Vimana Shastra

Today I'm talking with Vimana Shastra, also known as Dynamic Freakuencies. He is co-founder of Juicy Noise Records and lives in Oslo, Norway. He has been producing psytrance for quite a few years now, with growing success.

What fascinates you about psytrance culture?

What fascinates me about psytrance culture is the kindness and the amazing people you meet around the world, people who either produce music or are simply into it and want to dance and have a good time. I must also say I'm fascinated by all the good vibes and the creativity. When you're at festivals, the deco art is killer. And the producers out there keep getting better and better.

What are your musical influences?

My musical influences are The Prodigy, Miranda (the godmother of Goa trance/psytrance), Astrix, Man With No Name, Astral Projection, Captain Hook, Liquid Soul and Infected Mushroom.

As artists we have a responsibility towards our audience. What is the keynote you want to pass on to your listeners, what is your message?

My message is deep and humble: stay positive, dance, have fun and make peace. Life is too short to be angry and spread negative vibes. Forgive each other, because forgiveness is a gift, just like music. Music is a universal language and medicine for the mind, body and soul. I see myself simply as a medium; the melodies come to me, if you understand what I mean. PLUR: peace, love, unity, respect.

And yes, we artists have a lot of responsibility towards our fans and audience. Many don't understand that. What I mean is this: I see some people, actually a lot of people – names aren't important, to protect the ones I'm talking about – but I see a lot of ego tripping, and some even send out bad energy without realizing it. There's too much drama in the psytrance scene now. People get jealous over nothing. Keep in mind that jealousy tends to bring out the worst in us. Now, I don't judge anyone, it's not up to me to judge people. But keep in mind that without your fans you wouldn't be where you are now.

Please name one piece of your production gear you like and tell us why.

Naming one piece of gear I really like is hard, because there are a lot of them. But a few that stand out for me are the Zoom H6 recorder and the Roland System-8. I like the Roland System-8 because it's good for psychedelic sequences, effects and so on, and it's easy to use, with a fast workflow. I like the Zoom H6 because it's very, very good, small and portable, so it's easy to carry around and you can record stuff wherever and whenever you want: birds, nature, water, animals and so on. That's good for track intros. What you can't make or produce, you record.