Basilisk

DJ Basilisk presents UROBOROS 1, an extraordinary journey through underground electronic music of the last decade. Featuring more than 130 tracks and clocking in at slightly more than 8 hours in length, this unusually ambitious mix spans an immense range of styles and approaches. An emphasis on smooth, harmonic mixing and dreamlike, hypnotic selections creates a sense of perpetual motion and const...

DJ Basilisk presents UROBOROS 1, an extraordinary journey through underground electronic music of the last decade. Featuring more than 130 tracks and clocking in at slightly more than 8 hours in length, this unusually ambitious mix spans an immense range of styles and approaches. An emphasis on smooth, harmonic mixing and dreamlike, hypnotic selections creates a sense of perpetual motion and const...

DJ Basilisk emerges from a long period of esoteric theorizing, conceptual regeneration, and diligent crate-digging to present Hermetic Expanse, a five-hour odyssey into hypnotic realms of underground electronic music. Originally conceived as a vehicle for showcasing the sound of Techgnosis Records (@techgnosis-records), the label he co-founded alongside Ben Rama (@benramamusic) in 2015, this mix f...

This set was recorded live at Re:Generate, the name chosen by the Om Reunion Project to set the mood for their summer solstice gathering in 2011. I was scheduled to play on Sunday morning at the Moon Bass stage, a great little setup in a forest clearing on a beautiful piece of land in Southern Ontario. It felt like the right space and time to take a trip into the history of the psychedelic trance...

Blacklight Metropolis is Basilisk’s contribution to the fifth edition of Global Goa Party, a virtual event organized by Marsh at the Goatranch to simulate an entire night of music from the early years of the psychedelic trance movement. This time around the year is 1997 and the golden age of Goa trance is in full swing, blasting revellers into limitless dimensions of sound with scintillating kalei...

Basilisk returns with Prototypes 2, the second edition of a new mix series probing the depths of progressive trance history in a live setting. Expect to hear a smoothly mixed selection of classic tunes from the intersection of progressive house, progressive trance, and progressive psytrance at the turn of the millennium. TRACK LIST Zen Lemonade – Zodiac Guns [Dragonfly Records] (2002) Bedrock – Vo...

Prototypes 1 is a retrospective journey into classic progressive house and trance from the early years of the new millennium. Basilisk is more widely known for mixing various forms of psytrance but also enjoys sharing diverse selections from many other styles of electronic dance music. Here he is also indulging in an abiding interest in shining a light on music history, sourcing sounds not commonl...

DJ Basilisk’s Concrete Dreams showcases the contemporary psychedelic techno sound of Techgnosis Records, Digital Diamonds, Blind Arc, and friends. Deep, pumping beats, edgy bass lines, and dark, bewitching atmospheres can be heard throughout the mix. TRACK LIST Ben Rama – VALIS [Digital Diamonds] Progus – Arus [Blind Arc] Luis M – Interferenz [Digital Diamonds] Alic – Ostkreuz [Techgnosis Records]...

DJ Basilisk serves up a sizzling blend of neotrance, melodic techno, and progressive psytrance with Earthfest 2015, recorded live in the mountains of central Taiwan. This set showcases a lot of material from the Ektoplazm web site, particularly from the Digital Diamonds netlabel, as well as three unreleased tunes destined for release on Ben Rama’s newly-minted imprint, Techgnosis Records. TRACK LI...

DJ Basilisk presents Reunion, a three hour studio mix based on his homecoming set at Solstice 2015, a unique community gathering in middle Ontario. Time slots at this event are typically limited to one hour, a thorny challenge given his usual propensity for long-form programming. After returning from the event DJ Basilisk reconstructed the set from memory, blending new selections with old favourit...

This set was recorded live at Spacecamp Psyfari in Iowa, USA, on the morning of August 24th, 2014, featuring 100% Creative Commons-licensed music from Ektoplazm. I began at sunrise, transitioning from a night of hard and heavy hi-tech into full-on psychedelic morning trance by the very end, touching on darkpsy, forest, twilight, new school Goa trance, and a hint of Suomi-style madness along the wa...

Basilisk proudly presents The Colours of Ektoplazm, a 5-hour, 69-track midtempo and downtempo odyssey featuring 100% Creative Commons licensed content released through the Ektoplazm free music portal. This mix explores the incredible diversity of Ektoplazm’s electronic music catalogue, shifting seamlessly between intricate breakbeat patterns and pulsating four-by-four rhythms, touching on all poin...

