Speakers
Kathleen Agres
Harmonic Repetition as a Mechanism for Enjoyment and Altered States in Uplifting Trance Music
Currently, my collaborators and I have been working to understand the interplay between repetition/complexity and enjoyment/altered states during trance music listening. While our interests extend to different types of trance music heard around the globe, we have taken specific interest in uplifting trance (UT), a sub-genre of Electronic Dance Music (EDM). Because research has already examined the impact of repetitive rhythmic and percussive elements on trance states, we decided to investigate a hitherto unexplored aspect of this genre – harmonic repetition. Altered states, such as audience flow state and the feeling of being "lost" in the music, are sought after by listeners, and have been identified as one of the highest forms of enjoyment of this genre by trance enthusiasts. Whereas variation plays a prominent role in the majority of Western tonal music, we argue that the enjoyment of UT is rooted in balance between variety and musical repetition, with the later aspect tied to altered states of consciousness. A robust account of the particular repeated elements that influence affective response in listeners remains to be seen. Therefore, to elucidate the connection between harmonic structure and subjective enjoyment, we conducted a behavioural experiment in which listeners provided enjoyment ratings for UT excerpts varying in harmonic repetitiveness (i.e., repetitions of the underlying chords). To avoid the confound of using excerpts from different pieces of trance music, the excerpts used in the experiment were computationally-generated, using a statistical model trained on a corpus of 100 UT pieces. Harmonic structure was constrained by imposing particular repetition structures, which we call semiotic patterns, on an existing trance template. By systematically investigating the repetitiveness of chords within semiotic patterns, we have discovered specific harmonic contexts in repetitions contribute (or do not) to the enjoyment of uplifting trance. Future work aims to more directly connect subjective enjoyment and altered listening states, by conducting a follow-up study in an ecological setting.
Biography
Kathleen Agres is a postdoctoral researcher at Queen Mary, University of London, with a background in music cognition and, more recently, computational creativity. She received her undergraduate degree in Cognitive Psychology and Cello Performance from Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA), and completed her PhD in Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science (focusing on musical learning and memory) at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY). Her research explores a range of topics, from musical and linguistic creativity to learning and memory representations, and utilises a wide range of methods, including paradigms from experimental psychology, information theory, and computational modelling.
David Badger
Anatomy of A Psychedelic Track
My talk will seek to show how both open-source/’free’ and commercial tools are used to construct a psychedelic electronic track. The talk will be a ‘show and tell’ session; I’ll describe how I made my track in fine detail, as I’m all for total openness and ‘no jealous secrets’ in University discussions. Along the way I’ll talk about my use of Max/MSP and Metasynth to create the initial pad sound which gave me inspiration; then I’ll move on to talk about how I incorporated and fused both ‘old’ and ‘new’: some drum loops and
patterns were built using live coding in ixiLang, and some synth sounds have come from Synplant. The ‘old’ influence comes from classic ‘psychedelic’ signifiers such as the Mellotron (in software form) and analogue synths (e.g. the ARP Odyssey through a Binson Echorec emulator). I’ll talk about the lineage of these instruments and effects processors in psychedelia, perhaps nodding to the obvious (the Beatles,
Pink Floyd) and the not so obvious (Seefeel). The talk will illustrate my MO when I’m trying to integrate these ‘tried and tested’ sonic signifiers with 21st Century tools. The talk aims to be inspirational and rather than overly academic, and aimed at everyone with an interest in EDM and psychedelia. If I have time I may show a brief snippet of my video work; one of my
Masters degree video music pieces, ‘880’, drew upon my interest in induced trance states using binaural beats, the Shepard-Risset tone, and the work of La Monte Young and Eliane Radigue, amongst others. The drone music piece, which consists of sixteen layers of material layered together in a cumulative process, was augmented by a looping video, which can induce optical hallucinations in the observer over a 14-minute long period by exploiting the well-known Aristotelian phenomenon of the ‘motion after effect’.
Biography
David Badger (MRes / BSc, University of Huddersfield, Leeds
Metropolitan University) is a composer, Moog player and image maker. A resting postdoc student, he gained his Masters from the University of Huddersfield (under Monty Adkins and Julio d'Escrivan) two years ago.
Claire R Bannister
To fathom Hell or soar angelic: psychedelic music and the liminal space of the Goth subculture
Amidst a series of letters exchanged in the mid-1950s between revolutionary psychiatrist Humphry Osmond and novelist Aldous Huxley emerged a number of neologisms that attempted to differentiate the effects of a certain class of mind-altering compounds from other inebriants whose effects were inherently more toxic. Although new terms have since been forged in response to various socio-political agendas, such as a desire to dispel associations with the 1960s counter-culture, the two primary contestants – psychedelic and phanerothymic – were both presented in their original forms within rhyming couplets revolving around conceptual oppositions. The emergent term was embedded within a phrase that resounded with the cosmological and transcendent overtones it would come to express: “To fathom Hell or soar angelic, just take a pinch of psychedelic”. In between these two extremes lurks the liminal space of the Gothic, a space which remains of profound interest to the contemporary Goth subculture.
This paper suggests that the music of the Goth subculture is incredibly psychedelic. The most comprehensive account, offered by Isabella van Elferen, characterises Goth music as the sound of the uncanny. This Freudian concept, in its referral to the simultaneous presentation of the new and the familiar, not only evokes the conceptual oppositions integral to psychedelia, but also alludes to a certain paradoxical quality that echoes the desire of the Goth subculture to challenge and transgress borders and boundaries, in much the same way the counter-culture of
the 1960s inverted cultural norms. From hypnotic drones to the fetishising of timbre and musical manipulations of time and space, Goth music contains numerous characteristics that are recognised as psychedelic within the context of acid rock and many varieties of electronic dance music. Based on ethnographic research, this paper, therefore, presents Goth as one of the many musical subcultures in which psychedelia finds sonic resonance.
