How To Hallucinate Without Drugs ( Top 10 )

What's that you say ? Get high without drugs ? Pfffftt ! You must be joking ! While it's fair to say that quite a lot of people in the psychedelic music scene have or currently do enhance their lives though the use of psychedelic drugs there are also a number of people for whom such drugs hold no appeal for their own personal reasons. 

One of the most common reasons is that some people simply grow tired of using drugs because of the associated down that comes after the high. Did you ever experience that exhausted feeling one has Monday morning after tripping all weekend ? That can add up after time and cause people to seek more natural alternatives that have fewer after effects.

So with that in mind I thought it might be nice to share some of the current methods to get high without drugs. There are many web pages devoted to the causes of hallucinations and getting high without drugs ( LSD, MDMA etc) but these tend to focus on obtaining a feeling of euphoria such as one experiences after intense exercise. What I want to concentrate on in this list is the visual high that comes with the psychedelic experience and if it can be obtained without psychedelic drugs.

1. Light

The use of light to have a hallucinogenic experience is an idea which is growing in popularity. For some people, being subjected to a series of repeating flashes of light is enough to induce a psychedelic trip. 

There a number of companies which offer products that allow you to attempt this at home. These devices are typically constructed of a pair of goggles in which there are a number of small LED lights which are set to flash off and on at a particularly frequency level. They are often sold under names like "mind machines", "dream makers" and other such terms that make you leave your wallet firmly in your pocket however recent scientific research and an increasing amount of user feedback has been giving weight to the argument that these machines do in fact work. 

Devices range from the cheap and simple to the quite exorbitant depending on the materials and technology involved. One of the more recent devices to be making a splash is the Lucia no. 3 developed by a couple of Psychologists and neuroscientists. It uses stroboscopic lighting techniques to activate your pineal gland which in turn produces visions not unlike a psychedelic trip.

Trip glasses :

http://www.tripglasses.com/

Create your own :

http://spacecollective.org/michaelerule/5140/How-To-Construct-Hallucinogenic-Goggles

2.Dance

Dance has even used by humans for thousands of years to allow us to enter a trance like state and cross over the bridge into the spirit world. Native cultures such as the Australian Aborigines, African tribespeople, Sufis and American Indians have utilized the power of dance to make contact with the spirits as they enter a world of vivid color and surreal architecture and archetypes.

3. Breathing and Meditation

 

Breath control and meditation have long been used by many cultures inn Asia as a means of clearing negative thoughts, finding inspiration, spiritual enhancement and becoming more self aware. Now that such practices have become world wide it is easy to find a teacher who can guide you on the meditative path. I wouldn't suggest telling your teaching you are only interested in meditation in order trip balls though. 

Many people who practice insight meditation have reported experiencing hallucinations. From simple shapes and colors such as one might see on a low LSD dose to full on "out of body" experiences where entire characters and environments are formed and interacted within. Nobody knows for sure why it happens and the suggested reasons put forth by teachers, yogis and even Buddhist masters differ just as much as the visions reported. Some people have said that unexpected visionary hallucinations while meditating have caused long term psychological issues so it would be wise to do as much research on the topic before you dive into the deep end.

4. Sleep Deprivation

I have had an interest in sleep deprivation and hallucinations since I read an Aldous Huxley essay on the subject as a teenager. It was some years later when, after a particularly busy weekend, I experienced some of what Huxley mentioned all those years before. I had not slept for close to three or four days. Suddenly I began to have audio hallucinations ( hearing things that were not there ) and began to see waves of colors and geometric shapes. I fell asleep and woke about 20 hours later ! I'm no scientist but it was easy enough for me to conclude that lack of sleep definitely has an effect on how certain areas of the brain and the visual cortex function. To read more about the science behind sleep deprivation try this link :

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1690

5. Dreaming

 

For most of us dreaming is a pleasant and surreal excursion during sleep in which our brain processes the thoughts, ideas and emotions we experience during our waking life. A kind of cerebral washing machine of you like. Generally speaking dreams are unhinged and out of our control. No matter how many times you dream about your wildest desires we often wake up right before things get really juicy ! However on occasion I have had the feeling being very much in control my dreams. Like a movie director or those dudes in the movie Inception, it felt like I could simply think about a wall, a river or a thin crust pizza and it would magically appear ( no anchovies please ). 

After mentioning this to a friend of mine, he lent me a book about lucid dreaming which detailed the process of being able to fully control your dreams at will ( after considerable training and effort ). I imagined with lucid dreaming one could experience any kind of fantastical hallucinogenic visions one could possibly think of. The psychedelic world would be my psychedelic oyster. Unfortunately after a few failed attempts I gave up on the idea. That's the problem with non-drug induced hallucinations I guess - if it doesn't work first time it's difficult to keep trying because you have that bias of having experienced instant gratification through the entheogenic and the synthetic methods of self exploration. 

Despite my own failed attempts to create a practice of full dream control I haven't given up on the idea as a viable means of hallucinating without drugs. Some people argue the point that Lucid dreaming can not be called a hallucination as they have strict definitions on what constitutes a hallucination. That is, in essence, that it should be experienced during a non-dream, awake state. Part of me agrees and part of thinks that if you are lucid dreaming and controlling your dreams, are you really asleep ? Which also leads to arguments about what really constitutes sleep and pretty soon it's, as they say in Discworld "turtles all the way down".

6. Cheese

If you can't be bothered with lucid dreaming but would still like to make your dreams a little more surreal then look no further than cheese. Stilton cheese to be more precise. A 2005 study conducted by The British Cheese Board concluded that close to 80% of men and women reported strange and vivid dreams when they ate Stilton cheese 30 minutes before bed. That's quite a significant figure. A selection of different cheeses were provided for the research with the Stilton coming out on top in the number of reported fantastical dreams experienced by the 200 participants in the study. 

I have also experienced such dreams after eating blue cheese. It does have a very high amount of calories and the stink it leaves in your mouth might melt the bristles off your tooth-brush so it's not something I would eat regularly. Some people point out that cheese contains high amounts of the amino acid tryptophan which can relax the body and mind and may be the reason for "cheese dreams". I doubt that however because other foods have just as much or more grams of tryptophan per 100 grams of food. Eggs and soybeans for example are higher in tryptophan than cheese and yet I don't recall ever having "egg dreams" nor "tofu dreams". 

