Let’s start with how this feature came about. Over the last few years, my obsession with digging on Bandcamp has grown even deeper in relation to my connection with DJing and doing radio shows – in addition to how I discover new artists to feature on 909. After a formative experience at Draaimolen Festival in 2023 where I discovered the impact of deep, textural soundscapes, I fell into a rabbit hole of digging for artists and labels that existed within this world. This is when I noticed that the majority of the music I was connecting with and was excited by was coming from France – more specifically, from Lyon and Paris. Trying to connect the dots and work out the size of influence from this scene, I started a Notes folder to track all of the labels, artists, collectives and promoters that I came across in France that were making music or promoting artists within this realm of ‘low end psychedelia’. It was huge… and then, the debut edition of pe:rsona festival launched last year, highlighting the influence and importance of this scene. It’s an entire festival dedicated to this scene and its creation really validated what I had been noticing over the past few years. So here I am, piecing together the history and movement of this sound that is most notably rooted in France, but with influence spreading across Europe and slowly picking up here in the UK (a surprising note since you’ll see that the artists interviewed reference the UK as a huge point of influence).
The term ‘low end psychedelia’ covers a wide variety of genres, it’s not particular to one sound but more of a feeling or connection or approach to the music. There are certain elements that are true throughout such as the depth of the track, sound design, ‘a loopy structure you can get lost in, a round low end which hugs you and storytelling and energy that transports you’ as Lyon-based artist Vardae, who is part of the part of the Ouroboros crew and EWO Collectif, explains. This term transcends genres and relates to music which could be categorised as techno, trance, dub, bass and more. It can be cold or warm, or maximalist or minimalist in nature. I’ve often found that The Netherlands and Italy’s take on this sound is colder and minimalist, whereas France and Spain’s is maximalist and warm. This is something that Positive Education and pe:rsona co-music programmer Antoine Hernandez recognised in our conversation too, stating that “the French bring more trance elements and sound design into their tracks”. In some iterations of the sound, you can hear a reference to the 90s free party movement, with Spiral Tribe’s signature 160bpm style which took influence from Detroit techno and dub. This connection is most evident within the works of the Dutch crew like Spekki Webu and Woody92, however, when speaking to French-Tunisian artist Azu Tiwaline on the topic, I discovered that Azu first connected with psychedelic music via 69db of Spiral Tribe before being influenced by the sounds of Berlin techno and dub techno.
With Thatcher in power in the UK and the introduction of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act in 1994, this meant that the Spiral Tribe collective had to move elsewhere in order to continue throwing parties in the way that they wanted – with their name being so recognisable, their events were constantly shut down. In 1993 Spiral Tribe created the first Teknival in Beauvais, with 500 to 1000 people in attendance. In 1995, 69db went back to France to attend the Teknival of Fontainebleau where the party had grown to over 10,000 people and multiple systems with local systems in France creating a space for the movement to exist such as, Nomads, Psychiatrik and Furious. Speaking about the emergence of France’s free party movement, 69db says, “France became a melting pot between our 160 bpm sped up Hip House and the Hardcore scene that was coming in from Northern Europe. I think the thing is we hit big in countries that had repressive laws around clubbing. France was like the UK and Italy where the authorities disrespected its people. People work all week, pay taxes, charges, bills and at the weekend they get moralised and taxed again as they try and grab a moment of relief from the grid of our repressive culture. Berlin was a haven for freedom and so they didn’t need us for instance.” This movement isn’t referenced much as a point of influence in the conversations I had, perhaps missing a generation before its reemergence with Azu briefly mentioning that this part of music history isn’t spoken about or documented enough so the education isn’t there. In spite of that, Toulouse-based Jan Loup first connected with dub/stepper music via soundsystem parties that happened in her birth city, often venturing to the forest near the mountains. “There were lots of them. It was amazing, but looking back to it, I think it was very “closed” in terms of genre. They were never experimenting outside the specific limits of proper explicit stepper/roots dub style. Same goes with the free parties happening around. The genres were restricted to the French rave culture, as I recall, frenchcore, psytrance, hardcore, hardtek, tribe, those kinds of stuff.” Coinciding with the rise of the free party movement in France was the dub scene, most notably in Lyon, with the acclaimed record label Jarring Effects, founded in 1995, who released the likes of High Tone, Scorn, Brain Damage and Interlope.
