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Ray Castle
This nOde
last updated March 22nd, 2005 and is permanently morphing...
(7 Muluk (Water) /
12 Kumk'u - 189/260 - 12.19.12.2.9)
Born in Auckland, New
Zealand, 1955.
New media and occult sciences artist. Cybernetic
surgeon, techno shaman, trance
theologian, astral attache, existential electro alchemist,
meta magician
 |
Visual arts and sound curator/director of
‘Closet Artists Gallery’
during the late 70s and early 80s.
Writing and performing rock, punk,
funk and industrial music
during the late 70s and early 80s.
Awarded Arts Council Travel grant in 1983,
to travel to America
and Europe.
Rap and hip hop performer/writer during the
mid 80s. Dee
Jaying at ‘psychedelic’disco/techno
parties in Goa,
India,
Tokyo, Europe, ‘86 - ‘94.
Discography:
Kox
Box/Saiko
Pod and Ray CastleMantaray
off ofSilent
Records / Demon Tea
Records (1995)_Looking
Glass_Gods_Zentrical
Wheel_ MP3 (160k)Dream
Spirits_Sufi
(Psy-Harmonics)Dancing
To The Sound Of The Sun
-- (Psy - Harmonics) |
 |
Time
Traveller by Masaray (Flying
Rhino)Nick
Taylor -- (Matsuri
Productions) |
 |
 |
 |
-- Insectoid -- _Wizardry of Oz_ 12"x2
-- (Transient)
off of _Psychedelic Krembo 3_ compilation on KremboNeal
StephensonGroove
Gland_ MP3 (192k)
-- Higher Spin States -- Ray Castle & Ollie Olsen -- (10 Kilos, Psy-Harmonics)GreenAnt)Moon
-- (Equinox)
by Tongue
'N' Tweak off of _Edges R Fun_ CD
on Edgecore (with Nam
Shub Of Enki)Tea
Records) The existential
quest is a theme which runs through my life.
The arts have provided a metaphorical vehicle for me to communicate some of
my discoveries which relates to collective consciousness and each individual's
personal dharma. Art is a symbolic, sensoria language,
which has the potential to reach the transpersonal psyche and reconnect us with
the creative source. I use my creations and other people's work to orchestrate
a hybrid medium, within a dance
party context, to bring about psycho-emotional transformations. Rhythms and frequencies
and sounds catalyse enzymes and chemistry in the brain and body-mind. I don't
see myself as a conventional musician or DJ, I am more of a sound therapist,
an infonaut,
acybernetic
surgeon stitching together a contemporary mosaic
of music and sonic geometry which takes the participants on a journey within
themselves and interpersonally. I am not sure who Ray Castle is. I am finding
out what I am here to do. Life is an unending journey of self discovery. I do
feel as though my work is about being a communications conduit for universal
consciousness. Working through ego and power-lust, control issues, to be a clear
channel. Manipulation drives are a complex for DJs to wrestle with, or anyone
holding the power to direct people.
Dance
has always been here. There is a great deal of social implication in the role
that dance serves. The fashion and style that is hung on this medium is multitudinal.
Music and rhythms are inherent to the vibrational nature of life. Music and
dance culture reflects whats going on in society and in the cosmos. Techno has
finally come into the mainstream and is headed for corporate comodification
like what happened to rock music, which is now a kind of classical form, like
jazz or blues. But all that has gone is embedded in the current form. Technology
has greatly influenced the sound and music of our time,
plus the definition of being a musician, or artist. Now the whole studio is
an instrument. Techno and the tribal role of DJs has eclipsed the hierarchical
staged-centred rock style show, with the audience all facing one way, focused
on being entertained by mythical gods. Midi programming, soft ware, virtual
synth architecture and drum
machines have fractalised-polyrhythms.
All the various sub-genres of dance music, are like sub sects of a greater cult.
