Acid Dreams

December 4, 2005 8:53 PM

For stoners who like to trip out, here is AJ Weberman’s unapologetic Virtual Acid Trip. Lots of basic mid-90’s midis in background, but if you are under the influence anyway, it will all make perfect sense. Many hallucinogenic links in the archives, including the German Buschman and others. Lock your door, Smoke N Toke & enjoy yourself. If you like it, you can donate some dough. (You are welcome.)
posted by growabrain (47 comments total)

I can taste the colors man, and they taste like shitty tiled animated gifs circa 1997.
posted by stenseng at 9:08 PM on December 4, 2005

Thanks for the heads up, growabrain, these links will come in handy when I get to Amsterdam tomorrow, very timely.
posted by Meatbomb at 9:13 PM on December 4, 2005

Nothing like acid.
posted by sourwookie at 9:15 PM on December 4, 2005

I'm sorry. I forgot what I was going to follow that up with. I remember it was deep though...
posted by sourwookie at 9:17 PM on December 4, 2005

So this is what you're supposed to see when you do acid? Maybe I ate too much? Or maybe, it wasn't acid. Damn! Foiled again.
posted by panoptican at 9:25 PM on December 4, 2005

Ah, Weberman. AKA Dylan's garbage man, which is to say he rummaged through it and harrassed Bob relentlessly. Trippy!
posted by Scram at 10:28 PM on December 4, 2005

*snarf* so what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night, Pinky... Grow a brain.
posted by hypersloth at 10:39 PM on December 4, 2005

Virtual BAD TRIP, man. I like computer music and computer graphics and all, but those terrible, amazingly sucktacular midis and animated gifs are going to give me nightmares for weeks. Talk about giving psychedelics a bad name. Also, what a kook. Bad vibes, man.

This "Flashback.swf" movie, however, has always been tasty. It's always fascinating to me how that flash movie can start out with such a naive, "not really quite getting it" feel to it, and then develop into that lush, gorgeous and polyloquent vision of drippingly iridescent tastiness.

Does anyone know what the music is that is used in that movie? I've been trying to find it off and on for a year or two now. Granted, I haven't really done more than half-assed searching, but I'd really like to have that track.
posted by loquacious at 11:02 PM on December 4, 2005

Ha, I LOVE IT! bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
posted by Peter H at 11:03 PM on December 4, 2005

The one really good acid trip I had, one of the friends I was with transmorgified from jewish to asian. Another grew hair out of every part of him, like a werewolf. They stayed that way all evening. The walls breathed like the whole house was alive, and ordinary objects occaionally melted into puddles on the floor. There were definitely light shows inside my eyelids, but they didn't have MIDI soundtracks. I laughed a whole lot. We went for a walk at one point and I remember losing the sensation (even the sound) of putting one foot before the other, and just gliding through the night air like a mote adrift. At some point I crashed into a pile of leaves and for several minutes couldn't stand back up from laughing so hard.

I'm kind of glad there was no internet in those days or we might have spent the evening staring at tiled GIFs.
posted by scarabic at 11:05 PM on December 4, 2005

loquacious, the music on Danny Gomez's Flashback is by Shpongle
posted by growabrain at 11:19 PM on December 4, 2005

/me loves shpongle (and hallucinogen)
posted by hypersloth at 11:24 PM on December 4, 2005

Hallucinogen is Simon Posford with the flautist, Raja Ram.
posted by hypersloth at 11:29 PM on December 4, 2005

Thanks, growabrain and hypersloth.

Ah, the track is Divine Moments of Truth.
posted by loquacious at 11:34 PM on December 4, 2005

Mmmm, Shpongle. loquacious, you should check out the latest album, "Nothing Lasts ... but Nothing is Lost".

Err, if anyone's going to be in/around Sydney next weekend, Simon Posford (Hallucinogen) will be playing live nearby. Just wishing I was there.
posted by 5MeoCMP at 11:34 PM on December 4, 2005

Flashback was previously discussed here, btw.
posted by homunculus at 11:46 PM on December 4, 2005

Nothing like an acid trip. I concur.

Though the animated GIFs seriously could give anyone a bad trip.

'Tards.
posted by malusmoriendumest at 12:04 AM on December 5, 2005

Nothing like acid.