When speaking to 69db about why he thinks the psychedelic sound is coming back now, he says, “this is a very tribal, psychedelic sound so if it is back we must be collectively reaching out for this form of communication. It also stands to reason that when the dominant narrative goes fascist, there is an equally extreme reach in the other direction by those who need to find truth. After periods of superficiality, people eventually realise they are just going nowhere. Covid was a period of self reflection and we saw a major rise of Experimental, Ambient and the 90’s free party sound as we came out of that. I think people could feel the difference. Our sound was a hidden gem that just lived in its own zone. This music channeled through a space where the people were not thinking about money; we were surfing psychedelics, we connected to that kind of source. For better or worse you cannot claim free party musicians to be commercially minded. We were all about helping to facilitate deep internal learning experiences.”
The point about COVID is something that has come up in multiple conversations I had. Virtual Forest Records co-founder Solma explained, “it’s just that the generation of producers who started during COVID are now gaining international recognition, and most of them have spent a lot of time during the lockdowns working on their sound, while they would have normally spent time DJing/organizing parties, etc.. This leads naturally to more sound-designed/brainy/introspective sounds.” Antoine Hernandez also touches on this, saying, “I really got into this movement during the various COVID lockdowns. For a few years, Charles Di Falco and I had been playing under Les Fils de Jacob, with a downtempo, very psychedelic vibe that didn’t exceed 110 bpm. Strangely, being locked up for weeks radicalized us towards faster music, but still just as psychedelic, which came to me through Woody and Chris (Spekki Webu).” The impact this had on the post-COVID scene meant that people were looking for more local, more intentional and more community-driven events, as Rinse France resident and tentacular founder Hewan Aman says, “clubs weren’t always the most welcoming or accessible places, and a lot of energy moved towards micro-festivals, squats, countryside raves, or industrial zones — spaces that allowed people to experiment and reconnect with music differently. That DIY energy, that urgency, is now embedded in the music and the way people organize.” There’s this need for something alternative to the normal parties that were taking place before COVID, which EWO Collectif (Toé, Vardae, Verveine and Coline Cretien) aims to offer. The collective was first created five years ago with the aim of proposing a singular experience to people. “They created the “house of the singing wood” experience which is based on our dome project and then used the same name to organise small occasional parties in our own flat. With House of the singing wood, we want to offer people a space where they can abandon themselves and feel safe. The project consists of a geodesic dome inspired by Mexican Temazcal where we offer an experience with visuals projected all around the inside of the structure and music being diffused in a quadraphonic spatialized environment. Verveine and Colline Cretien do all the visual parts while we do all the music together with Toé. For us it’s all about giving love to people through the experience,” Vardae explains.
The way people organise is directly affected by the political and economical landscape of the country. Right now, as Hewan Aman goes on to explain, “politically and economically, France is in a pretty tense moment — rising precarity, institutional violence, growing right-wing sentiments. It definitely seeps into nightlife. Permits are harder to get, spaces are being shut down, the pressure to commercialise is real. But that pressure is also birthing resistance. There’s a wave of collectives and artists who are rethinking what the party can be: not just a place to escape, but a place to feel, to connect, to politicise joy, to reclaim space.” This is collectively felt throughout all of the interviews I did for this feature, with Christian Coiffure mentioning, “as I am writing this, another club, that is 25 years old, just announced its closure in a mid-sized city. It’s devastating. Most of the venues that close are pretty small so that means there is less and less spaces for small artists to practice and gain an audience and I feel it’s the same in many cities here in France. Promoters don’t want to take any risks so line-ups feel like an echo chamber.” Jan Loup adds to this, saying, “[it] seems like most of the projects are happening in our minds, and on the internet, as most of the collectives and labels are delocalised and don’t have a space to exist beyond a page on Bandcamp. It is a map of small home-studios, where all the artists are either creating the music, dreaming the scene online, or dreaming in their bed haha. It is also the reality of capitalism that has divided us in tiny rooms, forcing us to be alone.” She also goes on to talk about an incident in 2021 where the political space “has shaped the masses mind through constant strikes against the free-party movement and the larger movement of electronic music. They keep presenting us as “parasites” of society. It is constant discredit and condemnation of our culture, that is not even seen as such, and at the same time, it is a complete hypocritical behaviour as they know we make the country shine abroad and they want to extract this and claim it as their own, through institutionalisation and completely calculated staged “support”. For example, at La fête de la musique in 2021,they invited Glitter and NSDOS to play at an official Macron’s event on the Champs Elysées, while two days before, the police showed epic violence during a free party in Redon, where a young man lost one of his hands to an armed-attack by the police.”
