Madison is praised for its nightlife and party scene. With countless bars, major concert venues and an active student body that really loves to party, finding something to do on the weekend is never hard.

Nevertheless, Madison can feel somewhat monotonous on the weekend, especially if the student is underage. If you are under 21, you’re essentially limited to house parties, frat parties, TITU events or movie nights. More than half of undergraduates are underage.

While there is never a lack of people complaining about underage drinking and fake IDs, there is a huge absence of fun things to do for 18-plus students. How many weekends in a row can students attend to a show at the Rathskeller, a pseudo-club night at Club 770, a house party where conversation and music is drowned away by the 40 freshman who just showed up, or that frat party that turns away all single guys.

Audiognomes, a Madison-based promotion group, threw Madison’s first all Psy-trance party March 27th at the Orpheum Stage Door (121 West Johnson St., Madison, WI).

So what is Psy-trance? Psychedelic Trance or Psy-Trance emerged from the Goa Trance sound that went through a brief, but intense period of popularity in the mid-nineties. Goa, on the west coast of India, has been a destination and a home to westerners in pursuit of a new musical consciousness through dancing for over 30 years. The music at the parties on the beaches and in the jungles around Goa progressed from Reggae, Dub and Psychedelic Rock in the 70s, to early House, Techno and Industrial sounds in the 80s.

Eventually a fusion of different genres of electronic music occurred and Goa trance was born. Whereas traditional music is essentially ordered sounds generated via instruments of a fixed timbre (piano, violin, drums, strings etc), Goa trance, which eventually would become Psy-trance, is comprised predominately of sounds generated by frequency manipulations of notes. The manipulation of the harmonics produces obscure pitches and effects that are foreign and novel to the human ear.

Yet while the nature of the music is artificial, the experience of dancing to Psy-trance is almost as natural as tribal dances and Shamans. Today Psy-trance is a global phenomenon, with DJs and producers from Israel, the US, Sweden, Germany, India, Japan, China, and more. Parties involve a real sense of community on a multicultural level.