Most of what I knew about psytrance (psychedelic trance) raves before I actually went to one came from this article in Vice:
Psytrance really is a counter-culture in the truest sense. The music is harsh, the clothes are weird, the drugs are strong, the best parties are illegal. This isn’t a scene you can enter half-heartedly; nobody is having their birthday drinks at places like this – it’s too intense, too esoteric for the casual partygoer.
It’s a piece that has always stuck with me since I first read it. I have loved “ethnography for the masses” journalism since before I knew what anthropology was; that fish-out-of-water, Gonzo style, with authors who are able to successfully suspend their WASPy disbelief and experience a new and strange environment with a more-or-less open mind, broadening their view of how life can be lived. Though at one point the above article devolves somewhat into gawkish weirdo-porn—”Look at all the funny clothing! Are these kids nuts or what!”—it hints at something unique about psytrance that I was curious to see for myself.
My partner and I showed up around 11, dressed in shorts for the beach theme. Blow-up sharks and beach umbrellas hung around the dance floor, which was sparsely populated by a core group of around ten people, mostly men, already dancing hard. Leaning into the intensity of the music, arms pumping and flailing. More people stood chatting and dancing throughout the rest of the club. Everyone looked happy, even if some were too focused on dancing to be smiling. It was a relatively older crowd in here (mid- to late-twenties) than at some other events I’d been to. Some were in classic raver outfits—fur boots, kandi, huge baggy pants, stuffed-animal backpacks, that same sort of neon-sexualised childlike look, like laser-show camoflauge.
“I have no idea what kinda drugs that guy must be on.” My partner pointed to a man who was swaying from side to side with a vacant look and half-open mouth. My guess, a dissociative of some kind. Ketamine, or GHB maybe. A bit too much, either way. But most people seemed clear-headed, if not exactly sober.
A beach ball went flying past my head as I went to buy a beer. The music was good, already stirring up a pretty strong desire in me to dance. We went upstairs to a second level overlooking the dance floor and sipped our beers. A man wearing an “I Believe” alien shirt walked past us and pulled out a small baggie of blue pills. It was done so blatantly out in the open, my partner figured he wouldn’t mind if he asked the guy what he was going to take. They exchanged words I couldn’t hear under the pumping music, and I saw my partner laugh. He came back.
Thanks, disembodied tangle of arms! (Source)
“They’re not pills. They’re earplugs,” he grinned.
I ended up having a great chat with Derek about the rave scene, after I complimented him on his decision to wear earplugs. He’d been going to dance music events since the birth of acid house in the late 80’s. We watched the crowd stomp around from our second-floor vantage point. Everyone looked a little different, a little unique. Though most of the crowd was white, there were people of all shapes and sizes and configurations of dreadlocks. There were no binary gender categories in charge here. Visually, this was a very different crowd from folks at more popular EDM events. It was the misfit table in your high school cafeteria, all grown up and not giving a fuck. I liked it. I felt at home. These weirdos knew how to party.
“Everything’s changed,” said Derek, as we continued to chat about the dance music scene. “It used to be about the people—the DJ wasn’t the centre of attention, now it’s all about ego…” This wasn’t the case at the events hosted by the organizers of this one, though, he said. He liked events held by these guys. But his words made perfect sense in what has become an increasingly monetized and corporate electronic music scene. The fact that a formerly niche music genre like EDM (contested though the term is) has exploded in North America in the last three years is shaping a lot of how the scene functions today. The effects of this explosion are everywhere. DJs are the new rock stars. Huge EDM festivals are popping up overnight on the map like mushrooms after a rain, so much that talk about market oversaturation has already begun—young people only have so much money to spend on summer festivals, and most can only afford one or two a year (though social media and FOMO are affecting these decisions as well). Celebrity actors-turned-DJs are using their clout to cash in on EDM’s popularity—Hodor from Game of Thrones calls his bookings “Rave of Thrones”, Bryan Cranston made a surprise appearance at EDC a couple weeks ago, and Paris Hilton is slated to DJ at Cabana in Toronto soon—though most of the online buzz around this fact ranges from not taking her seriously, to outright hostility at her “buying her way into the scene” where talented DJs could play instead. (To his credit, Hodor (Kristian Nairn) is apparently pretty good.) Gigantic rave cruises are spawning knock-offs and the Full Moon Parties in Thailand get bigger by the thousands every year. And Superbowl-sized LED screens blast the names of DJs in multicoloured glory as they pose for that iconic shot in front of the ecstatic crowd, arms wide, godlike, drinking in the adulation.
I’M YOUR GOD NOW.
Back at the beach-themed psytrance rave however, it was 12:30 am, the dance floor was filling up and a pink-haired DJ who turned out to be my favourite of the night was taking over. No LED screens, no antics, no huge crowd. The dancers cheered him on after a particularly complex bit of mixing. He shook his head and bowed to them, arms out, palms down, as if in worship.
There was an unique kind of unity in the dancing style I saw at this event, different from that seen at more mainstream EDM events. This was very… Well, what you’d have to call ‘frenzied’. It matched the music perfectly. Everyone is in their own little world; there’s less dancing together in tight pairs or groups, more space to move around and be creative. But you can still feel that it’s a collective activity. We’re all still in this together as a group, united by the music and the freedom to just be weird and dance however we want. Interestingly, there was a noticeable lack of sexuality about the dancing here. I wasn’t sure why, but I got the feeling that someone trying to dance provocatively, or any sort of sexual attention-seeking, would be frowned upon and probably mocked. It would be out of place, an unwanted break-in from the mainstream world of bros and Kanye’s “drunk-and-hot girls” that these people are trying to escape. Where they don’t fit in and don’t know the rules, don’t know how to fake it and have rejected the idea that they should have to.
1:50 am.
However, just as I was thinking to myself, “Everyone is dancing so damn hard, it would be pretty difficult to hit on someone here anyway,” my partner pointed out a hip-humper (a guy dancing crotch-first against a girl) at the front. Turns out she was into it, though. Later on in the night, my partner ended up accidentally interrupting them upstairs outside the bathroom, his hand up her skirt.
At 2:35 am, we hugged Derek goodbye and began our journey home. We weren’t sure exactly what we’d just experienced, but we knew that we liked it. We’d be back for more.
Note: Real names have been changed. These are experiences and reflections based on my current field work. My ideas and assumptions are quite possibly totally wrong, so I happily invite you to comment and change my perspective.
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Dr. Hilary Agro, PhD 