Biography
Claire Rebecca is a musician, sound designer and postgraduate researcher at Kingston University London. Studying under the supervision of Professor Isabella van Elferen and Professor Allan F. Moore, her doctoral thesis – Towards a Psychedelic Topography of Goth Music
– explores how psychedelia is integral to the music of the Goth subculture, and how it is expressed sonically. Her research interests include popular music history, theory and analysis; Goth(ic) studies; psychedelia and its musical expression; shamanism and trance; synaesthesia; the phenomenology of music; music technology and production; alternative cultural histories; and subcultural and queer theory. www.kin-dread-spirit.com
Biography
Something in the water: Psychedelia through the prism of song. An examination of psychedelic thought outside of its traditional sphere of influence, in my practice as a songwriter, producer and composer
Neil Burns
I aim to address the topic of 'the process, practice and/or experience of composing psychedelic music', with reference to my own practice, presenting relevant work in a live performance. In doing so, I hope to address what features can be considered 'psychedelic' and if psychedelic music can exist outside of its historical context.
Defined as 'a range of popular music styles and genres influenced by psychedelic culture that attempted to replicate or enhance the psychedelic experiences of psychedelic drugs', I would argue that psychedelic music is a broad church. Aside from the 60s rock, pop and folk that the term instantly invokes, its influence continues to ripple into the present, in everything from ambient and experimental electronic music to vaporware and the recent wave of 'neo-psychedelic' bands. As such, there are some elements we can identify as universally 'psychedelic', which acknowledge its historical roots whilst leaving room for growth - something which seems essential to its open spirit. These include novel instrumentation, an experimental approach to composition; with complex song structures, key and time signature changes, modal melodies and drones for hypnotic effect, an emphasis on electric or electronic instrumentation with frequent use of effects and a tendency towards surrealism.
Based in Derry, N. Ireland, Neil Burns completed his PhD in Composition from Ulster University in 2009. He is active as a composer and performer in eclectic settings, from chamber to choral, experimental pop, jazz and electroacoustic. He has received awards to undertake a residency in the Banff Centre, Canada, from Derry's City of Culture programme, the ACNI, as well as commissions from the Legacy Trust, recent development work with Belfast dance theatre company Maiden Voyage, two short film scores and performances of work in Ireland/the UK and Japan, as well as experience working as an arranger, composer and facilitator on diverse community music projects. As a songwriter and producer he has won acclaim online, had regular radio play on national radio in Ireland and been selected to play at prestigious international events including Canadian Music Week. comradehat.bandcamp.com
comradehat.tumblr.com
neilburnsmusic.bandcamp.com
The Use of Delay in Psychedelic Dance Music
Christopher Charles
The prominent use of delay (or ‘echo’) is one of the characteristic features of psychedelic music, and is an essential component in the creation of genre-specific sounds associated with psychedelic trance. With origins in the production of pop and rock music, the delay effect was developed heavily as a musical sound (often with rhythmic qualities) in the ‘dub’ reggae sound of Kingston, Jamaica, from the 1970s onwards. Subsequently it has become a staple element of electronic dance music, performing multiple roles in sound design as well as rhythmic and melodic composition.
In this paper I will demonstrate the importance of delay in psychedelic musical textures with reference to my study of psytrance music in Bristol. I will look at the work of two artists, Krosis and Globular, who operate within the subgenres of forest psytrance and psy dub respectively, examining the role of delay in generating psychedelic sounds and in connecting contemporary psy music with the broader history of electronic music production.
Biography
Christopher Charles studied music at the University of Edinburgh, and composition at the University of Bristol. He is currently studying for a PhD in music at Bristol with Dr Justin Williams, looking at the work of local psytrance musicians and crews. His interests include electronic dance music, creativity, learning, and the lives of professional and amateur musicians in the UK.
Owen Coggins
Rhetoric and Practice of Intoxication in Drone Metal Music
In this presentation I explore the contrasting rhetoric and practice of drugs and intoxication in drone metal, an extreme form of heavy metal music characterised by heavily amplified and distorted, radically extended, trance-inducing monotonous repetition. While drugs (particularly marijuana, mushrooms and LSD) are frequently discussed and represented in the musical culture of drone metal, I suggest that the rhetoric of intoxicated states plays a more fundamental role than the practice of drug-taking itself. Based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork, 74 interviews with listeners, together with extensive data from surveys and online discourse, I present a range of reports of drone metal experience being described as like taking drugs, by people who regularly take drugs, by people who used to take drugs and by people who have never taken drugs but imagine that the experience of drone metal is analogous. This rhetoric of ecstatic intoxication I relate to characteristic modes of discourse in drone metal culture where listeners describe their musical experience by evoking imaginary ‘elsewheres’ (other times, places, cultures, states of bodily consciousness) as well as traversing these elsewheres by rhetorically moving through different imagined elsewheres. This ever-shifting language means that drug references are used to talk about religion, religious terminology describes musical features, and music is described as a source of narcotic or psychedelic intoxication. In this way I relate descriptions of psychedelic intoxication, intense musical listening and mystical experience through discourses of ineffability; that is, people indicating profoundly important states of consciousness by describing them as indescribable.
