What is Psynews ?

[mars]

Latest update November 6th 2008

Origins

Psynews started as a small site hosted by French provider Free.fr. Its original URL was http://goatrance.free.fr, which still exists and redirects to http://www.psynews.org.

Although the exact date is not known for certain, logs seem to indicate it was put online for the first time on January 11th 2000 by a 23-year old Parisian named Christophe Harry a.k.a "Children".


Children on the right


The site first aimed at replacing a failing UK website called "TRiP" which was focused on reviewing Goa Trance music releases, on CD and vinyl. Like its predecessor, goatrance.free.fr's look and feel was of fluoroescent text over a starfield.
A group of enthusiasts from all over the world quickly joined Children and brought their own tributes by reviewing their own albums.

The very first reviewers were:

Nickname	Real name	Join date	Age at join	City	Country	What they became
Children	Christophe Harry	11/01/2000	23	Paris	France	Disappeared to found a family on sept 23rd 2003
Stathis					Greece
Infected Max	Maxence Mortier		24	Bordeaux	France	Has maintainted the famous band Infected Mushroom website for a couple of years
Mindbender					Finland
Anoebis	Joske Vranken	20/01/2000	17	Antwerpen	Belgium	Famous DJ, party organizer, manager of Suntrip Records, and moderator of Psynews
Gav					Scotland	Deceased now
Tequila	Stanislas		17	Paris	France
Pit-UFO					Mexico
DQ					Sweden
Ubik	Vincent Houzé		17	Paris	France
Mars	Fabien Marsaud	05/03/2000	23	Paris / Bordeaux	France	Admin and webmaster of Psynews now, and manager of Suntrip Records
Dreamer					Israel
Ben	Benoît Ory		21	Rennes	France	Still very much involved in the French scene
Chaitu					India
Ktaadn	Scott Kanov				USA
Globalsteez					Scotland
Mascok					Israel
Psytrancer					England
Gizmo					Poland
Jannis	Jannis Tzikas		17	Stockholm	Sweden	Known as the artist "Filteria" now
Freak51					Canada
Implant					Yugoslavia
Gustav	Gustav Sindler				Sweden
Smg	Mikko Itkonen				Finland
Baboon					Sweden
Deathposture	Martin Moller	17/06/2000		Aalborg	Denmark	Still a moderator of Psynews
Psylent Buddhi					Denmark
Acidhive					Netherlands
Tristan					Israel
Jeto	Jeto				India
Mahoney					Sweden
Stormbringer					Sweden
Insejn	Andreas Hulte				Sweden	Was a moderator on Psynews, and even co-admin for a couple of years
Rx7style					Canada
Genetix					Macedonian

Some of them are still active in the Psy scene



The site also contained various sections such as a long definition of "what is Goa Trance", detailed information about the main groups on the Goa scene, a list of forthcoming releases, the members' favourites tracks and albums, artist interviews, external links about Goa and psytrance, addresses of psy-shops around the world and upcoming parties.


Since the site was built in pure HTML, Children had to update it on a daily basis with all the reviews and information he would receive every day, and soon 500 very detailed reviews were online. The site went through a period of rapid growth and became a reference of internet resources regarding Psychedelic Trance music.

The determinant meeting

On April 22nd 2000, a big party involving Infected Mushroom, Talamasca and DJ Dédé took place in Paris. Several goatrance.free.fr members decided to meet up at Place d'Italie, Paris before going to the party.
Those present were: Children, Ubik, Tequila, Mars from Paris, Anoebis from Belgium, Guy and Daniele from the UK, Infected Max and some other friends from Bordeaux. They had never met in real life before except for Mars who knew Infected Max as they were both from Bordeaux.
Everyone enjoyed the party and that night some very strong connections were made between them. Most of these people are still in touch with each other or have since met up again. Daniele died a few months later but Anoebis and Mars met Guy again in London in 2003.


Children

Daniele & Guy Coulson + Infected Max

Left: Children / Middle: Mars / Right: Anoebis

Since then, the largest meeting of Psynews members was during the Twisted Records 10th birthday party in London in October 2006.

