The most influential psytrance artists, era by era

The most influential psytrance artists are the ones who changed how the music sounds: Goa pioneers like Hallucinogen and Astral Projection, full-on acts like Infected Mushroom and Astrix, progressive names like Ace Ventura and Vini Vici, and the producers who took it darker or slower. Here are 20 of them, grouped by era and style.

For each artist you get where they come from, why they matter and one or two releases to start with. We checked every fact against artist, label or reference pages. If the styles themselves are new to you, our guide to psytrance subgenres explains the differences.

Goa pioneers: the late 1980s and 1990s

Goa Gil

Goa Gil (Gilbert Levey) was born in 1951 and grew up in San Rafael, California. He left for India in 1969, settled in Goa and started DJing and playing music all night on the beaches with friends. Those outdoor parties, with their Eastern spiritual imagery, set the template for the psytrance party.

Juno Reactor

Ben Watkins started Juno Reactor in London in 1990 as an art project. Albums like Transmissions (1993) and Bible of Dreams (1997) mixed trance with world music and industrial sounds. Watkins later worked on the music for The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions together with composer Don Davis.

Man With No Name

British producer Martin Freeland has recorded as Man With No Name since 1990. He was on Project II Trance (1993), counted as the first Goa trance album, and his singles “Floor-Essence” (1995) and “Paint a Picture” (1996) reached the UK charts. Start with the album Moment of Truth (1996).

Hallucinogen

Hallucinogen is the solo project of English producer Simon Posford. His single “LSD” came out in 1994, and his debut album Twisted (1995, Dragonfly Records) is one of the most successful albums in the genre, with more than 85,000 copies sold. Posford also founded Twisted Records.

Astral Projection

Avi Nissim and Lior Perlmutter from Tel Aviv started out as SFX in 1989 and have worked as Astral Projection since 1993. Their Trust in Trance series (1994 to 1996) and Dancing Galaxy (1997) are the place to start. Nissim also co-founded the Israeli label Trust in Trance Records in 1993, and the duo released For All Mankind in 2025.

Full-on: psytrance goes global

Full-on took shape in the late 1990s: rolling basslines, bright leads and big breaks, usually around 140 to 148 BPM. Many of its best-known names came from Israel, which is why we wrote a separate piece on why psytrance is so popular in Israel.

Infected Mushroom

Erez Eisen and Amit Duvdevani formed Infected Mushroom in Haifa in 1996. Their debut The Gathering (1999) was one of the first albums to bring Israeli psytrance to a mainstream audience, and Classical Mushroom (2000) is often called their best. The duo later reached number 9 in DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJs poll.

GMS

GMS, short for Growling Mad Scientists, is the Dutch duo of Riktam (Shajahan Matkin) and Bansi (Joseph Quinteros), who began working together in Amsterdam in the mid-1990s. Their debut Chaos Laboratory came out in 1997. In 1999 they founded Spun Records, described as the first psytrance label in the United States.

Skazi

Asher Swissa from Jerusalem started Skazi in 1998. His debut album Animal (2000) was followed by Storm (2002) and Total Anarchy (2006), and over the years the project has also moved into house and electronic rock.

Astrix

Israeli DJ and producer Avi Shmailov was born in 1981 in Georgia, then part of the USSR. He signed to HOMmega Productions for his debut album Eye to Eye (2002), followed by Artcore (2004) and He.art (2016), and reached number 18 in DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJs in 2007. More in our Astrix portrait.

Tristan

British DJ and producer Tristan Cooke played Full Moon parties in Goa before returning to the UK in 1993. His first release came out on Matsuri Records in 1995, followed by albums such as Audiodrome on Twisted Records and Chemisphere (2007) on Nano Records. He has played festivals such as Boom and Ozora.

Ajja

Ajja was born in London in 1975 and is based in Lausanne, Switzerland. He co-founded Peak Records in 2003 and released his solo album Psychogenica in 2007. His solo sets are mostly built on psytrance around 144 BPM.

Progressive psytrance: the deeper groove

Progressive psytrance is slower, often in the low to mid 130s BPM, with a deep groove and gradual changes. Copenhagen’s Iboga Records, founded in the mid-1990s by Banel and Emok, is one of the labels that shaped the style, and several artists below have released there.

Perfect Stranger

Yuli Fershtat is an Israeli producer born in Moscow in 1970. After releasing full-on as BLT on HOMmega around 2000, he launched Perfect Stranger in 2006 with Learning = Change on Iboga Records. He has stayed with the label ever since, most recently with Broadcasting & Receiving (2023).