Biography
Interested in the language of religious experience in popular music cultures, Owen Coggins completed a doctoral thesis on mysticism and ritual practice in the extreme genre of drone metal music. He has published work on other aspects of religiosity, popular music, noise and violence, recently including a case study on drone metal published in Implicit Religion, a guest-edited special issue of Diskus on religion and music, and a taught course on religious sounds and symbols in heavy metal. Previous research has investigated religion and politics in the gospel blues of Blind Willie Johnson, urban monstrosity in Skinny Puppy’s industrial music, and a discussion of nationalism and individuality in black metal music.
Pete Dale
‘When I Was 12 I Had an E’: Negotiating MCing and DJing in an Inner-City Classroom
Based on a nine-year tenure as a music teacher in an inner-city school in the North East of England, this presentation focuses on the drugs culture which, rightly or wrongly, was closely associated with the DJ-based music-making of many young people in the school. On the 97th percentile for measures of socioeconomic deprivation, the school catered for some of the most ‘severe poor’ (in the strict, measurable sense) children in the UK. Amongst the many disruptive and disengaged learners in the school, there was a very large minority which preferred the brand of ‘happy hardcore’ known as ‘makina’: a nightmarish mash-up of fairground-ride-recalling synth melodies and heavy, repetitive beats ideal for MCing over. Between 2003 and 2012, this music and the attendant mode of music-making (MCing and DJing) provided a hugely successful method for re-engaging such disaffected learners.
However, certain problems arose, not least of which was a view, espoused by the headteacher amongst other staff, that this was ‘drug music’. To some extent, the association makes sense. For one thing, the trance-like character of the music seems to be recognisable. Furthermore, it was known that some of the greatest enthusiasts of hardcore makina were the children from ‘bad families’ (i.e. families which were known to have a history of drug abuse/dealing or were suspected to be actively using/dealing at the time). However, is this not putting the cart before the horse? If that is, these children were surrounded by drugs and, meanwhile, this music was felt to be part of their culture, is the link between the music and the drugs not perhaps rather incidental?
Perhaps, indeed, to ban this music from the classroom is as much a war on the poor as it is part of any supposed ‘war on drugs’. The reflective research offered in this presentation supports the idea that embracing hardcore EDM in the school classroom can do wonders for the self-esteem and general attitude of some extremely difficult young people. This presentation handles these issues carefully, even daring to wonder whether to attempt to encourage a divorce between the music and the drugs is disingenuous and/or a betrayal of the freedom of choice to which these children are entitled.
Biography
Pete Dale studied Communication Studies at Sunderland Polytechnic 1989-92. On graduating, he played in several indie/punk underground bands and set up the cult DIY label/distributor Slampt which ran 1992-2000. Taking up school teaching as his main occupation in 2001, Pete led the music department of a Gateshead secondary school for many years. During this period, he completed an MA in Music and PhD at Newcastle, adapting the latter as a book in 2012. Taking up an early career fellowship at Oxford Brookes in 2012, Pete has become Senior Lecturer in Popular Music at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2013. His first monograph Anyone Can Do It: Tradition, Empowerment and the Punk Underground was published by Ashgate in 2012. A new monograph under the title Popular Music and the Politics of Novelty was published by Bloomsbury Academic in February 2016.
Guillaume Dupetit
From Soul to Psychedelic Soul: sonic experience and sound experimentations.
“And on the seventh day, amid a haze of Hendrixian goo,
copulatin’ bass-throb, sinewy organ vamps, nappy gulps of harp and lysergically stained vocals, God inhaled deeply and created Funkadelic.” Fred Mills.
By the end of the 1960’s, distinctions frequently related to some geographical areas of production of Soul music – the opposition made between a sophisticated Soul Music from the North of the USA and a more raw Soul music coming from the South – blurred into a more global phenomenon: the development of Psychedelic Soul. From a mixture of many surrounding musical elements, Psychedelic Soul became an interface that defied the stylistic boundaries between Rock and Roll, Psychedelia, and nascent Funk music. This tendency profoundly modified the sound itself, from the instrumentation to the melodic and harmonic composition, but also impacted one of the most important parameters: the relationship between the instruments in the band and their function.
Many bands, such as the Temptations, Sly and the Family Stone, the Chamber Brothers or Funkadelic, decided to flirt with psychedelia in order to explore new spaces for their creations and propose new sounds to their audiences. Ted Friedman said that “Funkadelic underwent a radical change as Clinton and the rest of the members began hanging out with hippies, taking drugs, and listening to Jimi Hendrix.” Of course, sound experimentations represent a strong part of the modifications of Soul music to achieve its transition to Psychedelic Soul and this paper, through musical examples and analyses, will try to bring some examples of the infusion of psychedelia in Soul music for a better understanding of the style.
Biography
Guillaume Dupetit is a French musicologist, teaching the History and Analysis of Popular Music at the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée. Specializing in Soul and Funk music, his previous topics of research were “James Brown: musical and ideological implication” and “Playing with meaning: P-Funk Music” which led him to focus his PhD on the musical form of Afro-futurism. Interested in a multidisciplinary approach of modern musicology, he also taught at the University of St-Denis (Paris) and the Dirty Art Department (Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam).
Gemma Farrell
Twisted Things: Psychedelic Sonorous Objects in Psytrance
Psychedelic trance (psytrance) is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) with flourishing scenes worldwide, which for many participants constitutes a lifestyle and an integral part of their identity. Psytrance culture can be considered a permutation of previous psychedelic cultures - in particular, the hippie era of the late 1960s - due to its immersive dancefloor experiences and the widespread use of psychoactive substances among scene participants.