Another possible reason for cheese dreams I have heard is that cheese takes a long time for your body to digest so if you eat it before bed then your brain is too active at a time when it should be resting which results in vivid dreams. This also sounds like hocum to me as I regularly eat before bed ( as my wasist line can proove !) and again never experience the kind of dreams I have after eating cheese. Does cheese have some hidden chemical that is secretly effecting our nightly visions ? Maybe, but science hasn't provided us with an answer as of yet.

7. Nutmeg

Nutmeg isn't the most useful of spices. Apart from fruit pies and eggnog at Christmas time, most of us rarely touch the stuff. So it might come as some surprise that nutmeg has another use, one which is just as likely to make you feel as good about yourself as the festive season. Eat nutmeg, get high ! 

Nutmeg contains small amounts of a drug called myristicin, which is chemically similar to mescaline, the active compound in the peyote cactus. The downside about this legal high is that you need to consume an enormous amount of the stuff to have any noticeable hallucinogenic effect. If you can handle that then you should also know that the effects can last for up to 48 hours and that you will likely experience a lot of vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea. Some people have had positive experiences on nutmeg so it's not all doom and gloom. You can read a nutmeg trip report at the stowed vault here :

http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=7905

8. Isolation Tanks / Flotation tanks

In the depths of my record collection is a treasured copy of the soundtrack to the 1980 movie "Altered States". The movie which stars a young William Hurt and Richard Dreyfus details a Harvard scientist's search for an out of this world spiritual experience through the use of an isolation tank. In the end the guy gets more than he bargained for. I won't give the plot away here as I think it's kind of a cool movie and well worth watching is you are interested in exploring inner space. 

If you have never heard of an isolation tank ( sensory deprivation tank ) before, it is a light-less, soundproof tank inside which subjects float in salt water at skin temperature. They were first used by John C. Lilly in 1954 to test the effects of sensory deprivation. Such tanks are now also used for meditation and relaxation and in alternative medicine. 

Isolation tanks use the idea of sensory deprivation ( the removal of one or more sensory stimuli ) to promote hallucinatory images within the mind. Users reports are mixed after the first experience however if they persist in their isolation tank usage and are able to "let go" then many have reported the most fantastic journeys. I would love to try one some day but sadly there aren't any available in my home town. Maybe I should make it part of a holiday in another city some time... a trip within a trip !

9. Magnets

Over the past 20 years an increasing amount of research has been conducted into magnetic fields and their influence on the human brain. Apart from obvious medical applications that might arrive from such research there are also a number of more alternative research applications that are hinting at magnets being responsible for a number of hallucinogenic states. 

Some scientists are suggesting that natural magnetic fields may be the reason why people see ghosts or why groups of people have shared UFO or alien sightings. Science has proven that magnets do indeed create hallucinations - colorful lines and geometric patterns - akin to what people experience when under the influence of hallucinogens such as psychedelic mushrooms, LSD or peyote cactus. In the future magnets and transducers could well become the new entertainment playground. Imagine a home console where games are played inside your mind rather than taken in through your eyes ? Sounds like fantasy ? Japan's SONY corporation already has a patent for such a system in place :

http://www.scribd.com/doc/16996332/Sony-e-Hallucination-Psy3-patent-for-em-generated-hallucination

Here is a link to a bit of the science behind magnets and their effects of the the brain ( PDF Format ) :

http://www.rwhit.dsl.pipex.com/MADS/docs/EIFs.pdf

While I don't know of any devices for tripping on magnets at home there have been a number I personalized size devices created by people in the past. These are typically made by converting bicycle or football helmets into a comfortable magnet housing with gauges for field strength etc. One such device that captured the public's imagination was the God Helmet.

10. Drumming

Tribal drumming is a traditional ritual technique used by shamans to enter the spiritual world. The practice is thousands of years old and is passed down the generations as a way of keeping in contact with their ancestors or seeking healing advice. The repetitive nature of tribal drumming is key to the hallucinations it can produce. The short repetitive sequencing in tribal drumming reduces the amount of sensory input and encourages the brain to generate images and feelings which are spiritual or mystical in nature. Earl Vickers wrote a nice article about tribal drumming, music and consciousness which you can read about here

http://www.sfxmachine.com/docs/musicandconsciousness.html

Little Fluffy Clouds - The Orb

Rejoice ! The Orb have a brand spanking new album out soon. So I thought it might be worth revisiting where it all started for me with The Orb and that is back in 1990 with the release of their now classic track "Little Fluffy Clouds". For me this track was a major influence in my appreciation of chillout music. It bridged the gap between the pure ambient music and baggy Manchester pop I had been listening to at the time. I was young and The Orb seemed to me to be the epitome of all things cool, riding a wave of their own creation. I grabbed my board and began to paddle.

A lot has been written about this track over the years. This is due to it's contentious use of samples at a time when sampling was still somewhat of a gray area. The release of Little Fluffy Clouds involved a settlement case and  royalties paid to other artists whose material The Orb made use of ( the track is pretty much entirely sample based ! ).  One of the best articles about LFCs is the following one uploaded by Sound On Sound writer Richard Buskin as part of SOS's "Classic Tracks" collection ( hours of great reading by the way ) in August of 2011. So read on to find out how The Orb constructed this extraordinary tune.

The Orb — Martin ‘Youth’ Glover’ (left) and Dr Alex Paterson as they were when photographed for SOS in 1993. Photo: The Ferrari Brothers

It was 1989, and on Monday nights at Heaven, a club close to London’s Trafalgar Square, there was the kind of scene that provided non‑stop tabloid fodder for the News Of The World. While about 1300 people would line up outside the UK’s first openly gay nightclub, unable to get into a venue that had been converted from a cellar located within the arches beneath Charing Cross station, roughly the same number would be dancing inside to DJ Paul Oakenfold’s ecstasy‑fuelled ‘Land Of Oz’ acid house raves.