Subsequently, Mars (who was taking computer science courses) asked Children if he could help him in programming some parts of the site. The site was a reworked a little and became more dynamic. On May 20th 2000, Anoebis and Mars met again in Belgium for another party, and in the following months Children, Ubik, Tequila, and Mars partied together regularly.


goatrance.free.fr members attending some foggy festival

From a hobby to the establishment of a community

By September 2000, Children and Mars were aware the site was gaining more and more users and wanted to make it look less amateurish and enable people to communicate more easily. They also wanted to broaden its audience since "Goatrance" sounded too restrictive, and Psychedelic musicc in general were the real focus of the site. At the same time Children wanted to stay as independent as possible so as not to influence thecontent of some reviews, and didn't like the idea of putting advertisements on the site to finance better hosting, as he was still a student and couldn't afford it. However solutions were found and the domain psynews.org was bought by Mars on the September 22nd, and the site moved to a homemade server running on Mars' DSL line, in his wardrobe at the 5 rue Michal, Paris XIII. It stayed there until March 18th 2003.

To the site was added a decent forum, which boosted its growth and concentrated more information than ever. It passed 500 hits/day after 1 year of existence, which was quite high for the small Goa Trance scene. The first year of forum activity was deleted by Children one day when he tried to save some disk space, so the forum archives only go back to November 23rd 2001.



In August 2001, Psytrance music had completely switched from melodic to minimal and motivated by some members, Children started a "contest", giving 3 months for unknown music artists to submit their tracks before a jury would vote and establish a compilation tracklist, the idea being to release the music as a free online compilation. The results were way beyond his expectations as 185 tracks were submitted and so many were so good that a double-CD tracklist was established:



CD 1
1. 05'51" Neurotoxin : For Red (Russia)
2. 08'26" Psychopat : Spiral Landing (France)
3. 07'29" De-Fect : Bouncing Shrooms And Giggleing Gnomes (Sweden)
4. 11'53" Andromeda : Amiga (Poland)
5. 07'42" Synsun : TNC 2001 (Ukraine)
6. 08'42" Asura : System Babel (Code Eternity Rmx) (France)
7. 09'14" Artha : Controlled (Poland)
8. 10'54" Epsilon : Cosmic Vortex (Creepy Mix) (Finland)

CD 2
1. 08'25" Promon : Throbbing Hobbits (Sweden)
2. 08'02" The Bastard : Crispy Crunchy Buffet Beast (USA)
3. 09'26" De-Fect : Germs, Germs, Psychedelic Germs (Sweden)
4. 07'16" Amygdala : Synaptic Misfire (Denmark)
5. 08'15" Synsun : Replycant (Ukraine)
6. 07'45" Vax : Protoplasma (Ukraine)
7. 08'20" Agalactia : Awkward Lightrate (Israel)
8. 07'16" Torakka : Greasy Fingers (Finland)
9. 04'42" Solstice : Ricochet (England)


It was then that a new Italian label called "Inpsyde Media" became interested in starting their releases with this compilation and Valerio, its owner, convinced Children to release a selection of 10 of these tracks under the name "Psychedelic Sparks" in late 2001. The inlay described the idea behind Psynews and the contest. The remaining tracks of the initial selection were offered for free. Artists such as Asura, Synsun/Vax and Promon were later to release full length albums, and many of these artists are still active.


In mid-2001, Children found maintaining the site to be too much work and joined with Ubik and Mars to specify a new system that would be more automated. Development was started in PHP but was never completed. Even after Children left Psynews, Mars tried several times to restart the development of what might become the new Psynews using Java Enterprise technologies, and still hopes to release it one day.


Between February and May 2002, a second contest was held. A CD called "Another Demention" was scheduled to be released, but Inpsyde Media finally cancelled it.


The tracklist was :
CD 1
1. 08'23" Kinich Ahau : The 3rd Spiral (Luxembourg/Israel/Mexico)
2. 08'11" Agalactia And 5Meo-Geo : Ficus (Israel)
3. 06'41" Sienis : Rubbabong (Sweden)
4. 09'50" Moai : Chimera (France/Sweden)
5. 10'17" Sneila : Flying Objects Always Reach The Ground (Romania)
6. 10'28" Artha : Mahabharta (Poland)
7. 10'15" Ethereal Phaze : Liquid Blue Vision (Sweden)
8. 14'40" Prosect : Invasion (Israel)

CD 2
1. 10'59" Spiralgeist : Mean And Mean (Germany)
2. 06'58" Masada : Bhongo Bhonged (Sweden)
3. 08'14" Amygdala : Proprioception Malfunction (Denmark)
4. 06'41" Spiralix : Spirit Guide (???)
5. 08'22" Alien Noise : 604 Maniacs (Romania/Germany)
6. 09'07" Chiron : Ice Age (???)
7. 10'17" Ethereal : Fireflies (Sweden)
8. 08'47" Khetzal : Narayana (???)
9. 10'15" Vax : Tataria (Ukraine)


Again, several of these artists made their way onto the Psy scene: Ethereal, Prosect and Khetzal released full length albums; Sienis and Sneila performned many times, and Moaï is still active under another name. In mid 2002, the site had an extraordinary base of daily visitors, up to 2800/day. Children and Mars were interviewed by a Canadian newspaper and Psynews sponsored the Samothraki psytrance festival. This period is considered as the most prolific for the site, and gained it the most recognition. Several investors tried to buy the site but Children always insisted on his independence and declined their offers.

