Vague Recs: The rise of Wellington’s underground trance parties (pre-lockdown).

Words and images by Jan Kohout

There is no doubt that Wellington’s diverse and creative culture emancipates all who come to discover its reaches. For a small city of 200,000 residents, with a thriving young artistic culture, one could call it the L.A of New Zealand. What makes cities great aren’t necessarily the venues themselves but the people who feed their demand for originality. For a person who has lived two and a half years here, I have never met such a diversity of groups in a single place. Its infamous student life insensately introduces you to someone of someone else’s friend, creating a growing wave of acquaintances without you even realising it.

Wellington’s attraction power recruits the uttermost distinct characters one could possibly imagine, and this could only reflect on its music scene. A significant number of original indie bands, funky reggae, and a range of electronic music flood the sounds of its nightlife. However, for many people, town life becomes repetitive and uninteresting. Some seek a proper ambiance into their own suburban parties, where the lack of law allows for total ecstatic freedom to prevail.

The organizers of a start-up event invited me to one of its pioneering projects, “Vague recs.” Like all debuting brands, the organizers book a venue wherever they can find a slot. This one was ideally located in the metal venue of Valhalah.

Vague Recs is an independent Label started by Aidan Brown and Finn Agin-Quinn. After a few successful nights at a few house parties, the brand was moved up online. They acquainted a few DJ’s and VJ’s to create a decent set every night. With the help of legend organizer, Dee Tee (organizer of Twisted Frequency) they managed to run a label takeover night. By growing online, they secured spots for the Marlborough sounds and hope to expand around New Zealand for the winter. With Lockdown in place, the brand started doing live streams.

As it was a Wednesday night, rather than binging up, I stayed on a restrictive amount of 4 beers. This isn’t your typical 8 to 12 am event. Sleep is taboo, and the climax of its energy never starts until 12 am, when ravers feel raved and drugs start to kick in. Making my way to the venue, the sound was a distinct rumble through the thick red walls. As I entered, the low bass blasted through my body. It was 9:30, about a dozen people stood around contemplating the sound and the multicolored lights floating on stage. There was an odd sense of spatial comfort… you could fully appreciate the music standing there, alone, without a need for embarrassing dancing stunts. I felt compelled to stand there, tipsy and content, analysing every pattern of the track. Dark psytrance.

The sound was similar to a dark spatial transmission. Its remoteness made you feel small among the immensity of the void which your imagination started to form. I closed my eyes for a short moment without wondering how odd I would look to people around me. I almost felt like falling backward and fainting. It was as if you let the sound speak for itself and the mind illustrate the images. It was frightening in a sense, but to people here, it was a work of art. I could tell pure work and sweat was put into each piece, every sound like particles bouncing through the rhythm of the bass. I took a walk outside and found the organizer in an empty back alley followed by a poorly lit parking lot. I got one of these feelings that something wild was about to happen, a calm before the storm. You could tell the organizers were anxious to know the outcome of the first event. This was a decisive night for them to get a feeling about future promotion.

For many people, these events don’t get booked out every time. Wellington seems to host a big amount of drum and bass. Techno was yet a rising star in the festival scenery but the high energy of DNB mixed with highly intoxicated critters offered some pretty energetic nights. You’d usually hear about psytrance if you were in the right circle. Indeed, you do need to look for it a bit, and in the case that you weren’t able to find it, the latter will eventually come to you. The capital’s bubbling coincidences seem to draw you to something you never sought to experience, being it good or bad.

After a long talk about photography in poor lighting and a few cigarettes we decided it was time to go back inside. I started to mix in the crowd and kept being bumped around, so I stayed in a hidden corner to try to stabilize myself.

It was now close to 11 pm and the show was rumbling. I heard some commotion outside so I checked it out. As I walked through the outside door some people were very interested in my presence, and my camera. They asked for a few portraits. They told me they were here for Paige Julia, one of the headliners of the night. She was a hard strung DnB DJ that I had personally seen a couple of times live. The psytrance set was aligned at the start to warm up the show until Dnb blasted the 1 am one.

Walking outside, I watched the fire spinners making their entry. Many parties hosted these outcast critters, almost seemingly setting aside a separate show to the event. They were the fence hoppers of every party who stole the show how they wanted to. At festivals across New Zealand, fire spinners lingered out in the late nights on the brink of early mornings like nocturnal beings fired by the sense of adrenaline. Trance music brought together all those people that loved to trip out amongst the pulsation of the beat. In the heart of the motion, anything can be added to ignite body movement with the laws of gravity. The crowd diverged from those who comfortably sat in amazement, to others that raved it out. It was a space to feel more in a clan outside in the fresh air.

There was something about Calypso's fire dance that made it seem so in sync with the rhythm of the music. She had the grace of a ballerina with a touch of dazzling acrobatics that I had never witnessed before. The fire seemed to be part of her limbs as if she controlled it minutely to never hurt herself or others. The heat was heartwarming in the chilly night and didn’t stop the crowd from coming close. The ashes from the movement of the fire spat high across the air, we could feel the spirit of two beings in sync. The motherly relationship that fire spinners have with nature’s most precious element emulates a deep passion with energies of all kinds. There is no doubt in saying that Psytrance culture intertwines not only music but also ethics.

Throughout the night, you were likely to come face to face with some unspeakable creatures, lured in the state by ecstasy and ketamine. The intense energy of jiving and wavy movements started to transition to jump around frenzy. People were climbing on shoulders, screams and applause were let out in sync with Paige Julia’s tempo. We were all kind of ecstatic and happy at being here, alive, at that very moment.

Trance parties in Wellington varied from a range of ruthless myths of absolute chaos to liberating nights ruled solely for the sake of escaping the grips of society. The small community of Kiwi Burn seems to have found its place in the suburban parts of the city. There is nothing more inviting than the thought of cuddle puddles, ingenious talks in the middle of chaotic rhythm, and a dress code far from societal judgment. These seismic pools of colors and energy induced in the burner attitude are all unique in their own way. 

Most start-up DJ’s do prefer playing in these environments because their people enjoy whatever you show them as long as it has a beat and feels reckless. These psytrance nights have sprung into popularity in the last couple of years, and people are starting a different way to connect. Is this a modern revival of social communities we used to have in the flower power era? Will this lead to more communities forming? Maybe, we shall witness a significant change in socialisation, especially amid the level 3 lockdown.

The birthplace of New Zealand psytrance was formed in Takaka in the late ’90s as Goa trance parties were becoming a growing phenomenon in rainbow gatherings around the world. Only in the last decade, many people took the growing amount of listeners to new genres such as Hitek, Dark Psy, Prog, etc. A growing amount of genres in the festival scenery has fed the doofers of the south that inhabit the remote hippie wonderlands. There is anticipation for more outback doofs in New Zealand, which will undoubtedly shine into mainstream festivals of the world. 

As electronic music grows into a new wave of culture and people, it takes a radical change in terms of song structure and live performances, in contrast, to past music eras. There’s genuinely no way to know where this will take music. However, we can sit and contemplate it while taking time to realize that we should appreciate what today’s sound offers. Something is happening to Wellington that we should be grateful for. Even though the audiences’ echo fails to reach the vast crowds of the world, having a small, supportive community helps keep music scenes authentic and alive. When companies with money and greed touch music, it often ruins its purpose, makes it sellable, and takes away the reason we love it most. It is often said that genres are at their peak when unknown and hidden. Undoubtedly these small venues and parties are a birth of a new scene with high juvenile energy, get in while it lasts.