At the same time, in a small VIP area known as the White Room, Dr Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty would host their low‑volume, chill‑out alternative, spinning records by the likes of Pink Floyd, Brian Eno and 10CC against a backdrop of multi-screen video projections for about a hundred punters coming down from their drug‑induced highs. The duo would use three record decks, a cassette player, a CD player and a 12‑track Akai mixer to provide dance music for those who were in no fit state to dance. Known as the Orb, the pair utilized their six‑month DJ’ing stint at Heaven to create ambient house; the atmospheric, electronic sub‑genre that, in the studio, would see Paterson and his partner of the moment meld mid‑tempo, four‑on‑the‑floor beats with synth pads, strings, and the inventive yet blatant use of assorted, highly‑manipulated samples.

“We all have our own little tricks in music,” he says. “My main trick is being a DJ, and I’ve always stuck to my guns and developed that sensibility. I’ve got a bpm counter in my head. What’s more, where there’s a great scene going on and a lot of people are high, you can draw on plenty of energy. The beautiful thing about doing my own music and being a DJ is that I can make up a tune and play it that night in a club to see if I like it or not. I remember doing ‘Higher Than The Sun’, walking out of the studio at eight o’clock one morning with a DAT, jumping on a plane at about one in the afternoon, and playing it that night at a club in Vienna which had a quadrophonic sound system, a bouncy floor and a roof that opened so that I could see the stars. I was like hello!”

The Orb’s live shows have always been known for their elaborate lighting effects — and this one is clearly no exception.

Photo: Mick Hutson

Born in South London on 15th October, 1959, Duncan Alexander Robert Paterson grew up listening to anyone from T‑Rex and Alice Cooper to Kraftwerk and Jamaican dub engineer King Tubby. Kraftwerk would remain his biggest influence, although as a teenager, while attending the same school as future producer and Killing Joke bassist and composer Martin ‘Youth’ Glover, Paterson also absorbed the sounds of reggae artists such as Bob Marley, the Mighty Diamonds and the Abyssinians.

“Living in London, I heard a broad range of music, and right from the start I was attracted to weird things,” he now says. “My best mate at school happened to be Jamaican, but it wasn’t until I went to secondary school that I was even made aware of the fact that he was black and I was white. To this day, it means nothing to me at all; the conditioning of a horrible society that we once grew up in.”

To hear the reggae influence on Alex Paterson and the Orb, just listen to ‘Perpetual Dawn’ on The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld (1991) and ‘Towers Of Dub’ on 1992’s U.F.Orb.

“One of my fondest memories from when I was a kid is of listening to Minnie Riperton’s ‘Lovin’ You’ and my mum insisting it was a bloke singing,” Paterson continues. “I got a slap around the ear for telling her it was a woman, and in a strange, warped way that led to a sample of ‘Lovin’ You’ being used many years later as the main focus of ‘A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain’...”

After starting life as ‘Loving You’, with Riperton’s hit 1975 recording set alongside numerous sound effects and sci‑fi samples, the Orb’s ‘A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Underworld’ — whose title was taken from a Blake’s 7 sample on a BBC sound effects album — was released as a 19‑minute ambient single in October 1989. Then, a week later, the unlicensed ‘Lovin’ You’ sample was removed when Big Life bowed to pressure from the singer’s management, resulting in subsequent pressings of the record featuring a Riperton sound‑alike.

“Back in the days when we were DJs, we’d rip things off willy‑nilly and not think about the consequences,” Paterson continues. “‘Lovin’ You’ was a very beautiful song and it was hard to find anyone else who could actually sing it.”

While referring to the Minnie Riperton chart‑topper as “just a little snippet of my brain,” Alex Paterson also points out that such mainstream pop numbers take on a whole new character when listened to under the influence of hallucinogens, more of which in a moment.

“For me, ‘Lovin’ You’ and [Kraftwerk’s] ‘Autobahn’ basically fall into the same category,” he remarks. “Huge influences during the mid‑’70s. I’d also buy very obscure, weird records that would surface as samples on the Orb’s second and third albums, and I’m not afraid to move forward using the same kinds of structures of reggae sounds as the Jamaican boys. As they’ve told me, ‘You’re not a white boy.’ That’s a compliment, you know? At least I’m not trying to sound like the Police… God forbid!”

The Orb playing live, early 1990s.

Photo: Mick Hutson

In 1979, Paterson became Killing Joke’s roadie, and it was while on tour with the band in Neuss, Germany, that he first heard Brian Eno’s ambient Music For Films album, conceived as the soundtrack to some imaginary movies. As Paterson would later recall, having just dropped some acid he saw “the Ruhr steel works explode in the distance” and observed that “the scene seemed to be taking place in the music as well.”

Still high on LSD, Paterson was next blown away by how the steel works’ “huge metal arms were crushing molten rocks in time to the music” of Krautrock experimentalists Cluster on their electronic album Grosses Wasser. It was nothing if not an eventful evening for a man who was also positively affected by the compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen, yet his subsequent, evident influence by Brian Eno wouldn’t be reciprocated.

“Brian and I never saw eye to eye, bless him,” confirms Paterson, who landed in the A&R department of EG Records in 1986, when Eno was on the indie label’s roster. “I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I’m sure we could have some very nice conversations about EG Records, because I know the ins and outs as much as he does — in fact, although he wouldn’t know it, he used to say hello to me when I worked at EG. He’d come in and give me a nod, and that’s how I got to know Robert Fripp so well. He’d tell me, ‘You’ve got the best ears in this record company.’ Later it was ‘Can I do a tune with you?’ ‘Yeah, okay, brilliant!’ To put this into perspective, two of the first three albums I ever bought were by King Crimson, and here I now was, doing an album with the man. Once again, hello!”

EG was run by King Crimson’s managers, David Enthoven and John Gaydon, and the record Dr Alex Paterson is referring to is 1994’s eponymous FFWD, featuring him, Fripp, Thomas Fehimann and Kris Weston.

“I felt at the time, and I still do, that it was a spectacular album,” Paterson says. “It’s off the cuff, rare as martians, and I’m quite happy for it to be that way. You need records like that because everything’s so accessible these days. Some things in life have got to be worth hunting down, especially if you love music.”

Not that Brian Eno will necessarily be hunting down Alex Paterson’s musical tribute to him.

“Unfortunately, when EG saw my rise as the Orb at the turn of the 1990s, they got me to do versions of all my favourite Eno tunes and put them out under the guise of the Orb on EG,” Paterson explains. “Looking back on it, if some smart‑arse DJ sent me a bunch of my music and told me he was going to put it out on my home label, I’d also think, ‘Fuck off, who do you think you are?’ I just got off on the wrong foot and I blame EG for that.”