This presentation will explore how a sense of space is created in psytrance, the sound objects that populate this space and how, through the psychedelic experience, the body is projected into an imagined space. Drawing on embodied phenomenology, I will talk about how the body interacts with sonic objects within the imagined space created by the music, what affordances sonic objects present us with and the hierarchy of metaphors and meaning we ascribe to them.
Biography
Gemma Farrell is a postgraduate researcher in Music at the University of Sussex whose primary area of research is electronic dance music cultures. Her thesis is about the Psychedelic Trance (psytrance) genre and uses embodied phenomenology as a starting point to elucidate how its global culture is reassembled by local scenes, resulting in distinct regional styles. She uses the British scene as a case study to explore this process and considers how psychoactive substances affect the perception of the music.
Her research, funded by the AHRC, has taken a mixed-methods approach, deploying practice-led research, qualitative interviews, an online survey, participant observation, ethnographic vignettes and musicological analysis of psytrance tracks. Her other research interests include Deleuze and music, Merleau-Ponty and the perception of music, heavy metal, stoner rock (particularly the Palm Desert scene) and psychedelic rock.
Her first book chapter, 'Arcadian Electrickery: Locating “Englishness” in England's Psytrance Culture and Sonic Aesthetic.' was published recently in Exploring psychedelic trance and electronic dance music in modern culture. (London: IGI Global, 2015.)
She is also a classical singer and flautist.
Peter Grant
Grumbly Grimblies, Frozen Dogs and other Boojums: Eccentricity from Chaucer to Carroll in English Psychedelia
In the late 1960s psychedelic and progressive rock music developed along significantly different lines in Britain and America. Musically American bands remained heavily blues based whereas English ones admitted influences from both folk and European art music. Lyrically too there were differences. With the exception of Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane’s, ‘White Rabbit’ or ‘The House at Pooneil Corners’, classic and children’s literature was not a fertile source for Americans, whereas whimsical, often childlike, humour was a distinguishing feature of much British output.
English musicians were less attracted to urban settings such as San Francisco, instead gravitating to the countryside to compose, including Traffic (Aston Tirrold, Berkshire), Led Zeppelin (Machynlleth, Wales) and Fairport Convention (Farley Chamberlayne, Hampshire). This was part of an English pastoral tradition filtered through the classical and literary teaching in the Public and Grammar schools attended by many of the musicians.
This encouraged an approach that mined the surreal visions of William Blake and Lewis Carroll, the nonsense verse of Edward Lear, children’s classics by Kenneth Grahame and A.A. Milne and the zany comedy of Peter Cook and Spike Milligan. It was a world populated by anthropomorphic animals, such as Lucifer Sam (Pink Floyd) and God Dog (Robin Williamson), which had their origins even further back in tales such as Chaucer’s ‘Chanticleer and the Fox’ from the Nun's Priest's Tale in his Canterbury Tales.
These sources have continued to influence musicians, notably the progressive rock music of the 1970s and even today’s symphonic and folk metal bands.
Never concerned with appearing silly or childish these lysergic excursions inspired some exquisite moments of original humour and this paper will explore a few including Caravan’s In the Land of Grey and Pink, Blossom Toes We Are Ever So Clean, Donovan’s HMS Donovan and Kaleidoscope’s Tangerine Dream.
Biography
Dr Peter Grant is Senior Fellow in Grantmaking, Philanthropy and Social Investment at Cass Business School, City University, London. His definitive book The Business of Giving: The theory and practice of philanthropy, grantmaking and social investment was published in 2011. His latest book Philanthropy and Voluntary Action in the First World War was published by Routledge/Taylor Francis in 2014. His next book will be National Myth and the First World War in Modern Popular Music from Palgrave Macmillan. Peter is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, trustee of the DHL Foundation and of the Amy Winehouse Foundation and former Chair of the Voluntary Action History Society.
Alexander C Harden
Musical Listening as Psychedelic Experience
Amidst the increasing technologisation of everyday life, the possibilities of artistic expression and engagement have arguably never been greater. Indeed, as ongoing discussion in the field of cyborg theory affirms, technological development has consistently afforded new means of interacting with the actual world and, more recently, augmented worlds through the addition or deformation of reality, a process prefigured in psychedelic styles of art. Possibly the most ubiquitous example of this is our consumption of recorded music.
In this paper, psychedelic experience is understood in terms of two related processes: firstly, the deformation of an actual world into a hybridised or altered other, and secondly, the
sense of transportation or accommodation within this alternative, possible world. With this in mind, I argue that one of the most pervasive experiences compatible with psychedelia is musical listening. I draw particularly upon theories from cognitive narratology which address the role of an interpreter in the construction of an image of a possible world based on a narrative text, and his/her recentering of consciousness to effect a sense of transportation to this world. Connecting
this with a discussion of realism in recorded popular music and theories from environmental psychology regarding environmental numbness, I explore how narrative worldmaking, musical aesthetics, and listening practice afford the view of musical listening as an instance of psychedelic
experience. With examples of recorded popular song, I argue for a broader consideration of the ubiquity of psychedelic experience in contemporary society as we continually deform, augment, or supplement our perceptions of the world around us.
Biography
Alexander C. Harden is a postgraduate researcher in popular music analysis at the University of Surrey. Following training at the University of Birmingham in electroacoustic composition and sonic art, his research now investigates the applicability of narrative theory to the study of recorded
popular song. Alex is particularly interested in hermeneutics, narratology, and digital musicianship, and has presented work on issues ranging from EDM and temporality to use of songs as a form of social protest.