Psynews was actually one of the very first collaborative online spaces.

The Party

Psynews still had one more thing to achieve: A party. On december 2001, Anoebis (who had by then started DJing and had already organized parties in Belgium) met Mars again, and they thought seriously about throwing a "Psynews party". They met again several times during spring 2002, searched for a good party place, and the date was finally set for June 29th 2002.
Although both organizers were very inexperienced, they did their best and put all their savings into the event, to the extent that the "Psynews Summer Launch" became a huge project with a €10000 budget involving live sets from ToiDoi (FR), PsySide (FR), and Indidginus (UK), and DJ performances from Roopak (Procyon Recs, India), Colin from OOOD (UK), Bor (NL), Las 22 (FR), Janua + Psyonic (BE), Tohm (BE), Psilo (BE), and Anoebis (BE). It took place in Hangar 29 of the port of Antwerp after its original location, Azelhof, was closed down by the police just one week before the event. Children, who had not really participated in the organization, was there, and he met the Inpsyde Media crew and other Psytrance related people who had come especially for the party. The event was a huge success and is still regarded as one of the best Goa parties ever to take place in Belgium.






Bor, ?, Las22, Lizzy, Children, Anoebis


Indidginus and Colin OOOD

Psyside


Party people having a good time

Mars and Anoebis holding the bar

It's 1 PM, people are still there !

From a passion to a priesthood

During the autumn of 2002, it became more and more difficult for Children to update the site on a regular basis, so he started doing it on a weekly basis. The forum kept on growing and its members brought their own psy-news anyway.
Members such as Basilisk, Otto Matta, Anoebis, Deathposture, Shaft, Overdose, Matt Strumpling, SlidingTrancer, Moondancer, and many others added their regular more-or-less-serious tribute to the Psy movement, and set the path to what Psynews has now become.


On March 2003, the server moved with Mars to its new apartment, in the basement of 37 rue Perrot, Malakoff, south of Paris. This place was also the HQ of Suntrip Records from mid-2004 to mid-2007. On September 23rd 2003, Children and Mars met for the last time. They had decided to improve Psynews, which ha become harder and harder to maintain and keep online. They decide on a list of actions which were never accomplished as Children simply vanished a few days later. He would answer neither his phone nor email. No-one knows what happened. Some say Psynews drained him of too much of his time and energy and he had to leave, others say he founded a family and felt guilty to leaving, whilst yet others say he died. However In mid-2005, Mars called his cellphone and heard on the voicemail message a woman's voice saying "Christophe can't answer you at the moment but you may leave a message", to which he never replied, but which gave a few clues about Children's whereabouts.

The forum Era

Mars was therefore left alone with the server. However his work was too stressful to leave enough time to update the site, all the more as he had by then started releasing music as "Suntrip Records" in association with Anoebis, so he retained the original menu on the Psynews homepage (which lead to the existing content) and replaced the rest of the homepage with the forum. And the site kept on growing by itself, thanks to its forum members.

(Here some gossip is missing about all the dramas and moderation stuff that happened)

On November 24th 2005, Psynews was attacked and much of its database destroyed, its old code being too vulnerable. All former content was then removed, a backup of the forum restored, and the forum became the one and only source of information on the site. New rules were written to bring back peace to the site which had become quite anarchic, and 7 permanent moderators set watching over the site from a private forum called "The Moderatorium".

A new start

In 2006 the forum was locked for a short time whilst Insejn, Deathposture and Mars spent several days moving all the original content ; mainly reviews and interviews - to specific subforums, after which people were allowed to post new reviews and interviews again. Because he didn't want to have too many interactions between Psynews and Suntrip, and because he had no time for daily moderation, Mars also resigned from his moderator seat and is now only taking care of the server maintenance, and trying to develop a newer version of the site on his free time.