EG is no more. Nevertheless, it was during the mid‑’80s, around the time he first became involved with the label, that Dr Paterson began crossing over into the artistically innovative side of the business.

“Ever since I was a kid, I always had loads of records and cassettes that most of my mates couldn’t be bothered to keep,” he says. “I’ve still got boxes of them and I’m not going to throw them out — they’re just too valuable. When I was at EG, they actually said, ‘Clear all those records out, we don’t need any of them.’ I was like, ‘You’re talking about so many loved records. I’m not going to throw them out. I’m not a fool.’ As I discovered, most people at record labels don’t even know what music is. They don’t know what’s going on in the evenings at nightclubs and bars, and what’s hip and what isn’t, and basically what’s coming. Labels are supposed to find out what’s coming and feed the public what they need. It’s a good job I didn’t take their advice. These days, I do a radio show every week called Chilled Chewy Choosedays for www.fnoob.com that I’m very proud of and that is my little outlet to the world, enabling people to tune in and hear what I’ve collected for the past 30 years of my life.

“Back in 1984 and 1985, we used to have these 98.7 KISS‑FM parties in Brixton, where I’d have a box of cassettes and, using twin cassette decks, we’d try to mix two cassettes together at the same time. That was really the start of the whole DJ’ing conundrum for me. Because of my DJ’ing connections and those with EG, I started getting weird little ambient gigs — like the openings of fitness centres — before I started working at the clubs and the whole thing suddenly just snowballed.”

Dr Alex Paterson today.

Alex Paterson had first met Jimmy Cauty in 1982, when Cauty was the guitarist in a pop/rock band named Brilliant, Youth was the bass player and Paterson was their roadie. In 1987, Cauty joined forces with Bill Drummond to form the Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu (aka The JAMs), which morphed into the Timelords and, eventually, acid/stadium/ambient house pioneers the KLF.

“I was doing these ambient parties for [record label] KLF Communications,” Paterson recalls. “One afternoon when I was there, Jimmy popped in with a new keyboard. He didn’t have a clue what it was or how it worked, but it just so happened to be the same keyboard that I’d been looking after for five years with Killing Joke. So, I told him, ‘Okay, I’ll give you a quick ‘once around the block’ and he said, ‘All right, let’s record it,’ and we made a track that day. That’s how do‑it‑yourself it all was: ‘That’s a great sound, let me sample it...’

“Those early, early sessions were purely about taking direct samples from KISS‑FM in New York, which, incidentally, had nothing to do with KISS‑FM in London. Aside from nicking the logo and the templates from KISS‑FM in New York, KISS‑FM in London didn’t have a mastermix show with Tony Humphries and Shep Pettibone. Those boys were mixing [New Order’s] ‘Blue Monday’ and stuff by Erasure into proper techno and disco tunes, and I remember thinking, ‘Wow! I can do that.’ One of my favourite things is to turn up at a proper techno club where they’re expecting me to do a techno set and the first thing I put on is the Cure. That’s one of the most beautiful feelings I’ve ever had, just knowing it’s going to nauseate people but that they’ll still stay there.

“The sampler was like the Rosetta Stone for DJs. With the Akai S700 I could now do all of those things that had been going around in my head. Up until that point, I had been an A&R man, I’d run a record label, I’d been in a couple of bands — having recorded four or five unreleased tracks with my group Bloodsport in 1979 and then served as a singing roadie with Killing Joke — but I’d never really taken myself seriously. I was also doing a lot of DJ’ing. So it was a case of ‘Bring all of your favourite records, Alex, and let’s see what we can do.’ That’s how it all started, to be honest, and I’ve never been afraid to say it, because predominantly the Orb is not about a vocalist, it’s about a DJ being the frontman, and that should help all of the other DJs to have a bit of confidence to go ahead and do their own thing in a band as well.”

The first release by Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty was ‘Tripping On Sunshine’, issued on the 1988 compilation album Eternity Project One. This was followed by the Orb’s 1989 four‑song Kiss EP, featuring samples from KISS‑FM (New York, not London) and released on Paterson’s and Martin Glover’s own WAU! Mr Modo Records label. Soon after — together with Glover — Paterson and Cauty began leaning toward the softer, less beat‑heavy sound that would evolve into “ambient house for the E generation” at Heaven. And following a recording session for BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel that gave rise to the track that would be released as ‘A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld’, the Orb remixed Dave Stewart’s hit single ‘Lily Was Here’, leading to similar assignments from several other artists.

Then, in April 1990, after Paterson and Cauty had been working on their first joint album at the latter’s own Trancentral studio in the basement of his South London squat, they went their separate ways. Cauty wanted to release the record on his KLF Communications label; Paterson wanted to accept the deal offered to the Orb by Big Life. The result was that Dr Alex held onto the group’s name and Cauty held onto the recordings, releasing them — minus Paterson’s contributions — under the pseudonym Space on the album of the same name. Paterson, meanwhile, did appear — albeit without credit — on the KLF’s Chill Out album, also culled from the Trancentral sessions. And it was at this point that he began working on the Orb’s ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ with longtime friend and fellow DJ Youth who, he recalls, “was the one in our club who was always going to be the pop star, even when we were 13 or 14 years old.”

Little Fluffy Clouds

“That song is now my calling card,” Paterson states, ”and yet the whole record is samples. It speaks to the beauty of how you use the samples, and true to my word, I’ve never let anybody know where the drums come from and I never will. Again, I think it’s great to let people guess.”

Point taken. Still, what is known regarding the track’s other samples is that they include a harmonica sample from ‘The Man With The Harmonica’, composed by Ennio Morricone for the film Once Upon A Time In The West; a spoken passage by John Waite, presenter of the BBC Radio 4 consumer show You & Yours; parts of ‘Electric Counterpoint: III. Fast’, composed by Steve Reich and featuring multitracked guitars played by Pat Metheny; and, at the centre of the entire track, clips from the ‘Conversation With Rickie Lee Jones’ promo CD that was added to some boxed copies of her album Flying Cowboys.

