South African psytrance

South African psytrance (sometimes referred as SA trance) is a form of darker psychedelic trance music that started and is produced mostly in South Africa. Unlike the Russian and German dark psytrance, South African psytrance is more rhythmic with large percussion usage, melodic and danceable, yet keeps the nasty-like attitude although it is highly influenced by full on and tribal music. It is not uncommon to see musical groups of dark psytrance musicians with South African psytrance musicians or South African psytrance tracks in dark psytrance compilation albums, and vice verse. Also, there are artists such as Shift (Chris Hoy from Cape Town, although later leaned more to full on, and today to R&B) who combine their music with dark, or releasing tracks along with dark or dark\full on musicians (such as Psychotic Micro). The "South African sound" is not made by South African musicians only, for example the Israeli duo Abomination, the only non-South African musicians signed in the Cape Town based record label Nexus Media.

History
Perhaps the first South African psytrance compilation album is Mideranged released in 1999. However it is only in the early 2000s when the first wave of South African psytrance musical movement started. Compilations such as Africa In Trance, Alien Safari and Encryption in 2002 established the South African sound and were the first exposure to artists such as Artifakt, Damage, Phyx, Rabdom L, Rinkadink, Shift and Xatrik – who were basically the first wave of South African psytrance, later to influence new musicians in South Africa and the rest of the world.

Scene


Although most of the large psychedelic trance festivals takes place in Europe, South Africa, especially Cape Town, are loaded with psychedelic trance parties. There are big, famous outdoor, forest and beach parties.

Active musicians

 * 🇿🇦 Twisted System (Chris Hoyy & Craig Hudson & Ian Summs)
 * 🇿🇦 Brethren (Joseph Summs & Ian Summs)
 * 🇿🇦 Shift (Chris Hoy)
 * 🇿🇦 Pitch Hikers (Chris Hoy & Liam Gibbs)
 * 🇿🇦 Rabdom L (Craig Hudson)
 * 🇿🇦 Tickets (Joseph Summs)
 * 🇿🇦 Phyx (Ian Summs)
 * 🇿🇦 Hydraglyph (Andrew Morgan and Mark Ackermann)
 * 🇿🇦 Zion Linguist (Laurence Sonnenberg)
 * 🇿🇦 Slug (Liam Gibbs)
 * 🇮🇱 Abomination (Saar Davidov and Eyal Gershon)
 * 🇿🇦 Artifakt (Matthew De Nobrega)
 * 🇮🇱 Azax Syndrom (Saar Azaria)
 * 🇿🇦 Broken Toy (James Copeland)
 * 🇿🇦 Corona (Brendon Rod and Magnus Claussen)
 * 🇫🇷 Digital Talk (Julien Fougea and Luc Achintre)
 * 🇿🇦 Frozen Ghost (Barry Wynn)
 * 🇵🇹 Menog (Daniel Bernardo)
 * 🇫🇷 Phatmatix (Stephane Rault)
 * 🇿🇦 S.W.O.R.N.
 * 🇫🇷 Triskell (Fred Sauvand)
 * 🇿🇦 Xatrik (Greg Hamber)

Solo acts

 * Tundra (Andrew Morgan of Hydraglyph)
 * Chesh (Gareth Tacon of Hydrophonic)
 * Kut 'n' Paste (Jaco Konig of CounterCop)

Collaborations

 * Brethren (Ian Summs and Joseph Summs – brothers in real life)
 * Commercial Hippies (Nate Raubenheimerm and Gareth Tacon)
 * Multistate (Gerhard Olivier and Greg Hamber)
 * Pitch Hikers (Chris Hoy and Liam Gibbs – bombast of Beat Hackers)
 * Twisted System (Craig Hudson, Chris Hoy and Ian Summs – audio mastering by Matthew De Nobrega)

Record labels

 * Afrogalactic Records
 * MMD Records
 * Nano Records
 * Nexus Media
 * Sanskara Records
 * Red Eye Productions
 * Timecode Records