This year and even more, next year, the styles are and will break down and will
cross over further. Psychedelic-trance
has come out of Euro techno and disco with its 4/4 marching doof
beat. And urban hip hop break beats have been speed up and mutated into jungle
and drum and bass. Art is always a syntax of ideas and forms. Computers have
enhanced our capacity to create grooves,
manipulate wave forms and cut and paste compositional structures. It would be
impossible for a drummer to play the rapid 160 bpm patterns of drum
and bass. The full power stomping beat of trance is good to a point, but
its regimented 16th-patterned form is starting to become quite stale. Its always
the hybrid that is fascinating. What has been of uplifting value with psy trance
is that it has brought more spiritual, extraterrestrial vibe into dance music,
its not strictly sex, or urban club music, like house, or jungle, or the urban
angst of hip hop. The more cosmic frequencies of Psy trance work well outdoors
with the light
play in nature, and the longer journey type dance party. But rhythmically some
of the drum n bass percussion programing is very progressive and cyber. There
is a different dynamic than 4/4 structures. Here you have this rapid 160 bpm
snare polyrhythm attack underpinned by a half speed 80 bpm kick and bass groove.
Its a fresh, invigorating, timing formula, which creats a more sensual sway,
rather than a full pounding, fixed, marching, doof beat. A lot of the atmospheres
and moods in typical breakbeat and drum and bass are still quite austere and
minimal, or too cheesy for me, but it has much psychedelic potential. You can
paint different ambient
washes in the back, which you can't do with riffy, regimented, trance. Its all
to do with gaps in space and time.
There has been very fixed camps, especially the polarisation of black music
-- primarily funky hip hop, jungle -- versus -- white cerebral techno styles.
With the corresponding crowds these different genres and scenes attract. Youth
culture, especially, projects so much of its identity on to it. I don't see
very many black people coming to psy trance parties. They seem more centred
in earthy, funky, sexy, beats. Psy trance is more resonating with a state of
ascension and astral gliding on galactic gated wavelengths. It all seems to
run in cycles, with the whites re-interpreting the black funk. I can see this
with tech step, a darker version of urban jungle and with break trance. The
last two tunes I have done have pushed all this to the max. Fresh territory.
Where trance and drum and bass go on a phantasmagoria whirly gig into another dimension
of body-groove-gestalt. If I send these tracks to typical trance labels or typical
drum and bass labels, they would all have a freakbeat fit, it doesn't fit comfortably
into their tight categories. But when the labels make a fixed fashion concept
out of their stable, they trap the music, and it eventually must break down
again to move forward. New carriers and springboard publishers will emerge to
herald and forge the zeitgeist paradigm pulse.
That's why the underground always regenerates itself like a groove compost heep.
The system is set up in a circle (4 stacks of speakers)
and often there are 4 totem poles for the 4 elements and 4 cardinal points.
Prior to the music starting there is a group meditation in a circle of all the
facilitating participants. Frankencense (a kind of incense) is used to clear
and purify the space. Often the first sounds are chanting or acoustic drumming
or didgeridoo.
Gradually organic ambient
sounds come in followed by slower techno beats. Ideally, this progression of
rhythmic moods builds slower, with the very easy accessable beats coming earlier
in the night prior to midnite. After which the pulse quickens to a more pithy,
full power, punchy beat which loosens up the musculature and primes people for
the full cathartic fireworks in the middle of the night. There are ebbs and flows,
and peak climaxes, which eventually culminates with the light arriving and the
journey goes into a religious kind of ecstasy
in the soft glow of dawn. The faces of the dancers start to emerge like photographic
paper in a darkroom. Dancing thru the night is more of an inner journey but
still feeling the psychic aura of those around you, who are locked into the
same wavelength, syncopated rhythms. In the morning, there is a sense of oneness
and unity, being together on the dancefloor. A feeling of inseparable timelessness.
A kind of ancient rite of passage back
to the source with the first sun rise. As the blooming rays of dawn hit
your body there is a resurgence of energy and a renewed flight occurs. This
is augmented by ascending, angelic-like, reverential, morning music. As apposed
to the more deeper, chaotic
,
hektec-night-atmospheres, in the music.
 |
What bothers me about dance music
is that it has a short life. Its very transient.
The more you slow it down the longer is lasts. If you take all the beats out,
it becomes timeless. It won't be long until we will be composing musical works
which change each time you listen to them. An evolving ecology of intuitive
circuits. I can't say I have one particular favorite recording artist. To make
a top 10, is too limiting. Its constantly changing. For sure there are always
pieces being made that are stunning and very contemporary and speak of the spirit
of the time. But it is hard for any one artist or group to stay vitally hot
on the vibe, consistently. Artists tend to peak. Mostly, if they have some commercial
success, they tend to cling on to the formulas that gave them visibility. Fashion
is an undulating tide, and the more enduring creative innovators can interpret
the constant shifts, reinventing themselves, as they rock with the waves.
