Hallucinogen - 1999 - Twisted

Quality: 4.5 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.5 out of 5

Here we find Shpongle co-mastermind Simon Posford with his first recordings as Hallucinogen. Although released in 1999, most of these recordings apparently date from the first half of the decade. If you have any affinity for the electronic sub genre of psy-trance, I think you very well may agree that this is the best album that that particular niche had to offer.

What we find here is a totally cool, streamlined gliding sound. As good as the Lone Deranger was, it was a little loaded down with squiggles of noise, and it rarely took flight as amazingly as this one. Twisted manages to fit every note and sequence in the right place and is better fitted to induce a trance state of mind than pretty much any other music with a beat (we'll leave more ambient music out of this equation).

Twisted starts of with "LSD," which is a damn fine track whose concept Posford's Shpongle collaborator Raja Ram would later take to album length on the first 1200 Micrograms album. Then the sound plunges down for a a in flight canyon run on "Orphic Trench," which comes across like the Orb on steroids. Early centerpiece "Alpha Centauri" sonically takes us to that particular star system using an very different route than Tangerine Dream did on their Alpha Centauri album. Once again though, songs are not necessarily the key here as the album seemlessly flows through several top rate dance numbers like "Snarling Black Mabel" and the percolating "Fluoro Neuro Sponge." Make sure to fast forward through a few minutes of silence after "Solstice" to find a pretty cool ambient track that would have been a nice breather in the middle of the album.

This is a very upbeat album, but retains a psychedelic sense of mystery. I suppose this is best used for when you want your party to get wild and weird, blasting down a lost highway at night, or spinning around and around in a car with electric lights flashing very fast.