Speaking in a strangely nasal tone that some people have attributed to drug use, but which Jones herself has cited as the result of a heavy cold, she recalled images from her childhood: “We lived in Arizona and the skies always had little fluffy clouds in ’em, and, uh... they were long... and clear and... there were lots of stars at night...”

Whereas Reich, flattered by the use of his composition, asked for and received a 25 per cent royalty on all sales of ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’, Jones was less than enamoured of the unauthorised use of her voice and, after resorting to litigation, agreed to an undisclosed out‑of‑court settlement with Big Life.

“I can’t tell you how many times we’ve turned up in America and heard, ‘So, where’s the vocalist, man?’” Paterson says. “They expect to see some bird, and it’s like ‘Well, you’ll be hearing her later. Don’t worry...’

“Whereas we used a song for ‘Loving You’, we didn’t with ‘Fluffy Clouds’, because that’s where we suddenly didn’t feel the need to do a cover version. It started with a friend from Birmingham sending us a cassette that had Pat Metheny on one side and the Rickie Lee Jones interview on the other. It came with a note saying something along the lines of, ‘You guys are going to have to make a track out of this. It is definitely Orb material.’ At that time, I was sharing a flat with Youth and he had a studio in my bedroom — part of the deal of living with him. Funny that, isn’t it? That little room in a coach house in Wandsworth is where ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ was born.

“Quite simply, we had the infamous Akai S700 with loads of samples, so we did the demo in the bedroom, using not only the samples that everyone knows, but also bits that people have never pulled out. For instance, did you know there’s some Lee Scratch Perry? I hear it every time, but people don’t hear the same tune as the one I got it from. It featured heavily on the demo and it also features very heavily in the live sets that we do now.

“From the bedroom, we moved things up a notch, switching to a place called Bunk, Junk & Genius (BJG) on Farm Lane in Fulham, where we got Thrash in and the track evolved over the course of about six months. Thrash is an amazing engineer and the next level was him programming the drums properly. Then it was down to editing and getting a seven‑inch [4:27] version for the Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld album because, given the old punk rocker in me, I was really loath for it to become a pop song.”

"‘Fluffy Clouds’ was probably one of the very first sessions we did at BJG. We also went there to do a remix of ‘Hotel California’ and ended up with ‘Earth (Gaia)’, which was the second track on the Ultraworld album that we began recording after ‘Clouds’ had been released as the Orb’s second single. Working in a proper studio was different to being in the bedroom, where we could waddle in and out whenever we felt like it. Then again, developing the track at home also took time, since we had no preconceived idea of getting it done, but an even bigger problem was the samplers that, in those days, would always crash before you could save anything. Old macs were the same — ‘Save! Save!’ For years, that was a favourite saying in the studio.

“One of the main challenges was disguising so many things to make the track have its own identity and getting so many different areas of samples to stick together. For example, at the beginning of ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’, do you know who’s asking Rickie Lee Jones, ‘What were the skies like when you were young?’ It’s LeVar Burton, who played Kunta Kinte in Roots and Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation, asking her that question on a TV chat show. I myself didn’t find that out for years. Then again, on ‘Fluffy Clouds’ you can also hear little bits of me being interviewed on Radio 4 about ambient music. Youth played the bass line on ‘Clouds’ and there were things taken from the BBC sound effects archives. There are some fanatics who have probably written pages about the samples on that track — I should check them out online to see if I’m actually correct!”

One person whose work has definitely never been sampled by Dr Alex is Brian Eno.

“I just wouldn’t bother,” Paterson confirms. “It’s not worth the hassle.”

Fair enough, although the threat of hassle doesn’t appear to have deterred him when sampling anyone else, either flagrantly or in a heavily manipulated form. That, without a doubt, takes balls.

“It’s about having your own record label and being prepared to deal with the consequences,” Paterson reasons. “This old punk knows that any press is good press. It doesn’t matter what the story is — half the people don’t read it anyway, they just see your name.”

According to Alex Paterson, ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ changed during the course of its six‑month evolution from a house anthem to “something for a generation”.

“I get that feeling when people come up to me and talk about that record,” he says. “I can see it’s from the heart. There’ll be these 40-year‑old blokes telling me that, the first time they heard ‘Fluffy Clouds’, it inspired them to go out and buy an electronic record. A lot of that is converting young kids from indie music to dance music — Primal Scream’s Screamadelica is a really good album, but at the end of the day it’s made by two DJs.”

Certainly, the Orb helped change the way samplers are used, from replicating real instruments to serving as creative instruments in their own right, and Alex Paterson reinforces this view.

“I’ve always thought that plagiarism is creative,” he agrees. “In no way did I consider it to be destructive, especially if you can twist that sample and make it become something else. That’s why Steve Reich viewed ‘Fluffy Clouds’ like a real musician, telling people that he could never have envisaged his melody being turned into another song. In fact, we never went to him and said, ‘We sampled you.’ It was just that old‑school punk rock attitude of ‘If you want something, you can come and get us.’ Which is what he did several years later, asking for one fifth of the publishing from then on if we’d give him a version for the album that he was doing. It was a real gentleman’s agreement. And Rickie Lee Jones also ended up liking the song because she could consider herself cool again. Never mind that her management wasn’t too keen; she overrode her management. So the sharks swimming around the musicians are the ones you’ve always got to look out for. It’s rarely the musicians.”

Originally released in July 1990, ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ peaked at 87 on the UK singles chart. However, following its inclusion on Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld — most of which was recorded at Berwick Street Studios, as well as at Marcus and BJG — and the number one success of the Orb’s second album, U.F.Orb, the song’s various re‑releases culminated in it reaching the Top 10 in 1993.

“Having grown to hate that track for a long time, I’ve now grown to love it,” says Dr Alex Paterson, whose recent projects include HFB’s (High Frequency Bandwidth’s) BAFTA‑nominated soundtrack to Pixel Junk’s Playstation 3 title, Shooter; the Screen album of “spaced out ambient dubness” that he’s recorded with Daniele Gaudi and Chester Taylor, scheduled for release this autumn; and a commission by the Royal Opera for the Orb — currently comprising Paterson and Thomas Fehimann — to produce a short opera that will be staged in 2013.

“As with all ambient house, ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ is music to sleep to. You see, one of the best things I could do in the studio was fall asleep to a tune. Then, if something in it woke me up, I’d make sure I removed it...”    