Liquid Soul

Liquid Soul is Nicola Capobianco from Switzerland. He began playing progressive trance at the end of 1993 and released his best-selling albums on Iboga Records, among them Synthetic Vibes and Love in Stereo. With Ace Ventura he co-founded Psy-Nation, a radio show and party series.

Ace Ventura

Ace Ventura is Yoni Oshrat from Israel, who found his way into psytrance in the late 1990s. His album Paradise Engineering came out on Iboga Records in 2015, and side projects like Alpha Portal with Astrix and Alien Art with Captain Hook show how connected the scene is. Read our Ace Ventura portrait.

Captain Hook

Reshef Harari from Israel spent seven years in the duo Quantize, whose album Time came out on Iboga in 2009, before going solo as Captain Hook in 2010. His debut Human Design (2011) led to years of touring abroad.

Vini Vici

Aviram Saharai and Matan Kadosh from Afula in Israel started out as Sesto Sento in 2001 and have been Vini Vici since 2013. Their remix of “Free Tibet” by the French collective Hilight Tribe became a global hit, “The Tribe” (2015) followed, and “Great Spirit” (2016) teamed them up with Armin van Buuren and Hilight Tribe. In 2018 they launched their label Alteza Records.

For a newer name in this line, read our portrait of Antinomy, who entered the scene in 2017 and released his debut album A State of Mind on Iboga Records.

Dark psytrance and forest

Dark psytrance starts at around 150 BPM and often goes faster, with heavy basslines, strange sounds and little melody. It became a recognisable genre after 2003, mainly in Germany and Russia; forest is its more organic, woodland-sounding relative. Xenomorph, the project of Mark Petrick, is credited with first bringing a dark, occult aesthetic into psytrance.

Kindzadza

Kindzadza is Lev Greshilov from Moscow and a key name in Russian dark psytrance. His album Waves From Outer Space came out on Parvati Records in 2004. With Psykovsky he co-founded the label Osom Music, where he released Nano Ninja (2012).

Psykovsky

Vasily Markelov, also from Moscow, released his debut album as Psykovsky in 2005. His music moves between roughly 145 and 200 BPM and goes deep into detailed, unusual sound design. With Kindzadza he also plays as the duo Osom.

Psybient: the slow side

Shpongle

Shpongle formed in England in 1996 as the project of Simon Posford and Raja Ram, an Australian-born musician who was a founding member of the psychedelic rock band Quintessence in the late 1960s. Their debut Are You Shpongled? (1998, Twisted Records) mixed world music, psychedelic trance and ambient, and Tales of the Inexpressible followed in 2001. If you want to hear where psytrance meets the chill-out area, start here.

More portraits from the scene

Influence also works on a smaller scale, in local scenes and on small labels. These interviews and portraits on our site show other sides of it:

• Genetrick: between progressive and full-on, with releases on Iboga Records.
• Spectra Sonics: from Tokyo’s underground parties to festivals abroad.
• Vimana Shastra: co-founder of Juicy Noise Records in Oslo.
• Magic Shaman: born in Iran, now a UK citizen, from downtempo to hi-tech.
• Darkland and Inner Sphere: making psytrance in Iran, where the parties are illegal.

FAQ

Who is the most famous psytrance artist?

By mainstream reach, Infected Mushroom and Vini Vici are hard to beat. Infected Mushroom reached number 9 in DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJs, and Astrix made number 18 in 2007. Inside the scene, Goa-era names like Hallucinogen and Astral Projection carry just as much weight.

Who invented psytrance?

Nobody on their own. It grew out of the Goa parties, where DJs like Goa Gil played all night, and out of the Goa trance records of the early and mid-1990s by producers such as Hallucinogen and Man With No Name. Our article on Goa trance or psytrance explains how one turned into the other.

Which famous psytrance artists are from Israel?

Astral Projection, Infected Mushroom, Skazi, Astrix, Perfect Stranger, Ace Ventura, Captain Hook and Vini Vici. Liquid Soul, who often works with Israeli artists, is Swiss, and GMS are Dutch.

Where can I see these artists live?

Big psytrance festivals are the best bet. Astrix and Tristan, for example, have both played Boom in Portugal and Ozora in Hungary. Line-ups change every year, so check the festival pages and our list of psytrance festivals worldwide.