In Exile is a special mix composed by Basilisk for Global Goa Party 2, a virtual party organized by Marsh at the Goat Ranch, a flashpoint for old school Goa trance fandom. The concept is simple enough: gather up a bunch of seasoned old school veterans and have them mix up a full night of music just as if it were some point in the not-so-distant past. The first event—for which I produced Moonshadow...

Circadian Rhythms is a meditation on the passage of time and an exercise in musical archeology. Mixing live on four decks, Basilisk skillfully blends some of the finest mid-tempo Goa trance classics of the 1990s with dub techno, deep trance, progressive house, psychedelic breakbeats. Holding steady at or around 120 beats per minute, the deep frequencies of this mix evoke the heartbeat of creation,...

This set was recorded live at All Stars 2011, a festival held near Fenelon Falls, Ontario, on August 28th, 2011. My time slot was in the late morning, sometime close to noon, and there was a curious haze all around, for we were situated beneath the outflow clouds of the deadly but distant Hurricane Irene. Unscripted as always, the set unfolded with a sublime blend of dreamy psychedelic techno and...

Moonshadow is a classic psytrance mix originally composed for the Global Goa Party, a virtual event conceived to “create the soundtrack for a full night (and morning) of old-school Goa trance by ten DJs from all over the world.” The rules were simple: record a mix with music that would have been heard on the dance floor in 1999. I snapped up the 12:30 to 2:00am time slot and spent weeks scouring m...

This set was recorded live at Eclipse 2009, a psytrance festival held at the Bonnet Rouge campground in Ste-Thérèse-de-la-Gatineau, Québec. My time slot was 9pm to 11pm on Friday, the opening night. Since people were just arriving I opted to play a deep and driving blend of techno and progressive psytrance to warm up the crowd and get everyone excited for the three days and nights of music to come...

This set was recorded live at Darkrave vs Panic, a special one-off event held on the 2009 May long weekend in Toronto, Canada. My mission was to showcase the hard and nasty side of psychedelic trance often referred to as “darkpsy”, a style that is not often heard on Toronto dance floors. I try to ease it up near the end with a few crowd-pleasing tunes with big build-ups and a splash of melody but...

This set was recorded live at the Om Reunion Project’s winter solstice celebration, Dreamcatcher, held on December 19th, 2008, in Toronto, Canada. The style is a frosty blend of progressive house, psychedelic techno, and deep trance influences, mixed and arranged on CD decks by DJ Basilisk. The scope is somewhat limited as it is a relatively short set, but there is some progression from the indust...

This is the live recording of my set at Harvest 2006. I was opening the trance tent at 9:00 pm on the night of the festival so my intention was to get things started right, beginning with an old favourite from 1992. From there the set develops into progressive house and trance territory, keeping it all fairly low-key. The final half hour picks up the pace, taking the crowd on an electro house-infl...

Octopus Marmalade is an exploration of the light and funky side of progressive psychedelic trance. These tracks were chosen for their intricate rhythmic programming, deep and groovy bass lines, warm summer melodies, and laid-back atmospheres. Instead of being a peak-time party mix, this one is crafted with smooth harmonic mixing for background listening in the car or at home. Recorded January 22nd...

Heliocentric is the sound of summer: sixteen upbeat tracks smoothly mixed into a journey that softly builds from thoughtful grooves toward an energetic peak. The introduction is purposefully sedate, though Cosma’s song rapidly catalyses the emotional power of the developing storyline. The mix keeps on pumping steadily until Jaïa’s From Tokyo, when a funky tribal twist alters the trajectory and sen...

Mystic Revelation is a curious blend of contrasts, uniting the forces of dark and light in a driven melodic journey. Ninja’s Showtime kicks it off, immediately involving the listener in a deep fusion of full-on energy and balanced atmospheric sounds. The slightly Gothic character of the mix becomes apparent by the time Dark Soho’s track glides in. The keystone is Logic Bomb’s Marauder 2, the stron...

Replicant Redux is a tribute to the grim futuristic mood of tech noir, an artistic style of literature and film best known from the movie Blade Runner. The flow of the set is programmed like a descent into dark realms of the imagination, beginning with a series of synthetic progressive grooves. From here, increasingly mechanical techtrance rhythms vividly flesh out the concept, and the storyline d...

Nocturnal Wanderlust is a thoughtfully orchestrated journey through the deeper realms of psychedelic trance with special emphasis on showcasing a smooth and sublime progressive style. Conceptually, the story line unfolds as a descent into the inner world of dreams, reaching a hypnotic state of trance near the heart of the mix with Noma’s tranquil Avoid the Future, and gradually rising through trib...