In April 2007, Mars moved to Belgium. DSL lines being capped there, Skytrancer agreed to host the server at his place in Paris XIII, 300 meters from where it all started. Mars would take care of it remotely. However the machine became unstable and the site had to move again in September 2007. It's now hosted on the same dedicated server as http://www.psysurfeur.com, another site dealing with Psychedelic Trance which delivers party and festival videos from throughout the world.
In September and October 2008, the server went through two hacks, one requiring the complete OS & filesystem reinstall. The "Off-Topic" forum, known to be a source of great fun, turmoil...and tensions, was suspected to be at the root cause of this grudge against Psynews and was definitely closed.


In October 2008, Children reappeared as well [and I hope he will post here to tell more].

Psynews now has a collection of approximately 40 forums and subforums, more than 3000 album reviews, 100 interviews and 10000 subscribed members. As of November 2007 it was read by 3000 visitors on a daily basis.

[GaySatanicHippie]

Thanks for that overview, Mars! Very interesting trip down memory lane. Its really weird that Children just disappeared from the face of this earth. Maybe hell come back one day to just say hi?

 

But I was here, too, starting 2000 reviewing CDs. I used the name aje back in the day or in the very beginning my old email adress djaje60@hotmail.com. Then I left for a while when all that Bruce and Jakob shit happened, and then I returned 2005 and since then i never really left, even though i dont post nearly as much as i used to in 2005 and 2006. I even got banned once for like 5 hours for pretending to be EP and instigating fights Ever since then i have been a nice boy, though...

 

Keep up the good work, Mars!

[frozen dream]

and when the memories are gone?

[psytrancer]

wow!

 

one of my friends pointed me here after they saw it on google.

 

such a spin out - that was an awesome party in Paris !

 

happy to say I still love psytrance

 

Hope you are all good! Mars, Max, Joske!

 

Joske I saw you last year I think - I didn't make it into that party

 

Still living in London, still going to parties, trying to make music myself! It ain't easy!

 

Guy

[Caffein:me]

I feel so honored of posting here, it's like taking part of history.

i must say i was very moved by this history post, and i had no idea up until now that suntrip records were made by Mars / anoebis. but it explains alot

 

I Feel that in psy-news' honor we should make more parties in the future, and i'll hope for a site to become world renowned

as for the matter of people "hacking" psynews. Who in the world would do that? it's just plain mean, and definetely not plur!

 

I feel comforted that back in the day, anoebis was the same age as me. i always had thougts about being to "young" to participate in psynews, and the events it brings.

Most of all, i really am suprised about the initiative of psynews, that the original creators easily could advertise for suntrip records, but won't do so. that's really keeping it independant.

 

As for the whole matter of organizing parties, i feel that psynews should bring some initiative into making parties or "get togethers" as most of us share the same interests.

 

And again, thanks for posting this enlightening thread, more people should know about this. thought about making a wiki?

or should the members take initiative?

[Go-Goa Trancer]

And again, thanks for posting this enlightening thread, more people should know about this. thought about making a wiki?

or should the members take initiative?

He had an idea

 

http://www.psynews.org/forums/index.php?sh...amp;mode=linear

[Moai]

Between February and May 2002, a second contest was held. A CD called "Another Demention" was scheduled to be released, but Inpsyde Media finally cancelled it.<br/>

<br/>

 

The tracklist was :<br/>

CD 1<br/>

1. 08'23" Kinich Ahau : The 3rd Spiral (Luxembourg/Israel/Mexico)<br/>

2. 08'11" Agalactia And 5Meo-Geo : Ficus (Israel)<br/>

3. 06'41" Sienis : Rubbabong (Sweden)<br/>

4. 09'50" Moai : Chimera (France/Sweden)<br/>

5. 10'17" Sneila : Flying Objects Always Reach The Ground (Romania)<br/>

6. 10'28" Artha : Mahabharta (Poland)<br/>

7. 10'15" Ethereal Phaze : Liquid Blue Vision (Sweden)<br/>

8. 14'40" Prosect : Invasion (Israel)

<br/><br/>

CD 2<br/>

1. 10'59" Spiralgeist : Mean And Mean (Germany)<br/>

2. 06'58" Masada : Bhongo Bhonged (Sweden)<br/>

3. 08'14" Amygdala : Proprioception Malfunction (Denmark)<br/>

4. 06'41" Spiralix : Spirit Guide (???)<br/>

5. 08'22" Alien Noise : 604 Maniacs (Romania/Germany)<br/>

6. 09'07" Chiron : Ice Age (???)<br/>

7. 10'17" Ethereal : Fireflies (Sweden)<br/>

8. 08'47" Khetzal : Narayana (???)<br/>

9. 10'15" Vax : Tataria (Ukraine)