Tanya Harris
Marosa
The Shipibo people are an ancient tribe who live in the Amazon rainforest in Peru.They still practice their spiritual customs and traditions after thousands of years. In the last forty years, there has been a continual rise in people’s interest in traditional indigenous cultures that engage with the unseen forces of nature and altered states of consciousness. "Look deep into nature then you will understand everything better" (Einstein).
In the Amazon, hunters can smell urine at forty paces and tell you what species left it behind. The taxonomy of Amazonian shamans is remarkable when they begin to characterize and systematize creation. They can consistently distinguish different plants at great distance. You ask a shaman what the foundation of their taxonomy is and they say, "Well, the plants talk to us". To our rational mind, it is nonsense to think that plants can talk. Yet, it is only nonsense because it does not fit in our paradigm. When we consider the possibility that different society’s belief systems create different levels of perceptions but also different realities, what does that say to you?
Sulmira is a Shipibo shaman, whose name means grounded bright shining light. It is custom for Shipibo people to ingest thousands of different plants, flowers and trees that induce an altered state of consciousness. Ayahausca is an entheogen and master plant in Shipibo culture. They have the intention to connect with the spirit of each plant while living in isolation for 2-6 months and eating a very simple diet. Sulmira spoke to me about a plant called Marosa, which taught her about love and protection. This plant has a feminine vibration, she continues."Each plant has a different personality just like people. People will receive different messages from each plant depending on how they get on."
Shipibo shamans receive healing songs or ‘icaros’ from the plants while there arein a trance after ingesting the plant. They use these songs as healing tools in ayahausca ceremonies. Icaros are then translated into geometric colourful tapestries,which embody the healing messages of the icaros.
Biography
Tanya Harris is a multidisciplinary sound artist who graduated from Central Saint Martins (MA, 2013). During her MA she explored the relationship between sound and geometry in her project The Architecture of Sound. She presented this
work at London Design Festival (2013), where she was interviewed by Resonance FM, and also at the Sounding Space symposium in London (2013), Oxford Brookes University (2015) and CARU Arts re Search Conference in Oxford Brookes University (2015). It is also being published by Bare Hill Publishing as The State of Art - Installation & Site Specific #2 (UK, 2015), and featured on Soundry (London, 2013), Symatic Stimuli (Hawaii, 2015) and Pioneer Works In Print, (New York 2015).
In 2014, Tanya travelled to Peru to meet the Shipibo tribe who originally inspired her to explore the relationship between sound and geometry. She lived with the Shipibo tribe for a month in the Amazonian jungle where she recorded Sulmira, a Shipibo shaman. (Marosa, 2014)
Krisztián Hofstädter
Brain-Computer Music Interfacing Software Development
This research develops a biofeedback system for stress management and meditation. It uses the combined benefits of neurofeedback and music therapy to develop Brain-Computer Music Interfacing software compatible with consumer level electroencephalography (EEG) hardware. While the use of biofeedback has been well documented in the arts, it is a promising interdisciplinary area to probe for therapeutic purposes located within music. Investigation is necessary, as firstly, effective stress management has been demonstrated in numerous music therapy as well as neurofeedback studies yet there has been little investigation into their combined therapeutic use. Secondly, existing neurofeedback software mainly focus on giving visual feedback and when there is sound, it usually neglects the wide-ranging healing capabilities of music.
The research involves composing algorithmic music in musical
genres that the researcher and the research team experienced to be effective in inducing altered states of mind e.g. ‘beatless’ ambient music, syncopated liquid drum and bass and non-syncopated psychedelic trance. Later stages of the research
involve experimenting with technologies like binaural beats for encouraging altered states of consciousness for further brainwave entrainment.
This research will create software, creative work and a new concept of neuro-feedback with music for stress management and meditation. The outcome will show whether it is possible to employ the developed software effectively beyond its use in creative arts as a tool for developing self-awareness of one’s
states of mind. The proposed software's user-friendly operation allows not only specialists but also the wider public to develop better control of their central nervous system activity and understand more of their consciousness.
Biography
Born in 1981 in Hungary, Krisztán is a creative technologist living in East Anglia since 2005. His main expertise lies in music technology. In Hungary, he was an orchestral percussionist and received a diploma in Cultural Organising. In Cambridge, he has completed his BA (2009) and MA (2013) in Creative Music Technology and has started his PhD in Music (2015) at the Anglia Ruskin University. His research develops Brain-Computer Music Interfacing software for
stress management and meditation. Besides his studies Krisztián has been working as a university lecturer,
composer and sound designer for games, films and theatre, music technician, live sound engineer, photographer, painter, video producer and art event organiser. His philosophy is mainly influenced by the words of Lao Tzu, Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts. http://tedor.info
Thomas J Johnson
Correlates of Spiritual and Transcendent Experiences Among Participants in the Electronic Dance Music (EDM) Scene
The Electronic Dance Music (EDM) scene in the US and elsewhere was originally associated with use of MDMA (Ecstasy), but has come to be associated with use of LSD, Nitrous Oxide, and numerous other substances. In addition, ethnographic studies have emphasized the importance of quasi-spiritual experiences among EDM participants, as well as spiritual practices and beliefs connected with events. While detailed ethnographic descriptions of such experiences have been published, less information is available on the prevalence of such experiences or what predicts which individuals report them.
The current study surveyed 143 individuals involved with EDM, primarily from the Midwestern United States. Participants completed questionnaires regarding involvement in the EDM scene, types and frequencies of drugs used in the EDM context, health and well-being, spiritual experiences in the EDM context, and other issues related to EDM. Sixty percent of participants indicated they sometimes, often, or nearly always had spiritual experiences at EDM events; most commonly feelings of bliss or serenity, following by experiences of enlightenment and transcendence. Forty-one percent of respondents indicated that “having spiritual experiences” was a very or extremely important reason why they attended EDM events.