But it's all gone!?
posted by homunculus at 12:07 AM on December 5, 2005

Loquacious, I was going to post that exact SWF myself, but ended up watching it, and so not posting it. It's sort of crude, but does come closer to capturing the experience of a trip than most other things I've seen which try to.

Yes, it's Shpongle, specifically the song "DMT". If you like Shpongle, you should also check out his work as Younger Brother on the album "A Flock Of Bleeps" which is also rather good.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:22 AM on December 5, 2005

Yeah, these would be too intense on acid. Like sensory overload maaaan. A blade of grass is entertainment enough when you're tripping. But thanks anyhow.
posted by Devils Slide at 12:24 AM on December 5, 2005

More fun.
posted by homunculus at 12:25 AM on December 5, 2005

The handful of times I tripped were closer to scarabic's experience (although my friends didn't transmogrify). One time I spent about four hours looking at a string of xmas lights (the red ones breathed) like it was the most fascinating thing I'd ever seen. And I laughed harder than I've ever laughed at someone saying "whoops" or something. The laughing actually began to become a bad trip, because I couldn't stop for hours and my cheeks were hurting. Ah, memories.
posted by Devils Slide at 12:35 AM on December 5, 2005

Heh, I caught Hallucinogen / Shpongle at Earthcore last week. He rocked it. Last time I saw him I was too off my head on alice to fully enjoy, so I was stoked to catch him again in a more complementary state. I wonder how many psy trancers there are on Mefi??
posted by Onanist at 12:37 AM on December 5, 2005

Jon Mitchell: I commented on that SWF because it's in the FPP; See the link in "it will all make perfect sense".
posted by loquacious at 12:38 AM on December 5, 2005

Woah, scarabic, if we lived closer I'd swear I was the person you mention.. One trip night, a friend swore up and down I had become an asian werewolf, and we were totally harassing freshly-raked leaf piles on our trapse through the neighborhood. Ahh, Acid.

.
posted by SpookyFish at 12:53 AM on December 5, 2005

Growabrain:
Many thanks for the Shpongle. I needed some new music to like.
posted by Goofyy at 1:05 AM on December 5, 2005

onanist: +1 ;)
posted by borq at 3:37 AM on December 5, 2005

Just reading this thread gives me a funny tingling sensation at the top of my spine. I dare not follow the links either for fear that this feeling might spread further throughout my body and result in what most trippers like to call a flashback.
posted by sjvilla79 at 4:32 AM on December 5, 2005

The members of Shpongle also record as '1200 micrograms' and 'Hallucinogen'.

If you're looking for psychadelic trance, Psyshop is the way to go.

I also highly recommend lnfected Mushroom and Astral Projection.
posted by empath at 6:11 AM on December 5, 2005

I'm with scarabic, it's better to go outside.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 6:23 AM on December 5, 2005

Just use MilkDrop in Winamp. Bad web design = bad trip.
posted by ab'd al'Hazred at 6:43 AM on December 5, 2005

If you want your visuals to look like 2005 instead of 1995, download electric sheep and never look at another visualizer again.

It's all the fun of a psychedelic screen saver mixed with all the joy contained in a tank of sea monkeys, with a little SETI-at-Home collective responsibility thrown in for good measure.
posted by solipse at 7:15 AM on December 5, 2005

And it is good to see a few other psytrancers on Mefi...
posted by solipse at 7:19 AM on December 5, 2005

Bah, I prefer that my visuals look like 1990 or so: Fractint, now on version 20! Mmmm, color cycling plasma fields, Julia sets and more. None of that fancy-pants alpha-channeled Ultrafract stuff, just sheer, crunchy hardcore purist fractals. I remember running much of that on a 386, taking advantage the the DX core for some deep, slow zooming action.

Here's a nice psytrance set from this dude I know. I've been listening to it off and on for a few days, and I'm not all that into psytrance. Frickin-frackin drippy-hippy guitar solo music, maaan... where's my crisp and crunchy urban acid techno beats?
posted by loquacious at 7:25 AM on December 5, 2005

Ehh, sounds like your friend likes "drippy-hippy" progressive psytrance. Either that or he is from Cali? I would not consider that to be a representative sample in either case.

