Darkpsy Adventure

Last week I realized I know almost nothing about darkpsy, a genre that has always seemed interesting to me, but I never got around to actually checking it out. Well except for Blisargon Demogorgon, whose music I always liked and even that did not push me to delve deeper into the genre back in the day. I rarely listen to trance these days, some goa now and then, but I abandoned that genre a while back so checking darkpsy was sort of like going back to where I came from in my musical evolution.

I got three albums by three different artists: Tumult by Derango, Waves From Innerspace by Kindzadza and Da Budet by Psykovsky. 

Derango – Tumult

First of I have to say Derango is a great name for a darkpsy project. Just perfect. That’s what got my attention in the first place. That, and also the fact that Derango always seemed to be one of the most praised projects of the darkpsy sphere.

This album contains some of the most evil and twisted music I’ve ever heard. It makes you feel like you’re being dragged through a forest path in the middle of the night and the path is full of thorns, rocks and evil creatures that follow you the entire way. And it doesn’t end well. As you progress on your trip it just gets darker and more hopeless. Very, very climatic, I must admit.

Unlike in some cases the samples are perfectly blended in. If anything deserves the label dark psychedelic trance it is definitely this album. The only minus might be that none of the tracks really stand out, it’s a solid album, but no real “hits” on it. Maybe after more listens it will become clearer.

Rating: 4/5

Kindzadza – Waves From Innerspace

I chose Kindzadza because of its high popularity on Last.fm. For a darkpsy project of course.

Waves from Innerspace is definitely a ligher album than Tumult. The sounds are not as twisted, not so evil sounding. There is a bit more variation here though, beat pace changes quite often, and there are some melodies here and there. Overall though I have to say this is not as good as Derango’s album. It’s a good release, but I’m guessing this is pretty

much standard darkpsy. No fireworks, just solid dark psytrance.

Rating: 3.5/5

Psykovsky – Da Budet

For the last release I decided to follow Last.fm tags and checked what came up for the tag forest psytrance. Psykovsky wasn’t on top but the name caught my attention. I decided to get the second album because it is purely him here and on Debut he included several remixes and collaborations.

This album is very varied. Even more variations in the beat pace than Kindzadza, really excellent voice samples and dark atmosphere is what makes it great in my opinion. At times it sounds chaotic, but in a good way, very keeps your attention to the music. Unlike with the previous two albums, here the tracks stand out a lot, each one having something specific to offer. In my opinion the deeper you get into the album the tracks get better and better. The Indian prayer (I guess it is a prayer) at the end of the final track was a really nice surprise.

Very interesting art work for this one, I like it a lot.

Rating: 4.5/5

After touching the tip of the darkpsy iceberg I have to say I am hooked! It is definitely not something I would listen to everyday, or at least not long periods of time, but it is definitely very good stuff. Possibly the darkest music I have ever listened to, hard to believe people put it under the same label as all the fluffy trance, not to mention all the pop Tiesto and company release these days. I would say that besides goa (new or old), this is the most interesting sub genre of psytrance. Fans of evil and twisted stuff should not miss this.