Use of LSD and MDMA at EDM events predicted frequency of occurrence of spiritual experiences at events, but some individuals who reported spiritual experiences denied use of drugs. Although Hutson (2000) compared EDM events to shamanic healing, in our sample frequency of spiritual experiences was unrelated to measures of well-being, but positively related to viewing EDM as an important influence on one’s identity and endorsing that “EDM has changed my life.”
Biography
Thomas J. Johnson is Professor of Psychology at Indiana State University, where in 2005 he was awarded the Theodore Dreiser Research and Creative Activities Award for his research on social, cultural, and subcultural contexts of substance use. His research has been funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the Centers for Disease Control. In addition to having a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Missouri, Tom also studied trumpet with Bill Adam of Indiana University and studied music theory and composition at IU, the University of Wisconsin, and Indiana State University. He remains active as a composer, writing chamber music and works for big band and musical theater.
Ian Lowey
Our Music is Red With Purple Flashes: The Visual Representation of Psychedelia
My presentation is about the vital role that graphic art played in visually representing the psychedelic experience.
In 1967, the jazz musician and cultural critic, George Melly, wrote that ‘the [psychedelic] underground is the first of the pop explosions to have evolved a specifically graphic means of expression.’ This specifically graphic means of expression manifested itself in the concert posters, record covers and publications produced by protagonists involved in the late-1960s psychedelic scenes based chiefly in London and San Francisco.
Pre-modernist influences such as Art Nouveau, the Pre-Raphaelites and Symbolist artists informed the aesthetic of the psychedelic underground. In drawing from such influences, those involved in the psychedelic underground were rejecting the prevailing modernist design ethos that geometric forms represented the modern world more accurately and purely than organic shapes. These art forms, which were conceived to appeal directly to the senses as opposed to the intellect, found favour with those seeking to bypass the rationalising function of the ego through the conspicuous consumption of LSD. In addition, many psychedelic poster artists were seeking to directly replicate the vivid colours and amorphous shapes of the acid experience itself in their work. In doing so, they turned the whole notion of the poster as an open form of communication upon its head.
However, divested of their overtly druggy and countercultural associations, psychedelic graphics were swiftly assimilated into the mainstream. In spite of that, psychedelia can be seen to have left a lasting mark within graphic design. Flying in the face of modernist concerns with order and rationality, psychedelic graphics emphasised the value of ambiguity for audiences literate enough to negotiate such complexities.
Biography
Ian Lowey is an author, editorial designer and journalist based in Manchester. In 2003, he co-founded the underground/alternative culture magazine, Nude, which served up an eclectic mix of graphic art, indie/arthouse film, leftfield music and cult literature, and ran until 2011. More recently he was the co-author and editorial designer of the book, The Graphic Art of the Underground: A Countercultural History, (Bloomsbury, 2014).
In 2014, he completed an MA in Design and Art Direction at Manchester School of Art. His MA research centred upon an exploration of the kind of anonymous, transient and highly-controlled space which has been defined as ‘non place’ by the French anthropologist Marc Augé and others, and resulted in him producing a body of graphic work based on the aesthetic of the supermarket and shopping mall. In addition to writing and design, he is often employed as a guest lecturer at colleges and universities. http://www.ianlowey.co.uk/
Anthony Meynell
Re-creation of The Byrds “Eight Miles High”. Using re-enactment to recapture historical recording practices.
By the mid-1960’s sound manipulation, once the domain of novelty, sound effects and avant-garde soundscapes, had entered mainstream pop record production, adding colour to arrangements that were previously relying on instrumental performance. The unorthodox demands of the artists not only resulted in engineers circumventing prescribed studio equipment working practices to discover new techniques but also ushered in a new method of performance practice that allowed the subsequent manipulation of individual sound sources. Thus, the final recorded piece became a construct of individual recordings of solo performances and overdubs, as opposed to a single ensemble live performance. In addition, the separation of instruments on individual tracks encouraged new ideas of musical expression to take place, where composition and construction of the soundscape continued in the studio as a generative act through improvisation and experimentation to create “an ideal event pieced together from pieces of actual events” (Eisenburg, 2005).
This paper analyzes a historical recording by re-creating the closed environment of the 1960’s recording studio. Through re-enactment of The Byrds' “Eight Miles High” 1966 recording session, we can better understand how the social construction of the everyday working practices shaped the sounds we hear on the record (Bijker 1994).
Whereas current cultural etiquette promotes the revealing and sharing of recording techniques, sound engineers in the 1960s tended to keep their ‘professional secrets’ to themselves and thus our understanding of these recording methods, is seeded in retrospective anecdotal evidence, written descriptions and investigations into the technology or personalities of the time. Recreating the recording identifies expertise impossible to verbalize, provides valuable insight of particular techniques, and by creating videos I am able to demonstrate the performative nature of the tacit knowledge while post session video analysis reveals the flow of decision-making as the session unfolds (Ingold 2009).
Biography
Anthony Meynell, MA (Dist.), is completing a practice-based PhD at London College of Music investigating the differences between British and American recording techniques in the 1960s.
Anthony is a lecturer in popular music Record Production, a performing musician and writer, has an active record label and publishing company and is the owner of a recording studio utilizing vintage equipment. He is a member of AIM, PPL, PRS, MCPS.