The job of a DJ is to take individual tunes out of the collective whirlpool,
data flow,
and create an information
chain-reaction-statement out of it. And when the artists hear their music reinterpreted
in a mix, their tunes take on a life of their own. One tune can have magnificent
bearing and influence upon the direction of a collective movement. Then other
tunes come which mirror that one back, which creates the evolution.
Its more than any one artist. Its greater than one. All we really can be is
a clear vehicle, or channel, to allow something much greater and universal to
flow thru, without attaching too much personality or ego identification to it.
Then it comes down to the fundamental role -- pop, fashion, art, culture or
spirituality -- serves for society's psychic health.
There are some new pieces, both
dance and slower contemplative ones, with the umbrella names of Insectoid, Higher
Spin States and Exotic Matter. You will only hear them at underground parties,
because only some of it is released. There will be an album of Insectoid, and
Exotic Matter material out before too long, and also some new works from Mantaray,
plus I will be curating a compilation of psychotropic techno from Oz. In regards
DJ mixes, some it has a journey quality, but hearing the mix of a party is like
looking at photos of the event, it is devoid of the spirit and electrical
charge which created the, here and now, bio-feedback
experience -- cum -- party -- cum -- ritual.
It would seem to indicate that the collective is seeking
a more liberated, individualised, experience of 'truth', rather than an institutionalised
dogmatic religion. It also suggests a spiritualising of science and technology.
Music and art are going to move in radical new directions, and will mirror global
consciousness in a far reaching egalitarian medium. Since Uranus entered its
home sign of Aquarius, we have seen a rapid escalation of the applications of
the internet
to shrink the geographical and idealogical borders of the world, with free access
to life-enhancing information.
Its going to get more refined, sophisticated and powerful as a communicationscentral
nervous system. Its definitely going to have major impacts on the music
industry and its info-marfia-like distribution systems.
 |
 |
Part of the shamanic richness I
strive for is the magic
of trying to extend the natural universal laws into TRANCE-DANCE
music and channeling this music in my role as a DJ TECHNO SHAMAN. So that the
collective group dynamic can come into alignment, to use these potent spacial moments
to access certain knowledge or DATA IN OUR DNA
or THE TRANSPERSONAL SELF. We are like the Aborigine, eons ago, who contemplated
the planetsphere with their 'dream-time',
whilst beating their sticks and blowing thru a hollowed out pipe (didjeridu).
These open-air, wilderness, TRIBADELIC, pagan-like parties (rituals), are along this line of primordial communion. I see cathartic dance as a reconnective therapy, and a rekindling of a free-form play space, which we had as children.
The peak experiece, weather it is a sexual orgasm or the
self abandonment we feel at a trance dance party, is a letting go of the defences
which bind us to our ego, our aloneness, and the controlling personality of
the mind. One aspect of the GOA MYTHICAL DANCE PARTY movement has been to bring
a more spiritual vibration into this art form, and make the whole experience
more cosmic, and ultimately more holistically edifying. This has encompassed
a neo-hippie fashion trend, which has identified with the taoistic
East and its dieties, and a revisioning of SOUND FREQUENCY ALCHEMY,
ritual magic, image media, ceremonial art installations. All of which are in fused
into a potentially healing, unifying social event, for the individual, the community
and the planet. When we dance together, we are one. There is a MICRO/MACRO
reverberating affect. Like people meditating or praying together. A now POST
GOA, anti-podal mindscape. A mystical experience mediated via the technology.
It relates to the maxim of the Aquarian age, where science and a more individuated
religious experience can merge.Composers and DJs of Trance Techno, tend to be
anonymous communal artists, and don't have the hierarchical, narcissism of the
previous rock musician archetype.
The author of Cyberia, Douglas
Rushkoff, states that, 'the mission of cyberspace counterculture of the
90s is to explore unmapped realms of consciousness and to rechoose reality
consciously and purposefully.' And to challenge existing media, manipulated,
paradigms of world view held by the dominator culture.