Try this mix instead.
posted by solipse at 7:45 AM on December 5, 2005

Accidently dosed myself last week (still can't figure out who left those "chocolates" in the freezer I was cleaning out), and this was the last sort of thing I'd want to pay attention to while tripping. Stayed away from the computer entirely for the duration as a matter of fact....
posted by squalor at 7:56 AM on December 5, 2005

The night never looks so good as it does on LSD.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 8:00 AM on December 5, 2005

Solipse: He's from California, yeah. That mix is pretty indicative of the California desert psytrance sound, ala Moontribe and other crews.

I checked out the mix you linked, and got all excited by how it started - slow, melodic and ponderous like the Shpongle stuff. See, trance used to mean stuff like Mixmaster Morris, Scanner, Pete Namlook and others. It was like slow, trippy ambient techno - listening music, not dancing music. (See the original "Trance Europe Express" CD sets.) Then Goa got ahold of the trance name, and well, here we are today.

Then that mix rapidly devolved (IMO) into the same heavily appregiated, rolling, squickling bassline stuff with that same high attack bass kick with phrase-locked, time-distorted snares and hi-hats, all iced up with washy acid synthlines. It's just all so predictable - to me. In fact, it sounds more commercial and polished to my ears, and more predictable and less "new". But my perspective is probably warped. I've been listening to and dancing to EDM/techno since before 1990, so I'm not so easy to please.

Sure, I'd probably be much more into it on a good handful of shrooms or a few drops of sunshine, but still not as much as I would be into... something new and different and heavier. It's not at all that I don't "get it". I think it's just at this point in my musical listening career given the opportunity of any sort of truly altered state I'd much rather seriously hurt my brain with some experimental/noise, or even just raw static, or silence and closed eyes in a dark room, allowing my mind to make up whatever it wants. Heh. Static eater. Void dweller.

This is an example of what I prefer to listen to, dance music-wise. But it damn well should be, I DJed it. (Yeah, that's a self-link.) More minimal, not quite house, more acid and techno, but genre crossing. Disclaimer, that mix is a just a test jam. It's no where near as polished or as well sequenced as I'd like, but it's quite listenable. No, I don't get to listen to that stuff out at parties as often as I'd like. Psytrance, melodic and progressive trance pays the bills, it seems.
posted by loquacious at 8:47 AM on December 5, 2005

Regarding psy-trance, Shpongle, Hallucinogen, Infected Mushroon, etc... Digitally Imported has a goa-psy trance channel for streaming goodness..
posted by hypersloth at 10:20 AM on December 5, 2005

loquacious: "Void dweller"
by Eon?!
posted by hypersloth at 10:24 AM on December 5, 2005

hypersloth: I used to have that album on vinyl, and some of the 12" LPs. I still have it on CD and MP3s from said CD.

I was referring to both the song but more the metaphyisical space. Even nothingness becomes something tangible when illuminated by one's own mind. It's not really a place or space that I've visited in some time, but I know it's still there - probably waiting for me with it's yawning, gaping blank canvas-ness and impossible possibilities.
posted by loquacious at 10:38 AM on December 5, 2005

Nice... I was kinda thinking that album was just a secret between me and Eon (and maybe some hardcore Dune fans)
It definitely stands the test of time.. I have a lot of fun playing it for people and having them guess what year it was released...
posted by hypersloth at 10:45 AM on December 5, 2005

btw, thanks for 5lower5hop!
posted by hypersloth at 10:49 AM on December 5, 2005

shpongle wallpaper
posted by hypersloth at 11:04 AM on December 5, 2005

You're welcome, thanks for listening. That mix is called "5lower5hop" because it's one of an ongoing series of test mixes, one of which is due for release on the 5lowershop collective/soundsystem label out of San Francisco.

(5lowershop can be read as "flowershop" or "slowershop" or a number of other ways. It's a bunch of cool, crazy techno-hippy bridge people living the high life in an old flower shop warehouse somewhere South-of-Maket. I really wish I was there, now, but I missed my window of opportunity and they're full-up, now.)
posted by loquacious at 11:11 AM on December 5, 2005

"Listening to the frogs, fes." says my bro.
"Why?" I ask.
"They're speaking."
"What are they saying?"
"I don't know - it not English."
"It's German," says the friend.

Perfection.
posted by phaedon at 11:18 AM on December 5, 2005

I hate Luba.
posted by swift at 2:15 PM on December 5, 2005