Live Remixes

“There were loads of different mixes that we put on the Wau! Mr Modo/Big Life 12‑inch selection,” explains Dr Alex Paterson. “We wanted to grab people’s attention regarding ambient house, so we always had an ambient house mix, which obviously meant taking the drums out. The remixes, which had a drum and bass track, didn’t come out until many years later. We now incorporate a Kraftwerk sample when we play ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ live. And if we ever play America again, we’ll incorporate the Pat Metheny/David Bowie song ‘This Is Not America’, which has the same bpm as ‘Fluffy’ and pretty much the same kind of tune, too. It works a treat when you mix the two in. It wouldn’t make sense in Europe, but it does make sense when you’re in America.”


> You might also like this Alex Paterson Interview

Papadosio - Divine Moments Of Truth ( Shpongle Cover )

Papadosio is a live five piece electronic rock jam band for the modern era. Think Ozric Tentacles mixed with a bit more modern electronica and heavier grooves. They are steadily gaining a large dedicated fan base from their home in Athens OH and are now spreading around the US and the world via online social networks such as twitter and their Facebook page.

I ran across the group by chance on YouTube where I discovered a rather cool cover version they do of Shpongle's "Divine Moments Of Truth" ( see below ) . On their website they have a full tour schedule and a number of albums you can download for free too ! Check em out - you wont be disappointed. Oh, there is a also this Archive.Org page of some life recordings which you can download and listen to as well.

How to Mix Ambient Music

"How do I mix ambient music ?" is a question that listeners here often ask so I thought it might be useful to explain the way I do things on this blog. Mixing ambient music is not exactly rocket science however creating a mix that people will want to listen to again and again, well that come from your experience of the genre and your love for the music.

Mixing can be child's play

Unlike techno or trance music, there is no need for knowledge of beat matching when it comes to creating a great chillout or ambient mix. There are a number of ways to go about mixing your favorite ambient tunes including vinyl decks, cd mixers and laptops/pcs with some mp3 mixing software. Heck I've even seen a guy perform an amazing mix, live, using two Sony Walkmans ( the tape versions !! ) and another get great sounds from mixing with two Nintendo GameBoys. So there are no hard rules, just choose what fits your style and budget. My preferred method and the one I use to create the mixes on this site is to use a laptop with mp3 mixing software and a few other programs to assist in production. So let's take a look at the process from the seed to the tree.

First thing I do when creating a mix is choose a style of music I am interested in. I have a large music collection built over many years that is made up of just about any genre you can think of from Rock to "UK garage house hard core psychedelic death metal". 

iTunes has proved to be a godsend when it comes to keeping everything sorted. I simply put all my tunes in different playlists under whatever genres I care to categories them into. The main playlists I use on the PsyAmb site include Psybient, Space, Minimal Ambient, Ambient Dub, Traditional Dub, DubTechno, World, Glitch, IDM, Spoken Word, Breaks and PsyStep. So let's say I want to make an "Ambient Dub" mix, the next step is to go into that playlist and choose 20 or 30 songs I think work well together. When I say "work well together" I mean have an overall similar sound so that nothing sticks out like a sore thumb. This group of songs is copied into a temporary playlist I call "Next Mix". From here I like to move songs up and down the "Next Mix" playlist. I usually put the slower, quieter tunes at the start, building up to faster, more complex tunes in the middle and then one or two quieter songs at the end again to use as a fade out for the mix.

Once I have a basic order of tracks I listen the the start and end points to check if there are any problems that might occur. For example if two tunes have different key signatures they might clash during the mix and create a rather harsh experience for the listener. If this happens I might move a tune to a more suitable position or simply remove it from the "Next Mix" playlist all together. 

When I am happy with the basic playlist and the running order I start up my mp3 mixing software. There are lot of these available these days from free programs to top of the range commercial products. I'm a creature of habit and have  been using the excellent Traktor DJ software series since day one. For mixing ambient music , the latest version of Traktor ( Traktor Pro 2 )is complete overkill so I don't recommend spending all your cash on that beast. If you can, pick up an older version - they work just fine and there is a much easier learning curve involved.

Here is a "Traktor DJ Studio 3" screen shot from an ambient dub mix :

Traktor DJ Studio 3 in action

One of the cool things about Traktor is it's iTunes integration. You can import a playlist from iTunes with just one mouse click. Once I have my "Next Mix" imported into Traktor then the fun really begins.

First I give the start and end points a listen again in Traktor to give me a feel of how each tracks blends into the following track. At this stage I'm looking to see if there are any more problems with the mix points and if I have to shuffle tracks around or remove them again. While testing the mixing points I am always keeping the theme of the mix in mind . Then I use a pen and paper to write down the time at which I want each track to start, volume levels, effects an extra info

For example 

Track - Name - Notes

1. Shongle - Dmt

2. Aes Dana - Leylines - in 0:30 - vol 80% - delay last 2 secs of (1)

This says I want to Press play on track two at 30 seconds, with 80% vol and then use tractors "delay" effect to delay the last two seconds of track (1) i.e DMT

Here is a typical Tracktor checklist that I use : ( image from notebook )

Traktor run sheet - now with 10% more chicken scrawl !

In the above situation I have set the vol of track two ( Aes Dana - Leylines ) to play at 80% because it was too loud compared to track one ( Shpongle - DMT ). This kind of thing happens a lot. You can use the vertical sliders to control volume and mix tracks too. I tend not to use a mix of the vertical volume sliders and individual high mid, low volume knobs ( show images ). 

So this process is repeated for every track in the mix until I have written down the entire running order and track mix info. Once fished I make sure to run through the entire mix points a few times, using the info I wrote down to give it a few more checks. It's time consuming but makes for a better mix I think. 

Then it's time to start recording. Traktor records your mix to a WAV file so first make sure you have enough disk space on the target drive. As a general rule a 1 hour mix will eat up about 600mb of disk. Select your recording target mix directory on the preferences>recording  tab and then load track one and two into the  two Traktor decks. Press record to begin recording then press play on deck one. Track one is now playing and being recorded to your destination drive. Now it's time to check your paper to remind yourself at what time to press play on track two to start it playing and mix into the end of track one. Once track two starts playing you can let track one play out or slowly reduce its volume to zero ( a fade out ) and then load track three into deck one by a simple drag and drop from the playlist to deck one. Be careful that you do not have the auto repeat button selected on deck one before you load track three else track one will start playing again as soon as it finishes, before you get a chance to load track three ! That's caused me a few headaches before.