Craig Morrison
The Musical Characteristics of 1960s Psychedelic Music and Their Cultural Meaning
The idea that psychedelic music is a style intended to accompany or simulate a drug trip was made more precise by Michael Hicks (1999), who proposed that the key to its stylistic definition lay in three fundamental effects of LSD that were translated into musical expressions. These he called dechronicization, depersonalization, and dynamization. They referred to, respectively, aspects of time, personality, and structure that were accepted as stable, sound, or predictable but that became, under the drug’s influence, conceptually and perceptually fluid. He also characterized psychedelic music as “extremely loud, reverberant, contrapuntal rock, slowed in tempo, unstable in harmony, and juxtapositional in form.”
To catalogue the musical characteristics of psychedelic music in the 1960s, hundreds of recordings have been analyzed in light of two additional concepts. A structural value, called a matrix by musicologist Peter Van der Merwe (1992), is “a unit of musical communication” such as a regular beat, a fixed musical note, or an individual chord. A similar concept of a structural value that carries a meaning is the cultural diagnostic (Thomas Vargish and Delo E. Mook, 1990). The authors called their three subjects cultural diagnostics: “advanced intellectual activities that serve to reveal the underlying values of the period.” Value they define as “an underlying but identifiable characteristic… pervasive, almost ubiquitous at a certain level of culture during a certain period.” A popular music style can be treated as a cultural diagnostic as it contains within it historically defining values.
This paper presents the vast and varied musical vocabulary of the style in the socio-cultural context of the 1960s, as derived from the analysis of a large sample, including the listening list for my university course Psychedelic Music. The characteristics are categorized, described, and presented with examples. The interpretations of their cultural relevance and meaning are supported by interview material, both original and published, with the musicians who created the recordings.
Biography
Ethnomusicologist Craig Morrison is a professor at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, teaching Psychedelic Music, British Pop Music, Music of the Beatles, Rock and Roll and Its Roots, Black Music, Pop/ Soul and Its Roots, and Musical History Tour (on traditions of seven cities). His Ph.D. thesis was “Psychedelic Music in San Francisco: Style, Context, and Evolution.” Morrison is the author of Go Cat Go! Rockabilly Music and Its Makers (University of Illinois Press, 1996), and American Popular Music: Rock and Roll (Facts on File, 2006). An accomplished guitarist, pianist, vocalist, songwriter, and bandleader, he has 11 CDs on the market. He has interviewed over 125 veteran musicians, including members of 1960s psychedelic bands such as the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Iron Butterfly, Moby Grape, Country Joe and the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Strawberry Alarm Clock, and Procol Harum.
Alain Pire
Psychedelic substances and creativity in music
Since the accidental discovery of fuzz sound on 'Don’t Worry' by Country singer Marty Robbins in 1961 and even ten years earlier for the first distorted guitar sound in 'Rocket 88' by Jackie Brenston & his Delta Cats, the guitar sound in particular and the music sound in general changed dramatically during the Sixties and early Seventies. The musical innovators blew the boundaries of the classic Fifties sounds to virtually open new universes of sonic exploration.
From Fuzz to Echo, Reverberation, Backwards Loops, Phaser, Flanger and Wah-Wah etc., many creative musicians used new sounds to translate into music the visions and sounds that they heard while on psychedelics. For example, Donovan heard the harpsichord sound that he was going to use on Sunshine Superman while watching a raindrop on a leaf during an acid trip.
I will also talk about the relationship between psychedelics and creativity like the experiments that Harman and Fadiman conducted before LSD became illegal and also talk about many musicians' insights on that matter. Harman W. and J. Fadiman: 'Selective Enhancement of Specific Capacities Through Psychedelic Training', in Psychedelics, Anchor Books, New York, 1970.
Biography
Alain Pire received his PhD in Information and Communication from the Liège University (Belgium) in 2009. His thesis was about British Psychedelic Music in the Sixties. He conducted lengthy interviews with people like Barry Miles (who wrote the foreword of his book), John Hoppy Hopkins, Joe Boyd, Steve Howe, Kevin Ayers, Mike McInnerney (Tommy album cover designer), The Pretty Things, Man, Ian McLagan, Arthur Brown and others.
He translated Syd Barrett’s biography into French for Camion Blanc. He is also a semi-professional guitarist, playing in various bands and has a discography of more than 20 albums. His last opus was Cambridge, an LP released with his psychedelic band : Alain Pire Experience : www.alain-pire.be
Peter Smith
Come on everybody, get up on your feet - it won’t hurt ya!
The bands that sprang up – with varying degrees of commercial success – in San Francisco during the second half of the 60s are easily and typically labelled as “psychedelic”. While I can understand why this shorthand categorisation came about, I would argue that the description is more appropriate to the environment or “scene” in San Francisco than to the bands’ music.
I will describe how several of the best known SF bands (Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big Brother and the Holding Company for example) saw themselves primarily as dance bands and how their music drew more from their folk- and blues-based roots than out and out psychedelia. I will, however, draw attention to the musical output of bands such as Jefferson Airplane and Country Joe and the Fish, which while often proselytising LSD did so with music that in musical formats that do not meet the description “psychedelic”. I will explain how drawing upon and incorporating these characteristics can enable bands to term themselves "psychedelic”: they have a template from which to work. There was no such template for the San Francisco bands. Rather, those bands stumbled across a formula that, while often pushing at musical boundaries, gained the psychedelic descriptor as a result of the participating in the culture that had emerged in the Bay area: the ballrooms, the light shows, the Acid Tests and the blurred boundary between performer and audience.
