "land of a thousand trances"?

Postscript, March 2013

It isn't wrong to say that the Los Angeles trance-rock scene is more or less entirely contained in the records released in the second half of the Eighties. What came out afterwards, in fact, didn't offer much that was new in terms of creativity, and received even less promotion. That doesn't mean, however, that nothing happened at all.

Having disbanded shortly after Customs, Savage Republic got back together in 2005, putting out the solid "1938" (Neurot Recordings, 2007) and "Varvakios" (SR-Passport/LTM, 2012); missing from the line-up, however, is Bruce Licher, who at the helm of Scenic released "Incident At Cima" (Independent Project, 1995), "Aquatica" (Independent Project, 1996) and "The Acid Gospel Experience" (Hidden Agenda, 2002). A similar fate befell 17 Pygmies, who split up in 1990 (their last demos surfaced on the EP "Missyfish", Nate Starkman & Son, 1991) and re-emerged again around the middle of last decade (various albums on Trakwerk since then). A Produce's output was also prolific, split between the Trance Port and Hypnos imprints, sadly cut short in 2011 by the musician's premature death: worth mentioning at least are "Reflect Like A Mirror", "Respond Like An Echo" (1992), "Land Of A Thousand Trances" (1994; that the title might derive from this very article, which by then had surely come to our hero's attention, is more than just a suspicion) and "Smile On The Void" (2001). Nothing further, on the other hand, for veterans Afterimage, Bay Of Pigs, Paniolo and Party Boys, nor for the second-generation acts (Abecedarians, Blissed Out Fatalists, Doubting Thomas, Drowning Pool and Fourwaycross) or for White Glove Test and Red Temple Spirits, two of the three great hopes. Shiva Burlesque, on the other hand, did make a second, splendid album — "Mercury Blues", Fundamental 1990 — before splitting up shortly after to spawn the commercially successful Grant Lee Buffalo. As for the rest of the crew, the only essential mention is the long-awaited, remarkable album by Mark Nine, "This Island Earth" (Underworld, 1994).

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