Now just keep running through the tracks in the playlist following your instructions you wrote down until the mix is complete. Turn off the record button and your mix will be saved to your pc for post processing.

Post processing involves cleaning up your mix before making it available for people to listen to. You want to remove any silence from the start and end of the mix and possibly remove any glitches that may have occurred. At this stage it may also be possible to increase and decrease volume levels of the tracks in the mix or even add extra effects or indeed more tunes to the start, end or If you are really clever -  anywhere in the mix. How do you do all that ? With a good WAV editor.

There are a lot of WAV editors out there and plenty of them are free. My personal favorite is Audacity from XXC. It's fast, powerful , free and dead simple to use. One of the best bits of software I've used in my entire life. I load the entire mix ( outputted WAV file from the Traktor session ) into Audacity and clean up the mix then save it as an mp3 file, ready to upload to the Internet.

Audacity - Excellent free WAV editor

Before you save the mp3 you may want to consider the bit rate you will use. I save my mixes at various bitrates - it depends on the length of the mix. A two hour mix saved at HQ 320kb might sound great but it will take up a lot of space and prove a hassle to download for people with slow connections so I tend to save those at lower rates like 256 or 198. Some sites I upload mixes to demand a 320k file in which case is nothing I can do about it. To be honest though, with the speed of the Internet now it's becoming a bit of a non issue in the last year or so. Pretty soon all my mixes will be done at 320k I think.

Once the recording is converted to an mp3 i then add the MP3 file to iTunes  and give it a complete listen before uploading to the Internet. This ensures that there are no errors or problems in the final mix that I may have missed in any of the previous steps. Once I actually uploaded a mix of ambient music to my site that somehow inserted about 5 seconds of noise which wasn't audible during the mixing process. God knows why it happened - probably because my pc was overloaded with processes and had a bit of brain-fart ! Anyway it's better to be safe than sorry so give your mix a once through with a careful ear. After that you are ready to share your new mix with the world at large.

If you aren't so savvy with PC's and the Internet I recommend a dedicated DJ and track file hosting site such as MixCloud or SoundCloud. These are awesome sites  that provide quick and simple mix upload functionality and a kind of social feedback community like Facebook so others can easily listen to your mixes and comment on them.

The PsyAmb SoundCloud page

Another option is to upload to a file hosting site like rapidshare or filestube etc. These a good for quick  uploads but with governments cracking down on these sites you might  lose all your mixes in an instant so I don't recommend them for long term hosting. 

For hosting, I use a site called Archive.org for most of my mixes as it provides for free unlimited hosting and seems pretty stable and trustworthy. Soundcloud is far superior in terms of usability and sharing or embedding your mix on a web page but has a limited amount of space for the free account. 

So now you have your mix online all you need to do now is provide a track listing and let everyone know where they can find it. Another good thing about Traktor is that it has an export track list function which can export your track list to a HTML file with lots of info such as track name, artist, bpm, genre, album title, comments, label and more. 

One more thing I would like to point out is that should you ever have trouble mixing two tracks together because they just don't fit for whatever reason, then there are a few ways to fix the situation if you still want to keep those two tracks together in the mix. What I like to do is to take short ambient sound snippets from other songs of about 30 seconds or a minutes in length and put it between the two songs in question. Another thing I sometimes do is to create an original sound snipped using some production software like FruityLoops or Ableton. Finally there is also YouTube - simple play the songs along with some cool sounds you find on YouTube to see if it helps. If it does then save the audio from YouTube and insert it between your problematic tracks to create a smooth mix.

So that is the basic way I go about doing things regarding the ambient mixes on the psyamb site. It's not too difficult to get started mixing ambient tracks. The biggest problem you will encounter is finding the time do it ! If you are passionate about music though this shouldn't be so much of a problem. Good luck and if you ever want to share a mix here on the psyamb site feel free to get in touch with me. Happy mixing !

Ott and The All Seeing I ( Live )

We all enjoy listening to psybient and ambient dub music in the relative quiet of our homes or through the use of headphones. This is a given.  While I love listening to ambient music at home I always enjoy a live music experience too, from rock to blues to jazz and many forms in-between. 

However when it comes to the live psychedelic ambient music experience it's fair to say that a solo producer sitting behind a mixing deck or set of CD mixers isn't always the most amazing experience. Psytrance and techno - no problem, I can dance my ass off all night to those guys. But put an ambient producer in front of me for 4 hours and I tend to nod off pretty quickly or head off to the veggie burger stand. 

Fortunately a trend of late has been addressing this very problem - the live, on the road, psybient band showcase ! Shpongle are well known for using elaborate stage designs and sets complete with psychedelic dancers, lasers and all sort of craziness. Shulman has been touring the last year or two with his group of stage sound wizards.Peaking Goddess Collective, Younger Brother and Cosmosis are a few more acts that come to mind which have been  bringing their sounds to fans via live stage formats. 

Some very exciting news that come out this week is that psychedelic dub producer Ott has also decided to go on tour with a full band. The group is known as "Ott and The All Seeing I" , and what a group it is ! Don't confuse these guys with "The all seeing I" of late 90s breakbeat UK chart one-hit wonder "The beat goes on" fame. This is Ott and his mates - and what a band it is !  Ott will provide the bulk of the electronic sound magic with Naked Nick ( Nick Holden, who had provided input on a number of Ott's most popular tunes ) on guitars and vocals, Chris Barker ( from Umberloid ,  has worked on previous Ott and Shpongle albums ) on bass and Matt White on drums. 

The group will be playing live versions of Ott's material from his albums Blumenkraft, Skylon, and Mir. Dig that ! The tour is set to kick of in October this year along the eastern U.S states with a west coast tour occurring shortly thereafter. Complete tour dates will be announced around July 10th.