DEE JAYS ARE POWER FREAKS ! I feel
a huge amount of responsibility in this role. If you sense the need to cast
yourself in this directing, controlling, position, then try and do it in a clear
minded way, without unconciously projecting too many personal agendas through
the prime time
of these trance-dance, altered
state, sacred spaces. The dancers put themselves in your hands to take them
on a journey, its like psychic surgery. Its important to understand the dynamic
of raising this energy in the body and psyche, through progressing the various
levels of intensity
in the music, to make a spiralling progression. Its to do with raising the kundalini
serpent energy in the body's chakra
system. The party is a chakra journey, and finally you reach a crown-chakra-type
unfolding, like a flower, when the light
comes in the morning, and the progression of the music should reflect this.
But this can only come if you have ridden through the more interior, darker, dimensions
of the vigorous, visceral night groove.
This darkness into light, sound into light, dynamic is a powerful quality of
the Goa style, wilderness partys. If you can adjust the sound with this celestial
shift of energy, it creates immense, ecstatic
rapture, which can take the gathering into a melting, ascension, state.
This transcendent, dissolving,
unifying experience is fundamental to the psycho/spiritual nature of humans.
Deep down we yearn to experience this connectivity to the whole, which is what
we experienced when we were in our mother's womb; at that initial stage, our
spirit is taking form, coming into a body. We truly feel that we are the centre
of the universe, floating in space (the oceanic womb), where there is no ego,
no sense of self, no separateness, we feel a total interconnectivity with everything.
The innate desire to lose ones self in a transcendent, transporting experience,
pulls us back to that primordial source experience; it is like a returning home.
This can be realised in various communal spiritual practices which all the religions
tell us about, or to lesser degrees, even just going to the pub or being in
a crowd at a sports match. This ectatic state of intoxication on the spirit,
or just being part of an event, is the craving we have when we gather together
for social intercourse, or even as a passive audience. Humans have a strong
need to come together for a unifying collective experience, and I sense, it
connects us to a very communal, tribal, element in our social nature. The Greeks
strove to recreate this archetypal need with their emotionally-charged, mythological,
theatre. The mass hysteria at a sporting event, matches that of a full blown
rave. Perhaps one is seen to be more regimented than the other, but there are
codes of conduct, mind sets, and regulartory factors, weather that be referees,
djs, rules, bpms, or beat/style genres of music and body expression. And of
course, psyche-lubricating-substances, or soma,
are a part of the whole dissolving process
which assist in the dropping of our defences, temporarily. So that we can let
go and feel connected to something greater than ourselves, but then we have
to come back down again and be alone with all our conflicting feelings. So its
always this pull between wanting to be in a fusion
state, the bliss we experienced in the womb, and the pain of having to become
a separate entity and live in the boundaries of the body and work with mental
and emotional processes which challenge us with a vast array of dysfunctionalism
in our innate quest for unconditional love, both interpersonally and communally.
It can be seen as, ESCAPISM FROM THE MUNDANE, seeking nirvana
or shunyata, the religious bliss state. Music is the most powerful, emotion
catalysing, vibration, artform, we have as spiritual warriors.
Frequency
and rhythm activates the chemistry in the psychosomatic body/mind. Deep images,
sensations and memories are re-ignited. These dance rituals are about the gestalt
of the body, releasing regenerative, primitive, psychosexual energies, which
we as 'civilised', mind driven, westerners, are convoluted about, with our awkward,
retentive, neurotic, social programming. The DANCE CATHEXIS -- a group cathartic
psychodrama -- on tribal, techno, beats, offers a potent temenos (sacred space)
for reintegration of disconnected parts of the Self., which becomes a therapeutic
SONIC HOMEOPATHY of sorts. So techno tunes are like tinctures, and when we dance
to them they activate cellular memory,
in our metabolism, like electronic enzymes. Combining this with PSYCHOTROPIC
DRUGS creates a powerful catabolic, biochemical reaction.
I feel that Goa trance is TAPPING
INTO A QUANTUM
QUICK STEP.
A promethean
quest to awaken spiritual ideals and experiences via technology with a
popular, collective, art movement. The hippies, in the 60s, gave us aspects
of that, and now it is coming around again on a higher arc of the spiral.
