#songbender part 58 – Hallucinogen – L.S.D. (World Sheet Of Closed String Mix)
Welcome back ladies and gentlemen, to the second part of the double header this weekend, as said before.
So we’re looking at the first track of Posford’s magical album of Hallucinogen, which is the cornerstone of all this psytrance, and yes, actually, this is by OTT, and if you don’t know who Ott is, you better hang around, as Ott is simply my absolute mentor, spirit animal and GOD.]
And the reason for the double header is actually the fact that the original stands on its own. It just does. Go back, read it. This is one of the best of its time. No shit.
And then comes this. And perhaps many people know that SImon and Ott are actually friends, and my man Ott made his first biggest jump on the scene with actually remixing Posford’s album (called Hallucinogen – In Dub) and man this is a serious piece of work right there.
I’m actually trying to keep this short, and intentionally. I mean, you should realize how different, and how same these two are thinking. Just in different terms, and this may have been before Posford did Shpongle, but to be honest with you, i think it was there all along. Ott is just a different flavor of the same thing.
And with using those melodies, those samples (of the son of the LSD Pope, talking about drugs being a religious experience and all that – i’m not going to go into those right now, you do you) what i mention is that funnily enough, there’s a sample in Ott’s remix that is actually on Hallucinogen’s SECOND album, and the first track, regarding the “unsane” thing, i think that song deserves its own post, so we’ll not get into that this time.
But just experience how absolutely amazing this whole song is. And it’s “easy” to create an amazing song’s remix if the original is amazing as well. And it is, in this case.
You may notice the very reggae-(dub)-like basslines here, which is an early Ott trademark, he eased up on this on his later work, which is not always bad, but i think his work together with the All Seeing I also had an effect.
If your head doesn’t bob to the rhythm here, you need something else man.
It gives you the idea that this music is soooo simple, right? You just need a properly advanced rhythm pattern, a great bassline, and basically WHATEVER you do, will work. Yeah. That simple. I do it all the time. Hah.
Just for the sake of the things coming: this is early Ott, and i can do maybe a 2 hour version of an explanatory presentation on why that is the case exactly. He went through an enormous development period, but that doesn’t mean that this is bad in any way, this is fucking brilliant, and there is no better way of remixing an already absolutely amazing and legendary song.
So if you really are able to pay attention to this, you don’t realize this is more than 9 minutes long.
Which is the perfect way of having this.
Well i asked my virtual friend about what interesting things we could share about this song and what he wrote actually blew my mind. Just check:
The bass design is intentionally “anti-psy”
One of the reasons old-school psy heads were initially confused by this remix:
- No aggressive offbeat bass hammer
- No clinical psy tightness
- No razor-edged transient lock
Instead, Ott uses:
- Slow-moving sub envelopes
- Bass lines that slightly lag behind expectation
- Gentle saturation instead of hard clipping
This was deliberately rebellious against psytrance orthodoxy at the time.
In early 2000s psy culture:
- Faster
- Tighter
- Louder
- More mechanical
The Ott remix says:
“Nah. Let’s wobble reality instead.”
Which is why today it sounds timeless, while many early-2000s psy remixes sound period-locked.
I mean, it is right, you know.
even though he’s a damn algorythm.
and as a last thing:
Original LSD narrative:
“Here is the psychedelic truth. Listen.”
Ott remix narrative:
“You already heard it. Now let it dissolve inside you.”
Thanks for listening, ladies and gentlemen, please like and subscribe, or not, or whatever. See you next time.