Update !! Here are the latest tour dates :


Date City Venue Country

08/11/12 Beech Mountain NC Gnarnia Festival United States

08/12/12 Tidewater OR Beloved Festival United States

08/16/12 Asheville NC Asheville Music Hall United States

08/17/12 Logan OH Rootwire Festival United States

08/18/12 Stephentown NY Bella Terra Festival United States

09/29/12 Norridgewock ME Heads in Harmony Festival United States

10/03/12 Baltimore, MD Soundstage United States

10/04/12 New York, NY Club 39 United States

10/05/12 Cambridge, Massachusetts Middle East Club United States

10/06/12 Philadelphia, PA City Bisco @ Mann Center for Performing Arts United States

10/07/12 Syracuse, NY Westcott Theater United States

10/10/12 Chicago, IL Bottom Lounge United States

10/11/12 Minneapolis, MN Studio B United States

10/12/12 Lawrence, KS Granada Theater United States

10/13/12 Boulder, CO Boulder Theater United States

10/14/12 Fort Collins, CO Aggie Theater United States

10/16/12 Dallas, TX Tree’s United States

10/17/12 Starkville, MS Rick’s United States

10/18/12 Knoxville, TN The Valarium United States

10/19/12 Athens, GA Georgia Theatre United States

10/20/12 Atlanta, GA Terminal West United States

10/21/12 Nashville, TN Exit / In

Pineal Gland Activation

In the past few years a lot of research has been conducted into the mysteries of the pineal gland and how one might activate it's hidden powers. Or so the pseudo-science would have us believe. Having read a number of books regarding the pineal gland and it's possible functions I am still, like much of the scientists, researches, healers, doctors, shamans, clairvoyants and third-eye enthusiast alike, still somewhat confused as to what it's actual purpose is.

The popular scientific belief is that the pineal gland is part of the endocrine system and is used to regulate the production of melatonin which in turn is used to modulate our sleep cycles. It is also active in sexual development. Seems fair enough to me. However when you put this research against what people on the other side of the fence put forward - such as the pineal gland being a third-eye into the wonders of the cosmos or even a form of alien technology used to control our evolution into a higher alien like lifeform then one is left wondering where to even begin when making the right informed decision. 

Another meme is that governments of the world have been systematically dulling our spiritual consciousness by adding fluoride to our water which in turn calcifies the pineal gland and reduces our ability for original, imaginative thought processes.

Further fuel is added to the fire by the research of respected scientist Dr Rick Strassman whose research into the psychedelic drug DMT ( which occurs naturally in all living things ) lead him to conclude that it's production is centered in the pineal gland and that the gland releases large amounts of DMT prior to death and is responsible for what many term a Near Death Experience ( something my mother experienced actually ).

Anyway, what I wanted to present today is some ideas I ran across recently about the possibility of 'activating the pineal gland' or 'exciting it' to a state where one might experience something on the level of a psychedelic trip or form of 'mind opening' so to speak. 

The idea is that because the gland is constructed of a piezoelectric crystal matrix it should be possible to excite this crystalline structure to allow it to 'tune in' to a frequencies of trans-dimensional lifeforms ! Sounds pretty incredible right !

The first method of activation is through listening to sounds at a certain frequency and you need to look no further than YouTube to find a plethora of pineal gland activation videos, some with over 2 million views ! There are also a ton of companies online selling "mind power mp3s" CDs and so on. Personally I wouldn't bother with those CDs as I suspect it's the same as what is available on YouTube anyway. Here is one to try :

The second method is also a sound based method, however in this case you don't use headphones or music. All you need to do is cover your ears while making the sound "nnnn" for a few minutes then switching to a "mmmm" sound and finally saying "ngngng" for a few more minutes. I guess this is closely related to the ideas of chanting "ohm" to open up chakra lines and the like.

The next method I have seen is a physical method where one taps the back of your head in a series of rhythmic trance inducing patterns that apparently resonate with the frequency of the gland and open it up to all possibilities. Here is a video that explains the process in some detail :

This final method I've seen is through focusing thought and light to activate the gland. In this idea you need to sit in a comfortable position with your back as straight as possible. The room you are in should be completely dark so as to trigger the pineal gland to begin the production of melatonin. You need simply focus all your thoughts onto the pineal gland at the center of the brain. While you are focusing your thought you need to remain as calm as possible, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. 

So there you have a few things to get started with. All in all I'm still not sure what to make of it. A lot of the so called research I read on the topic make liberal use of words such as "apparently","possibly","could it be","don't you think" which always raises a few red flags with me. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic so if you have any experience in this area please feel free to add a comment below. 

As a closing thought I'd like to offer you this link to the movie "From Beyond" in which scientists make a device that allows the pineal gland to resonate and open a portal to a hostile alien universe ! Perhaps the pineal gland is best left alone after all ....

Michael Andresen - Healer and more

Over the past 20 years its fair to say I have listened to a lot of ambient music. Some great and some , well, not so. Some CDs I have bought I  have listened to only a handful of times while others have remained a regular fixture in my CD/LP player for over two decades and sound just as fresh as ever. One such long-player is "WonderGround" by Michael Andresen ( a.k..a Healer ).

I still remember the day I walked into the local psychedelic trance record store and saw it on display in the glass cabinet with it's cloudy CD jacket design. I asked the guy to put into the only CD player he had available and donned the headphones. Instantly I was transported to a world of dreamscapes and fantasy. Any stress that I felt that day was washed away in a matter of minutes as Healer's incredible debut album took hold of me. I bought it no questions asked.

Since it's release in 2000, Michael released just the one follow up album in 2004 titled "HigherGrounds". Emotionally and technically it is just as amazing as the debut but for me the WonderGround album remains a favorite. There is no real reasoning there - probably just because it was the first and it made a initial emotion connection with me. Michael also records trance music under the name "12 Moons" which has proven succuessful with appearances on over 20 compilations between 2000 and 2005.

So what has Andresen been up to since then you might ask ? Despite a lack of any further releases as either Healer or 12 Moons, he has been busy over the last few years working on video production and as a photographic artist. You can check out some of his work over at the Michael Andresen Website.

Perhaps the best news of recent times was Michael's decision to make all of his previous albums available as free downloads via the Ektoplazm website. How cool is that ! So if you have never experienced the Healer or 12 Moons sounds then now is the perfect time to start. Another thing that also looks promising is the release of a number of music videos on YouTube such as "Dream Time" which you can view below.

> You can also get more free music from this free album downloads site list