In Lyon, where a lot of these artists and platforms are based, or at least used to be, there’s only one good club that stands out which is Le Sucre. Outside of that, “everything is more about making a business out of it but it works in the beginning and then it stops. And it’s even worse when it comes to deep techno and more psychedelic stuff… Clubs are not considering us seriously because they don’t really understand the core of what we do… So this has a big influence on us as it gathers all the people of our scene, gives everybody the energy to create our own world and also extends our vision outside of a local environment,” Vardae explains. Meanwhile in Marseille, where Smogo of Blue Night Jungle, a record label that was launched 10 years ago in Lyon, is now based, “the city is amazing, with unlimited creativity. Very political also. Commitment is really at the root of everything here. The sensation of freedom is unbelievable. A lot of raves, mostly because there is a lack of “classic” clubs dedicated to these kinds of sound. But a lot of collectives are tirelessly shaping the vibe: the Boundless and CL.17 parties, the Saador ambient events, and of course Métaphore Collectif, just to name a few.” natural limit of Virtual Forest Records is also based in Lyon and speaks on the lack of cultural venues but how the community in the city is tight-knit, “despite the lack of venues, there have never been so many electronic music artists performing, and the musical emulation taking place in Lyon has never been so real. Here’s a few noticeable collectives: Everybodytrance, Big Science, Silence Collapse, Ouroboros, Monochrome, H3 Records, Cosmic Wave, and of course my collective heart Melifera Records.”
As you can see in the directory below and the breadth of interviews that were conducted for this piece, this movement is flourishing and will only continue to get more expansive, if there is an infrastructure in place to nurture it. Right now the local political landscape is working against them with the lack of support from the government and the continual closure of venues across the country. There is this need to create a network that could self-sufficiently support independent culture which we’re already seeing more of through the rise of mutual aid and fundraising events for social and political causes. Currently, this scene has its own pockets across Europe but when it comes to international bookings for those in France, they’re few and far between. This could be linked to the previous comment made by Christian Coiffure regarding promoters taking less risks with their lineups which is felt across the board post-COVID as nightlife trends shift, people searching for something outside of the club and promoters putting on events that are more likely to shift tickets. There’s only a handful of artists in the French scene who have made it into the international club and festival circuit so far and the wider media landscape hasn’t quite connected with it yet either.
There is an important part of this movement that hasn’t been mentioned yet – one that has helped nurture this hotbed of creativity and inspire multiple generations of artists: the Saint-Étienne festival Positive Education. The event series which has been running for 12 years now and has been referenced in every single conversation I’ve had. It is generally regarded as one of the most impactful institutions on the French music scene. Whilst they have a huge international roster of artists playing their events, the programmers also make it a priority to support locals, giving career-making opportunities to those emerging. As Hewan Aman says, “over the past five years, it’s become a common thread across many of the artists, micro-festivals, and collectives now thriving. It was a game-changer — introducing a more psychedelic, low-end, dub-influenced approach to the French scene that hadn’t been so visible before. The team behind it — Antoine, Charles, Christian Coiffure, A Strange Wedding, and many others — really planted the seeds of this new generation. The festival lives up to its name, and it also placed a city like Saint-Étienne at the heart of the map, which is a beautiful shift in itself. What’s striking is that many of the artists emerging right now carry this whole story within them — from rave roots to micro-festivals to dub and sound exploration. If you ask them, most will tell you how festivals like Positive Education, crews like Worst Records, or post-COVID shifts shaped their vision.” When speaking to Antoine Hernandez about the reputation of Positive Education and why it has had this impact, he says, “I do think Positive Education has been influential on the French scene because we’ve always been radical and have defended a side of electronic music that wasn’t being represented at the time. Many media outlets labeled us as the most cutting-edge festival in France, and I believe that, beyond the impact we had on the audience, what stands out now is that most French lineups are more adventurous in their offerings (to varying degrees).”
