1st Edition
Musical Psychedelia Research at the Intersection of Music and Psychedelic Experience
Psychedelic music is a fascinating yet under-researched field of study. This thought-provoking collection offers a broad introduction to the field of psychedelic music studies, bringing together scholarly work on psychedelic music in genres like rock, folk, electronic dance music and pop. Through an expanded purview on psychedelic music, an emerging trend in research, the collection affords students and academics alike an introduction to a rich, multi-faceted field.
The contributing authors explore a range of different facets of musical psychedelia: its transgressive and transcendent aspects, its foregrounding of timbre and texture, the way it changes our perception of time, its influence on “non-psychedelic” music, key composition and production techniques that composers and musicians use in its creation, how it is mediated by different places and spaces, and the interplay between psychedelic visual and sonic aesthetics.
This interdisciplinary work reveals both commonalities in musical psychedelic experiences and the contestation inherent in a field of study that juxtaposes music of different genres and eras with a variety of theoretical approaches and methodologies. In broadening the scope of psychedelic music research, the collection not only makes for varied and absorbing reading on the subject level but also stimulates reflexive thought about interdisciplinary research.
Introduction
GEMMA L. FARRELL
PART I
1. A Splendid Time is Guaranteed for All: The Recreation of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper Album on Stage
ANTHONY MEYNELL AND ALAIN PIRE
2. A New Kind of Blue: Connections between Early West Coast Psychedelic Music and Jazz (1963-68)
TOM ZLABINGER
3. From Soul to Psychedelic Soul and Beyond: Sonic Experience and Sound configuration
GUILLAUME DUPETIT
4. DJ’s skills and psychedelic trance’s rules: Temporalities of the psychedelic experience in European electronic dance music
AURÉLIEN DJEBBARI AND ELINA DJEBBARI
5. Psychedelic spheres: sonic spaces and party places in psytrance
GEMMA L. FARRELL
PART II
6. Rings around the world: The psychedelic ripple effect in a global set and setting
NEIL BURNS
7. Psychedelia, Occulture and the Dark Rock-n-Rave Crossover
DANIEL SIEPMANN
8. Transcendental Psychedelia: hearing hearing in the work of Maryanne Amacher
WILL SCHRIMSHAW
9. Ecstatic-Materialist Sound: A Cross-Genre Aesthetic in Today’s Experimental Music RICCARDO D. WANKE
PART III
10. Journeys Around the Secret Place
KRISZTIÁN HOFSTÄDTER
11. Because the Night Belongs to Sex, ‘Drugs’ and Rock 'n' Roll: The Nocturnal Integration of Promiscuity, Psychoactive Substance-Seeking and Musicality in Human Evolution
Marco Antonio Correa Varella and Jaroslava Varella Valentova
12. Spirituality, Substance Use and Transformation in Electronic Dance Music Culture: Results from a Quantitative Study
THOMAS J. JOHNSON, DANIELLE D. WEISMAN, VIRGIL L. SHEETS, BRIANNA TODD & CODY LESNIAK.
Index
Biography
Gemma L. Farrell, PhD, is an Associate Researcher in the Music Department at the University of Sussex, UK, and author of Psychedelic Style and Embodiment in Psytrance (PhD thesis, 2019).