<br/>

<br/>

Again, several of these artists made their way onto the Psy scene: Ethereal, Prosect and Khetzal released full length albums; Sienis and Sneila performned many times, and Moaï is still active under another name. In mid 2002, the site had an extraordinary base of daily visitors, up to 2800/day. Children and Mars were interviewed by a Canadian newspaper and Psynews sponsored the Samothraki psytrance festival. This period is considered as the most prolific for the site, and gained it the most recognition. Several investors tried to buy the site but Children always insisted on his independence and declined their offers.<br/>

Hmm Wasnt it Out Of Orion who was supposed to release it? Because they contacted me with a contract about the track Liquid Blue Vision.

I guess this CD will never be released. (T_T)

 

By the way, MOAI is still active under same name:

http://www.psynews.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=52966

[pixiejanet]

its a wonderful forum and i`m so glad i came across it on my surfin wanderings.....

!

[draeke]

This is truly nice.

What a lovely website this has always been.. at the beginning i was a bit sad that the old goatrance.free.fr had disappeared as i was a regular user of TRiP first and then of goatrance.free.fr

 

There were some posts of mine somewhere around and definetely liked this all from the real beginning. I don't remember if i ever wrote a review but my guess is no, i was browsing a lot of them though and the site alwas helped me to discover more and more about this world.

 

Very good about the parties and i wish i had come to some of the old ones..

 

You should definetely make some psynews parties again!

 

Thanks for all the effort you put through all this over the last 10 years

 

Ps: I think i spotted children somewhere by the way, will send mars a pm about it.

[Basilisk]

Bravo, what a great write-up about the history of the site! I am glad to have been a part of it. Respect! :posford:

[shaman of sound]

beautiful!

 

i rememmber the old site... i think i was 15-16 when i first loged on this site.... i remmember the feelings i had these days... i was a kid back than.

 

there have been times that i have been more active and in the recent 3 years i was hardly active because of my army service (thank god im done with that!) now im free again!

 

i am very proud to be a part of this forum and community!

 

long live psynews!

[MattMan]

I remember reading "what is Goa Trance", surfing the various pages back in those days. Great memories. Goa Gil! :posford:

[Children]

Hi all, I'm happy to see this website that took us so long time is still alive, and REALLY alive (like me ) !!!

 

Indeed, I suddenly left, cause I met a girl and we wanted to start a new project, which obviously takes time (and I didn't know how to explain to Mars I didn't have time anymore for the website or for parties) : marrying, and having little babies :-)

 

We now have 2 (Elora in 2005 and Vincent in 2007 who is sleeping alongside of me while i'm writing this post and swinging his pushchair) and are very happy of this new life, even if it gives us much less time, for the moment, for our hoobies. I still listen to psytrance when I can, and am still in love for this kind of music. And I use this website when I'm searching for reviews of recent albums."

Edited January 18, 2009 by Children

[abasio]

:o :o

WTF is children really here?

Nice to see everything is happy and good

[Children]

;)

 

Thx a lot, nice to see people are still so nice here !!!

Edited January 18, 2009 by Children

[abasio]

Yeah, it's still a nice place to hang out cyber(ly)

Welcome back

[draeke]

the founder has returned

Children the creator, welcome back!

thanks again for making this back then, from your idea flourished a great forum, recognized worldwide.

[Ormion]

You obviously don't know me, but huge respect for creating the best site in the web!

[Insejn]

OMG It's Children!

[Otto Matta]

Wow, he is indeed alive. Hello from Epic Automata. It has been a long time. Glad to hear you're well.

[psytones]

The legend has returned!

[Children]

Hi all :-)

 

Thanks a lot for your greetings, still all this always exists thanks to Mars who made this site keeping going on even atfer I left ! It would never have been what is it today without his help !

 

In any case that is exactly the site I wanted to create at the early beginning : a big community, independent, and happy vibes between its users ... wow ! isn't it the spirit of psytrance !?! :-)

[Go-Goa Trancer]

Wohow! I think it is time for some heavy relevant clips!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOkFWAglXoo...feature=related

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jweeOv7fX70

 

 

You do realise you have 8 years of drama to catch up, do you, Children?

[RTP]

You obviously don't know me, but huge respect for creating the best site in the web!

Can't put it better myself

 

Respect!

[Malevol3nt]

Hey welcome back. You don't know me, but I used to browse around http://goatrance.free.fr, amazing site back in it's days. So, thanx for starting the community website!