The introduction of a third stage, Stage 3, at the La Cité du Design editions, is what has helped bring to light this emerging scene, as well as all of those that are connected to it on an international scale, and inspired the first edition of pe:rsona last year. Creating a more intimate setting with a capacity of just over 1000, pe:rsona was a way of answering issues Antoine Hernandez and Charles Di Falco had experienced at other summer festivals whilst being able to showcase the music they were most excited about. Speaking about the approach to curation, Antoine says, “I think this music really belongs outdoors. It has allowed us to diversify the programming. While at PEF in November we offer a more “cold” selection, here we can feature “warmer” things like ambient and dub in the early afternoon, house for the closing (like livwutang’s legendary closing set last summer), minimalist bass in the late afternoon and leading into dubstep at night. We also have more freedom with pe:rsona because we can tell even more of a story each day.”
pe:rsona festival 2024. photo credit: Romain Guédé
Whilst the pillars of the low-end psychedelia movement are rooted within the French music scene as a whole, the fact that it’s not tied to one city or region has contributed to its decentralisation – it’s no longer centred around Paris, as it used to be perceived globally. Hewan Aman touches upon this, saying, “other key cities are starting to shine in their own right: Nantes with the iconic Macadam, Strasbourg with Karmen Camina — probably one of the best clubs in the country — and Le Sucre in Lyon, which has allowed a whole local scene to grow around it. This decentralization brings more diversity, more influence, and a wider sense of what French club culture can be.” There is no doubt that the internet played a major role in connecting these artists together and helped with forming online communities such as Facebook groups like Chineurs De Techno, Chineurs De House, Ramen Break, and La Chinerie which both natural limit and Jan Loup note as influences for them. As the groups got busier, local iterations were created, which meant that people could connect easily with those in their local scenes. This community that was connecting online would then come together in IRL spaces, often being booked or attending the same parties or festivals, whether that’s in France or around the world. “Community has always been a huge deal within niche sounds like we are doing. It has of course a very positive impact; it’s always nice to feel surrounded by people who share the same passion. I admire the deep techno scene, where you see people travelling all around Europe for a few well-selected festivals (Monument, Parallel, La Nature, Terraforma, La Vallée Électrique, Ouroboros, Waking Life), where you always find this community at the core. It’s always the same people. The devotion to this sound has always amazed me,” natural limit says. “There’s definitely a community feel, and dialog across the country. Small festivals book people from all over, and in one summer you can see the same faces all over France, it’s cute! Also everyone knows everyone and seems to be supporting each other,” Beatrice M., founder of the esteemed Bait imprint, adds. In Jan Loup’s view, “it feels like the network we have now is more consciously connected, more responsible than before, and a scene longing to grow and learn. As Simon Reynold puts it, it is a political movement of some sorts, and when you are inside, you intuitively have an unspeakable knowledge of how it works, of our shared goals and values, of our struggles and of our language.” However, having this many artists in one scene can be challenging, especially when the infrastructure isn’t available to nurture that many artists and the government is going against the culture. “The people are supportive and always ready to help or collaborate for sure, but in general the scene is quite saturated. There are a lot of DJs and not really enough clubs or punters for this kind of sound to really take off and for everyone to have a slice. It’s quite competitive, despite being very open-minded and well-meaning,” Fluid Matter explains.
So, what is it exactly that is influencing some of the most exciting music right now? What is it that’s connecting them to psychedelic music? The answers are so varied. For artists like Vardae and Javier Salazar (who runs the klape nunsen soundsystem and record label) their inspiration mainly comes from the deep techno and minimal scenes: “We’re more drawn to what we’d call minimalist music rather than “psychedelic,” which can be an overused term. What captivates us are sounds that stretch time, creating spaces where the mind can wander. The magic happens when this music is experienced on a high-quality soundsystem that can render every subtle detail. It’s in that physical sensation of sound, that the true immersive quality emerges,” Javier Salazar explains. Vardae notes the Spazio Disponibile nights in Concrete in Paris as a key part of his artistic journey, “it clearly had a big impact on my creative process. I was going there like I was going to school. During every set, I was taking notes in my head, analyzing how each artist was playing, building progressions and controlling the energy on the dancefloor and more generally how each artist was telling a story in the moment.”
