Nick Taylor has been an innovator in the world of psychedlic trance for many years, teamed with Tsuyoshi as Prana and, more recently, putting out tracks as Snakething on his new Edgecore label, located down under. He spoke with Michael Gosney at the Radio-V studio in September 1998.

Tell us a little bit about how you got started.

NT: I was in Japan playing in a rock band, and discovered [techno] in a little club, in the ground somewhere in Tokyo one night—found myself somewhere in there and I got it. And that was it—I threw away the guitar. I was with Tsuyoshi as well.

So Tsuyoshi was in the band with you and you discovered this new art form together?

NT: Yes.

And you took charge then, did you?

NT: Yeah, pretty much got into it from there. The first one was Blissed, an album we made in Tokyo. But at the time there was very little going on with electronic music in Tokyo. There were no labels—it was a bit frustrating, there wasn’t much inspiration for us. So that’s when we moved to London and started Prana.

Prana had a succession of LPs, then?

NT: There were two albums and one following which was under another name.

When did you start thinking of your music in terms of trance, as part of the whole psychedelic scene?

NT: I think the name first cropped up in the early nineties in Germany. It was popular in Asia, too, in Goa where a lot of my friends were going and where I went. And also in Japan what they were playing in the clubs was trance. It was a whole bunch of different techno, industrial stuff. And I guess psychedelic trance really happened around 93 in London when a lot of people who were travelling in Goa came back, inspired by a particular vibe of music that was played there—and honed into that sound. It felt quite fresh at the time. And then the media got hold of it at christened it Goa Trance. It became a very strong category of music, then, which has limited it ever since I think.

Well it seems like in the past couple of years the term psychedelic trance has become more popular.

NT: Yeah, people started getting away from the Goa name which is a good thing, I think.

Do you have any philosophical or spiritual influences in your music?

NT: Sure, from everywhere. Nothing fundamental, I mean, I believe that you’ve got to be open to everything. I’m not one to throw all my ideas into one spiritual basket, it’s a bit limiting. Same musically as well.

What do you think about the trance phenomenon of the parties where you get kind of a group energy, a group mind going?

NT: The thing about the trance scene is that they seem to be a bit more aware about what’s going on energetically at the parties than in a lot of other scenes. The focus isn’t on pure hedonism, even though that’s still there. But there is a lot more awareness of what’s going on as a community.

We have a lot of interesting symbology, religious iconography, alien imagery and so on—references to some of the obvious psychedelic influences like Timothy Leary and some of the philosophers behind the psychedelic counterculture. But it doesn’t seem like there is any real specific school of thought. It’s pretty much a synthesis of a lot of different things.

NT: Yeah, and I think that’s the beauty of music as well—it goes beyond the mind, so where it affects us really isn’t on the mental level, it’s beyond that. Some people will be inspired by that to look into different kinds of philosophy and some people will react on a real gut level or a spiritual level. They don’t necessarily need to read a whole lot of psychedelic literature although there are plenty of people who do, for sure.

Do you think people in the trance scene are a little more conscious about their drug intake?

NT: Well certainly a lot more than the rave scene. I think it’s a bit older of a crowd, a little more mature. They’ve probably already been experimenting for a few years. Probably a lot of people went through a stage where they were not very aware of what they were doing to themselves. Now they’re a bit more educated, and also the drugs of choice are different as well.

These days, after the early evolution of this sound back in Germany and London, it seems to have quite a global scope, a lot of recognition all over.

NT: That’s the beauty of it.

Are you finding yourself travelling around more to perform internationally?

NT: Quite a bit, yeah. Although I’m fairly happy to stay in Australia! I get asked to travel around and I’ve been on trips overseas three times this year. That’s kind of enough, really. I feel quite limited when I get asked to play at trance parties because it’s become quite a conservative culture for me. I mean, you stick up a few Shiva banners and a few black lights, play the right tracks and it’s easy. It’s not really pushing too many boundaries anymore. Certain sections of it are, but generally it’s become quite a commercial thing in a lot of places and people are quite attached to the iconography and the sounds of it. In that way it ceased to be really psychedelic for me because it’s not really taking anybody to new places.

There is quite a lively techno scene down there in Australia now? Melbourne is kind of the center?

NT: Yeah, Melbourne is probably the most vital of all the places, Sydney is also happening but it’s quite difficult with the venues there so it kind of holds the culture back a bit. There is a lot of politics with the promoters and what have you, which seems to happen everywhere, but in Sydney in particular its not very healthy. Byron Bay’s probably the hottest psychedelic scene along with Melbourne.

And Byron Bay is where you are from?

NT: Yeah.

Are there lively underground parties vs. more commercial?

NT: Definitely, yeah. The thing with the underground in Australia is that there are not many people living there so it’s quite small and people really connect with each other from different scenes. When you go to a party it won’t necessarily be trance one night or techno one night. It might be a techno DJ, a trance DJ or even a drum ‘n’ bass DJ, which makes it a lot more appealing to me. I mean, it’s not all like that—there are fundamentalists within it, but generally people there are a lot more open to mixing it up.

What about your more recent work, Snakething? How would you categorize that sound?

NT: It’s influenced by a lot of different sounds. It’s psychedelic music, psychedelic techno.

That’s the term I like, psychedelic techno. That’s the new term that needs to be adopted.

NT: Yeah, the kind of sounds that appeal to me are definitely psychedelic sounds but they don’t have to have eastern melody lines or whatever else goes along with conventional psychedelic trance. I mean, a lot of drum ‘n’ bass, for example, I find highly psychedelic. And even some house music—it doesn’t have to be trance, it doesn’t have to be 140 BPM with a sixteenth bassline running through it.