Psytrance and Psybient on Spotify

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Finally, we have trance on Spotify! I’ve been looking out for these genres to appear on Spotify for ages, so I was particularly pleased to see yesterday’s Spotify update including some of my favourite progressive and psychedelic trance (psytrance) acts, as well as a healthy dose of psybient and some progressive trance too. Here’s a summary grouped by record label:

Twisted Records
Simon Posford’s UK-based label specialise in psychedelic trance and psybient. If you’ve never heard psychedelic downtempo band Shpongle then you’re in for a treat: try their second album Tales Of The Inexpressible and your head will feel like a frisbee 😉 Twisted artists on Spotify now include Shpongle, Hallucinogen, Koxbox, Ott, and Prometheus.

  • Other Twisted artists to look out for: Younger Brother

Tribal Vision Records
Tribal Vision are a Czech label who publish legendary Swedish progressive project Vibrasphere. I highly recommend this band, they’ve been making some incredible electronic music for the past few years now. In particular, check out their Exploring the Tributaries album.

  • Other Tribal Vision artists to look out for: Tegma

Iboga Records
Denmark’s Iboga Records is mostly known for its minimal psytrance acts, but more recently a couple of Europe’s biggest progressive trance acts come via Iboga. Spotify now has albums from both Ace Ventura and Liquid Soul.

  • Other Iboga artists to look out for: Antix, FREq, Perfect Stranger, Sun Control Species, Flowjob, Beat Bizarre, Gaudium

Spin Twist Records
Based in Germany, Spotify now has a compilation album as well as the excellent debut “A Place to Be Real” from Spin Twist artist Day.Din.

  • Other Spin Twist artists to look out for: Neelix

HOMmega Productions & H2O records
Psytrance grew up in Israel, so it’s fitting Spotify now includes Israeli labels HOMmega and H2O. There’s one album from each of Astrix (2004’s “Artcore“) and Quadra (2008’s “Voice of Reason” album).

  • Other HOMmega artists to look out for: PsySex, X-Noise
  • Other H2O artists to look out for: Alien Project, Space Cat

Ultimae Records
French home to Sweden’s Solar Fields and Carbon Based Lifeforms. You might have heard Solar Fields on the Mirror’s Edge videogame: now Spotify has the complete discography of both artists, as well as albums from Aes Dana and Cell.

  • Other Ultimae artists to look out for: Chi A.D.

Astral Projection
Self-published, “Dancing Galaxy” the 3rd album from Istraeli psytrance act Astral Projection is now on Spotify.

Platipus Records
The British label that first got me into the trance genre back in the mid 90s, the regular compilation CDs fom Simon Berry’s Platipus Records became a must-by for me. It’s fitting then that Spotify now feaures their two-disc compilation “Platipus Beginner’s Guide” featuring tracks from Union Jack, Terra Ferma, and Quietman, all mixed by the legendary Art of Trance. I’m especially pleased to see this release includes the sublime Summit Temple from Quietman: my favourite ambient track of all time.

As always, keep an eye on the Spotinews blog for up-to-the-minute details on what’s new on Spotify.

I’ve started a thread on the isratrance forum about this, and created a best-of playlist called “Afront’s In a Trance” 😉