For Christian Coiffure, who’s released on labels such as Comic Sans Records, Pressure Dome, Bad Tips, and Krakzh, it wasn’t the local dub scene in Lyon that captured his attention right away. Instead it was the 2010s UK scene “with the remix album of The King Of Limbs by Radiohead, the line-up was super wild, Caribou, Four Tet, Lone, Pearson Sound, Blawan, Mark Pritchard, Objekt… This was a big thing that pulled me into this sound.” It wasn’t until 10 years later that Christian Coiffure connected with a lot of things dub-wise such as The Sabres of Paradise, Adrian Sherwood/On-U Sound, Leslie Winer, Smith & Mighty and the ambient dub era with Higher Intelligence Agency and Rockers Hi-Fi alongside the late 2000s era of Shackleton, Untold, early Hessle Audio and Objekt. For Smogo, it was the connection with “the classics of psychedelic (or spiritual) music, from psychedelic folk to doom rock and dub and reggae” before moving into electronic music when he started to party. For Paris-based artist Trois-Quarts Taxi System who’s really paving the way for live trippy dubstep experimentations and released a stand-out album on Bait earlier this year, he started in psychedelic rock bands during high school before being introduced to techno and drum & bass scenes via Soundcloud. More specifically regarding his connection to psychedelic music, he explains: “I really like the mix of intensity and instability in psychedelic music. The freedom of moods, structures and sounds. But at the same time, there’s a whole process of work and procedure around the loop, the relationship to hypnosis, while retaining the possibility of turning and digressing. All these facets and the way each artist makes them their own really struck a chord with me, and it’s a mix of genres and influences that I love.” As previously mentioned, for Azu Tiwaline it was the introduction of the free party scene in France alongside discovering dub techno from Berlin with the likes of Tikiman and Rhythm and Sound that were pivotal moments in her artistic journey. Her live sets are free, without constraints, which is another influence from free parties. She started playing live in order to perform at these parties, explaining that “your records would usually be judged by the soundsystem before they would give you a slot.”
In the case of Hewan Aman, she’s drawn to psychedelic music’s “expansive, shape-shifting nature—how it opens portals both sonically and emotionally. It’s music that doesn’t rush, that unfolds in layers, inviting introspection, connection, and sometimes even transformation. There’s also something about the history of psychedelia, its 90s origins as a genre that blurred the lines between dub, trance, rock, ambient, techno… It was never meant to fit in a box. A lot of early psychedelic music was played live, with real instruments, analog textures, and organic imperfections. It was music made to stretch time and dissolve boundaries, both on and off the dancefloor.” For Jan Loup, her connection to psychedelic music became a way of “reach[ing] some answer to what the human psyche is and the question of life in general, as a deeper meaning. I feel through psychedelic music and its experience in a party, combined with the substance that comes with it, there is this multi-layer of experiences you can come by, to perceive life in a different way than how the habits of the system have been forced on you. There is this idea of sharing this sort of egregore, collective consciousness, communicative trance-like state on the dancefloor, altering one’s state of mind where there is potential for door openings, better life and feeling true connection to nature and other people.” This attitude of going against the grain and being anti-system is something that Solma was also drawn to, “I’ve always loved how dub-inspired and psychedelic electronic musics express their anti-system features in a different way than punk-inspired electronic musics such as EBM or industrial techno do (which can also be super cool of course). It’s clearly more subtle but it resonates more with the person I am, maybe especially since the codes of punk-inspired electronic music have been completely swallowed by the mainstream system.” It’s this approach towards partying, the importance of the collective experience and using the music as a way of going against the system or organising events in support of social and political causes that connects it back to the free party movement and sound system culture. “The act of a free party was, in itself, political – organising outside of the commercial mainstream, connecting and making networks,” says Aaron Trinder via Crack Magazine.
The low-end psychedelia movement was born from the alternative; a reaction to political limitations and repression As the lockdowns physically drew people away from each other, it also brought people together much closer online. It was via these platforms and online communities that people could idealise new formats with the urge to create something more meaningful, working together to challenge the system and create a fairer world for all. It is something that I continue to look for as I navigate this industry and beyond, and what has drawn me so deeply to the scene. It’s a world in which community is put at the forefront, creating a space for honesty, depth and warmth, and building narratives for people to get lost in; there is no answering to the algorithm or whatever trend/discussion is taking place in the mainstream, and a continuous questioning of life and what it means to exist in this space. As Javier Salazar says, “for us, the dancefloor isn’t just about intensity, but also and above all connection, flow, a space where the mind can move freely.” “What I find powerful is how much this movement is rooted in emotional intelligence. People are done with cold, transactional club culture. There’s a hunger for something more honest, more porous, more human. You can feel it in the music being played—softer edges, deeper grooves, riskier transitions—and in the way people hold space for each other, both on and off the dancefloor,” Hewan Aman adds.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to the feature: Antoine Hernandez, Azu Tiwaline, Christian Coiffure, Trois-Quarts Taxi System, Javier Salazar, 69db, Jan Loup, Beatrice M., Hewan Aman, Virtual Forest Records, Blue Night Jungle and Vardae.
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