Rushkoff defines it as 'A SYNERGISTIC CONGREGATION OF CREATIVE THINKERS
bringing the tools of hi-tech and advanced spirituality together.' The foundations
of our most deeply held beliefs and myths are being shaken, with a rebirth
and revisioning of ancient spiritual ideas. The dilemma of a fixed, static,
traditional religion, is that it struggles to maintain a position in the
present which is wholly conditioned by the perceptions
of the past. India, the home of religion, has been a sanctuary for dharma
bums, mystics, truth seekers, misfits, freaks, druggies, drop-outs, hippies,
anarchists, futurists, new agers and a plethora of world travellers, who
are seeking to escape the mundane world, questing for a higher experience
and answers to to the big picture.
India and psychedelic
trance-dance is for those who want to shred their egos and embrace something
quite numinous (spirit reflecting) and potentially more psychically edifying.
This TRIBADELIC TECHNO TRANCE movement was started in the, time-warped,
ancient vase of --Goa-- India-- by the SEASONAL NOMADIC JETSET HIPPIES,
who are most definitely outside of conventional society. They sustained
their unshackled, fringe, bohemian, lifestyle, by smuggling bomm shankar
(charus) out of India to the West and Japan
and collecting the latest mind-blowing psychedelic dance music. Charis
(hash) had been legal in India, up till the mid 70s, and its use by Hindu
yogis and sadhus, as a soma, or heightener of the senses, was a part of
that culture's tradition, until America put heavy anti-drug pressure on
all Asian countries at that time. Goa techno trance actually originated
from hard line, electronic body music, groups, like Nitzer Ebb, Front 242,
Frontline Assembly, as well as Eurobeat. This international, underground
cult, network,
of outer space travellers and drug dealers, then brought this music with
them, on tape, to Goa, to play at beach and jungle parties that they made,
which were non commercial, spontaneous, extremely flambouyant, outrageous;
and boom!... the Goa trance --hyperspace--
collective mindset evolved. On top of this, there was a copius supply of acid
and other hallucinogens
always free at most parties there. After 1989, the party season in India
has been intermittent, because of politics, especially related to drugs
and the growing popularity of the scene. This once, secret, DANCE-DHARMA-ZONE,
became much publicised and the parties more difficult to make and less magical.
Goa, the actual place in India,
now has become more mythical than actually a free environment for partying,
which it once was. With its present commercial, toursit treadmill, commodification,
and the attention focused
on it, via this music fashion, its now been tamed into a kind of clubby Ibiza,
and has lost its raw, out-there, wildness, which the freaks gave it. But at
least its in India, which is totally mad, chaotic
and surreal,
and will maintain some degree of unhinged, unpredictability, as apposed to other
Asian tourist traps like Thailand and Bali. India is freak friendly, hardcore
and in-your-face. Its more conducive to time travellers and truth seekers than
straight tourism. Thats why its a hippie mecca, and will continue to be so.
A unique genre of dance music has been spored from this, A CYBORGANIC COUNTER
CULTURE OF PSYCHONAUTS, distinct from the mainstream of urban house, hip-hop,
rave, acid, techno which was being generated in Europe and America, for clubs
and urban venues, with lots of commercial manipulations and hype by music press
and labels, just like we are ironically, currently, witnessing in London now,
with 'Goa Trance'. DJs and musicians who have experienced the exotic seduction
of the Goa vibe, then went back home to the West to do custom made tunes for
the occassion and set up labels to promote it, and now it is being packaged
as a pop fashion, which inevitably happens to any social art movemet which has
some substance. Its amazing it took this long to become hip, its been going
on now, for ten years, but its basic principles are ancient.
