Hallucinogen: Simon Posford

Simon Posford is better known as Hallucinogen, and one half of the hugely successful Shpongle project. His days of music production on the psychedelic trance scene date back to before the term "goa" was even applied to the music, and his seminal underground hit "L.S.D" made waves with big-name jocks like Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling back in 1995, as well as creating what was for some people their ultimate introduction to the scene and its music.

Simon set up Twisted records (www.twisted.co.uk) which has become a hugely successful and well-respected trance label, playing host to top names in the scene including Doof, Tristan and Prometheus.

The Shpongle project, seeing Simon teaming up with TIP records founder Raja Ram, made huge ripples in the scene when its psychedelic ambient dub stylings graced eardrums on release back in 1998. Since then, Simon has been at the wheel of a number of projects, including the multi-talented array of collaborations on the recent Twisted compilation Unusual Suspects, and a forthcoming project with Benji Vaughan under the guise of Younger Brother.

Without question, Simon is through both the Hallucinogen and Shpongle projects, a leading and well-respected member of the psytrance community. In this exclusive interview, he discusses old music, new music, forthcoming music and tons more besides.

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Well, first up - welcome. Where are you and what are the vibes like-
I am at home. it is late on Saturday night. I'm chilling, watching Jacob's Ladder on TV, gazing out of the window at the stars, and recovering from a big night out in London ... feeling fairly fragile!
After this, I'm going to put on 'Music for Airports' by Brian Eno and crash out...

Unusual Suspects has just been released on Twisted, and it's awesome...
It seems like much more of a "concept album" than a lot out there - Can you give us an insight into the ideas behind its conception-
There wasn't really a concept.... but we wanted to release the tracks I'd done over the past few months, and since they are all under different names, a compilation album was the best way.

Also, we had some tracks by the other artists on the label that needed releasing, too.

As the sound was slightly different from some of the stuff in the past, we decided to try artwork from the 'designers republic'.

One of the underlying factors behind Unusual Suspects is the collaborations - which is something the Twisted posse seem to get up to a lot.

Is this just fluke that you all work so well together, or do you have to work at it-
All the artists involved are good mates, familiar with each others' sound, and totally at ease in the studio, so it was fairly effortless.

It wasn't really planned, as such.... I just did a track with whoever was staying at my house at the time! For example, Tristan came down to play frisbee for a couple of days, so we started a track together.....Meanwhile Serge was doing a gig in London, so he came down to chill in the countryside for a couple of days, and he joined us in the studio.... they both had to leave after two days, but Riktaam was coming into town on his way to the states, and he came to stay also... since he flew out the next day, there was little point in starting a new tune, so he got involved in a different mix of the tune that was still sitting in my computer... this was a bit more 'finished' than the one we had rushed out with Serge and Trizzer.


Anybody on the scene you're working with on top secret collaborations right now-
Whoever turns up next, I guess.... (laughs)

Actually Merv, from Eat Static lives close by, and we keep meaning to do a collaboration... as soon as we both have time. And Ed from Ozric Tentacles called to ask a technical question about the DR16, and we spoke about doing a tune together.

On a bizarre note, I have just done a collaboration with Alan Parsons (engineer of Dark Side of the Moon) for his 'Alan Parso Tags

• hallucinogen
• simon posford
• twisted records