In conclusion, I will suggest that the conveniently used term “psychedelic” is not entirely appropriate, but rather that the bands simply regarded themselves as a component of a multimedia environment that could genuinely be termed “psychedelic”.
Biography
Peter Smith became interested in psychedelia during the glorious first Summer of love, 1967. His particular interest is in the bands that emerged from San Francisco during the second half of the sixties and in particular the Grateful Dead. However, he remain interested in all aspects of psychedelic music and latterly has been involved in the drone scene in my native Newcastle. He has had papers and articles published in journals such as Popular Music and Society. He has also contributed CD and performance reviews to relevant fanzines. His professional career in local government and the civil service culminated, before he retired, in being given Senior Research Associate status at the University of Strathclyde.
Ed Spencer
‘Come Meditate on Bass Weight’: UK dubstep, the rhetoric of affect, and the rise of the grotesque
What makes a bass line grotesque or surreal rather than profound or sublime? This paper will focus on the embodied experience of sub-bass, wobble bass, and tear-out bass in UK dubstep 2006-2011. Firstly, by critiquing recent sound studies scholarship and interviews with dubstep producers such as Kode9, the paper will elucidate the rhetoric of affect associated with sub-bass. It will be argued that this discourse equates the perception of sub-bass with "metaphysical‟ trance-like states, a trope encapsulated by the promotional slogan "Come Meditate on Bass Weight‟ from the club night DMZ. Although the rhetoric of affect seeks distance from enlightenment aesthetics, especially through appeals to the thought of Deleuze and Guattari, it will be argued that descriptions of sub-bass actually cast it as sublime in the
manner of Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant.
Conversely, the second part of the paper will explain how so-called wobble and tear-out bass catalysed ludicrous, surreal, and grotesque affordances. Wobble and tear-out bass became allsignifying and graphic, negating the a-signifying autonomy of sub-bass through a very different form of embodied experience. Drawing on the thought of Mikhail Bakhtin, the paper will argue that the automated frequency modulation used to produce wobble and tear-out bass came to specify bodily processes of opening and enclosure and the passage from interiority to exteriority. Excerpts of tracks released by the carnivalesque label Circus Records in 2011 will be played as examples. Finally, the paper will highlight a prevalent tear-out topic known as "monster‟ bass used by Circus founders Flux Pavilion and Doctor P.
By way of conclusion, it will be stressed that although sub-bass and wobble bass were both prevalent in early-mid UK dubstep, wobble bass and its tear-out derivative took on grotesque and debased affordances. Just as bass sounds were opened up through frequency modulation, so too was an intensely powerful semiotic realm that negated "meditation on bass weight‟.
Biography
Ed studied on the joint course at the Royal Northern College of Music and the University of Manchester, where he graduated with a Dean's Award for Achievement and a prize for his dissertation ‘Wailing of the Unborn’: an exploration of Varèse’s virtual genealogy through a 4-D acoustemology. He is currently reading for the Master of Studies (MSt) in Musicology at the University of Oxford supported by an AHRC Research Preparation Studentship.
Ed's research interests include electronic dance music, timbre and embodiment, music and space, the psychology of music, and post-Peircean semiotics. His MSt dissertation The
Development of UK Dubstep 2001-2011 seeks to balance aesthetics and analysis with a sociocultural perspective.
Ed was recently accepted for DPhil research at Oxford and will be supervised by Professor Eric Clarke. The proposed title for his DPhil thesis is The Drop and its Discontents: an
acoustemology of base music.
Botond Vitos
An Analysis of Getting ‘Wasted’ or ‘Trashed’ on Psychedelics at Psytrance Festivals
Psytrance music festivals provide a familiar environment, typically outside city limits, where release is sought from daily reality, working routines or even common sense. While sharing these goals with other leisure activities, they also aim for the actualisation of encountering the Other, as if visiting an alien planet. This journey is enabled by the media ecology of the festival, which notably includes the effects of psychedelic drugs. Drawing on the results of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Melbourne psytrance scene, this paper discusses certain social and cultural behaviours at psytrance festivals, including the significance of getting ‘trashed’ or ‘wasted’ on psychedelic drugs (particularly hallucinogenic tryptamines such as LSD). My discussion is centred on the concept of symbolic waste or residue. Within the festival context, partygoers are deliberately getting trashed by consuming psychedelic drugs to access altered states of consciousness that are experienced as residual to everyday perceptions of reality. Getting wasted on psychedelics in the forest triggers a feeling of displacement through encountering symbolic pollution (Douglas 1966) within the residual environment (Baudrillard 1994: 78) of the bush: a feeling of culture devoured by its own symbolic waste. Yet encountering waste draws attention to the boundaries of one’s system of classifications and is not without regenerative potential (Hawkins 2006). Refreshment is gained from the return from this carnivalesque (Bakhtin 1968) overturn and dissolution of social reality that accomplishes the temporary ‘reset’ of the world.
References: Bakhtin, M. M. (1968) Rabelais and His World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Baudrillard, J. (1994) The Illusion of the End. Cambridge: Polity. Douglas, M. (1966) Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Hawkins, G. (2006) The Ethics of Waste. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.
Biography
Botond Vitos is an independent researcher residing in Germany. He received his PhD degree with a specialization in cultural studies from Monash University, Melbourne in 2014. His PhD project ‘Experiencing Electronic Dance Floors’ was a comparative analysis of Melbourne’s techno and psytrance scenes. His research interests include electronic dance music culture, the media ecology of the electronic dance floor, the cultural contexts and meanings of drug use, the mediations of aesthetic experiences, and the relationships between music and technology.