1. Love, Peace & Trance

Love, Peace & Trance is the sort of album that exists solely in its own universe. The murky layers of production which blend ambient techno drones and house rhythms with reverbed-out Indian-inspired instrumentation. The dense vocal harmonies which float at the bottom of the mix and then slowly rise to the top as they envelop these songs. Together it all creates such a singular ambiance it’s almost impossible to mistake it for anything other than itself.

The opening track, “Ho’la”, on the opening record side, “Quiet Love Mode”, opens with the sound of ghostly analog synthesizers over a sort of lo-fi recording of wind chime sounds (miraculously living up to the absurd “Quiet Love Mode” name). It’s a relatively short and drifting tune, but one which predicts the album’s’ very light and airy fusion of synthetic and natural incredibly well. “Quiet Love Mode” is capped off by the album’s lead single “Hasu Kriya”, a warm and almost dream-pop-esque song that weaves the three’s vocals into layers upon layers of synths and muted drum machine as the song pushes towards complete bliss.

Followed by “Silent Peace Mode” and “Calm Trance Mode”, Love Peace & Trance certainly never loses its sort of stoned-out-of-its-mind attitude, like on the track “Yeelen” where an English spoken word piece is given over top tribal drums and fluttering flute melodies. A speech which of course sounds like it was written through strong substances, featuring such cutting lines as ‘Death is the next step in life’, and ‘The body is the vehicle of the spirit’. It may remind you of experiences you’ve had talking to drugged out strangers on the street, or for those who indulge, perhaps your own comically vague thoughts you find scribbled on paper the next morning. Even more so on tracks like “Mammal Mia”, where Love, Peace & Trance almost sounds like Shpongle-esque psybient or psytrance, hard panning sleepy female vocals over bubbly drum machines while synthscapes drift overhead. Crafting a sound that was in many ways a decade ahead of its time, predicting the sounds of artists like Carbon Based Lifeforms and Shpongle.

It’s an album that certainly deals in dead-serious absurdity, selling its brand of future hippie aesthetic without an ounce of self-awareness or a modicum of irony. What I must stress is the music though, that drugged out delivery service is so fascinating and overwhelming you can almost feel yourself succumbing to it’s dead eyed world view, as the word “vibes” almost slips off your tongue. The warm and suffocating synths push out your cynicism as the gentle bells and vocal harmonies wash over you, clearing your mind of objective thought and individuality.

Love, Peace & Trance is the feeling of entering the collective, a higher intelligence, a “vibey-ier” intelligence.

(Sidebar: The song “Kokoro Da” actually features Haruomi Hosono singing, and sounds very much like a straight up synth-pop track. I am convinced Haruomi accidentally sent this song along with the others to the label and was simply too embarrassed to correct it after the mistake. Nothing will convince me otherwise.)