London is very good at whipping
up fashion-fad-fusions
with its infectious media, but in reality
England, with its justice cimminal laws, is one of the most repressive societies
for such events, but this just fuels its underground shadow, offshoot, -- English
eccentricity -- which I see as a curiously creative rebellion against a very
traditional class society. Lets see where this freaky, flavor of the month implodes
too, now, globally. POP ALWAYS REGURGITATES ITSELF. Goa is not about one scene
calling the shots, its A UNIVERSAL FREQUENCY FREEWAY. The party scene in Goa,
India, had always been very international, which flushed out narrow, parochial
attitudes and tastes. Although the quality of psychedelic music being produced
in London, has been very prolific and quintessential, of recent, its root 4/4
beat form is grounded in 80s Euro techno. Similarly, If you look back to the
60s, you can see what the British electric guitarists did with American blues
music. Its all about innovation, what ever form it takes, and obviously now,
the present immense palette of technology offersinfinite
possibility for psychic, sonic, evolution
in this medium. Which is an electronic umbilical chord, that links us all together
in one pulsating,
DOOFADELIC, trance dance, and offers the possibility to break
down psychological, cultural and political boundaries. The vibe in abstract
trance music is to do with universal themes, not subjectivepersonality
fetish, soapy romanticism or urban frustrations, which has made it rather illusive
to market by the music industry corporations, ie: give it a face. Its production
and networking
has been by a very alternative, grass roots, international, subculture. Now
we have a whole new psychedelic wave of computer wizz-kids, who didn't party
in the 60s, but many were born then, thus are fully hip to its revolutionary
spirit, and are now redefining and reinventing it, with a MIDI
MAVERICK, post modern, attitude. I remember, in '86/'87, having to dig around
the b-sides of dance records, or theirdub
versions, to find more spacey, weird, instrumental mixes, to suit our more,
off-centre, way-ward, esoteric needs. This thread of meta-music is like a sound
track for a journey thru time; past, present and future. There were always too
many insipid vocals, and often tracks were too short. So we used to use Sony
walkmans--no dats then--to cut up the track, edit it, and stitch it together
with various versions to make custom Goa mega mixes for the party. At this time
techno musicians had no idea of what was being done to their material and the
context it was being played in. The ELECKTRICKERY of the techno shaman's
cybertools allows for a kind of SOUND SORCERY,
all of which enhances the capcity to do this sacred work. There is often a thin
line dividing and defining the various qualities of doof,
techno, acid, trance or whatever you want to call it. Basically it comes down
to whatever evokes the spirit to a state of emotive, euphoric, ecstatic,
aliveness; but within this there is a potent fertile space for subliminal suggestion.
And for me, it is stearing it towards a connection with the UNIVERSAL OM
.
The PSYCHIC SONIC HARMONIC
that unites us all to the cosmos and creation; a THEOSOPHICAL
TRANCE.
 |
I don't want the focus
on me, in the environment of a dance party. Essentially the DJ is a channel,
for sound morphing the vibe, which creates a force
field, or magnetic resonance. The essence of dance music is that it has brought
the main event back to the individual rather than focusing on a creative ego
on stage or live musicians, as in rock music. Even live techno tweaking musicians,
I am dubious about. Laurie Anderson says: 'Watching someone play a keyboard
is as interesting as watching someone doing the ironing'. I would much prefer
some abstract, symbolic, theatre. Its all to do with personal empowerment via
movement, as the frequencies
and beats move the air in the space which triggers your emotional body. The
lighting and art also tunes and sanctifies the space, preparing the ground for magick
to eventuate, rather than formula, commercial, fashion, fictions, with lots
of voyeurism and ego jerk-off. I wish to strive for higher consciousness events
and music is a powerful catalyser. Esoterically, as the dervish
dancers knew, we are able to tap into invisible realms of meaning, to penetrate
the true nature of the physical space-time continuum. The electron does behave
like a particle, with access to information
about the rest of the universe. These parties are like a pluton, neutron, electron
dance of pure energy, which flushes out blocked psychic residue.
We are META MUTATING GLOBAL INFORMATIONAL
BEINGS, there is a metacontinuity in CHAOS
MATH. A dance party is a CHIROS SATORI
EXPERIENCE (time outside of regular time), where one can gain a bright-light-bulb-like
experience of illumination and understanding. As when the raver or dancer states
that s/he feels most alive when they are dancing, and this religious-like ecstasy,
offers a healing of our various splits and a reintegration with our instinctual
self, through such peak, bliss, experiences, which will permeate thru into all
aspects of our life; so it can have a very transformational, life altering,
affect. And yes, dance parties have transmuted the role that organized religion
once had to lift us onto the sacramental and SUPRAMENTAL PLANE.
604
track _Brother Ray_ MP3 (192k)
by Shaolin
Wooden Men off of _Supermindway_ (2000)
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