The history of underground electronic music is littered with inspired releases that, for one reason or other, slipped through the cracks. It would be fair to say that Trans-4M’s 1992 debut album, Sublunar Oracles, is one such release.
The full-length originally appeared on Belgian dance music megalith Buzz, an imprint whose output tended towards the more commercial end of the dance music market. Initially, Sublunar Oracles failed to make much impact and was championed only by a small group chill-out DJs; these days, it’s rightly considered a lost classic and one of the most overlooked albums of the ambient house era.
It’s certainly an inspired set with a story to tell. It was the product of the blossoming studio relationship between brothers Stefan and Dimitri Van Elsen. The former, the elder of the two, had been making a living as a club DJ on the Belgian scene since the early 1980s, taking up electronic music production following years spent playing experimental and industrial fare on local pirate station Radio Centraal. Dimitri, meanwhile, spent his days studying jazz piano and his evenings working on tracks.
The chance to release a collection of their bedroom productions came via a friend who worked for Buzz. The Van Elsen brothers grasped the opportunity, sequencing and tweaking a set of evocative, otherworldly tracks that had initially been written and produced over the best part of four years.
Despite Stefan’s status as a working club DJ, Sublunar Oracles largely looked towards the vibrant chill-out and ambient house scenes for inspiration, combining their own manipulated synthesizer sounds, dreamy jazz chord progressions and gentle beats with a smorgasbord of spoken word samples and home-made field recordings.
The Antwerp-based brothers designed the set as a concept album of sorts, with a clear narrative thread running through the album’s eight intoxicating and ethereal tracks. However, they never made this concept public, and it’s down to a new generation of listeners to piece together the story themselves.
26 years on from its initial release, the Van Elsens’ lost classic is getting a new lease of life via a Safe Trip reissue that stretches the original’s eight inspired tracks over two heavyweight slabs of wax. Beginning with the breakbeat-driven bliss of “Arrival”, the album bobs and weaves its way through deep ambient house, sublime horizontal soundscapes, saxophone-laden electronic mysticism, dusty downtempo grooves and glassy-eyed positivity.

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(2023 Repress) Young Marco mines deep into the 90s era Italian house underground and strikes absolute gold... Part 1 of 2..

This spring, Safe Trip will release Welcome To Paradiso, an expansive retrospective of the Italian dream house sound co-compiled by label founder Young Marco.

At the tail end of the 1980s, a new take on deep house began to emerge from Italian studios. 'Dream house' drew inspiration from key U.S deep house records of the period � the spacey melodiousness of Larry Heard's productions, and the rich jazziness of tracks originating in New Jersey in particular � but sounded distinctly different. Its' 'head-in-the-clouds' feel � all rich chords, tactile basslines, fluid piano lines and starry electronics � made 'dream house' a uniquely Italian proposition.

First and foremost, the style echoed the wavy, glassy-eyed positivity of the period more than any other. While music in the UK and the low countries was getting faster and heavier, Italy's 'dream house' producers continued to create music shot through with warmth and colourful musicality until 1993. While few 'dream house' records were made after then, its' sounds and loose aesthetic influenced subsequent styles such as trance and progressive house.

During its' peak, dream house � or, as it was tagged by leading Italian label DFC, 'ambient house' (echoing the similarly minded work of UK pioneers such as The Orb and The KLF) � could be heard blaring from club sound systems across Europe. The style's popularity was fuelled, in part at least, by the runaway international success of "Sueno Latino".

Welcome To Paradiso gathers together some of the finest examples of the style for the first time since the turn of the 90s. It includes a smattering of scene anthems � Key Tronics Ensemble's peerless "Calypso of House", Morenas's "Sonnambulism", the ambient mix of Last Rhythm's Italo-house classic "Last Rhythm" � alongside a swathe of hard-to-find, in-demand and forgotten gems.

There are cuts from key players in the movement � the likes of Don Pablos Animals, Sasha (later to find fame with a strong of bouncy, piano-heavy Italo-house cuts), and Dreamatic � plus a string of lesser-known names whose contribution to the evolution of the sound should not be overlooked. Young Marco has also found space for Leo Anibaldi's "Elements", a rare deep house outing from a producer who later helped define the sound of Roman techno.

Over the course of two double-vinyl compilations (and one extended digital download package), Welcome To Paradiso celebrates one of the most evocative and imaginative musical styles of electronic music's golden era. Kick off your shoes, turn your gaze skywards, and immerse yourself in the music. More

(2023 Repress) Safe Trip is taking one final deep dive into the warm waters of Italian dream house with Welcome To Paradise Volume 3, the concluding chapter in the label’s journey through the previously overlooked world of one of dance music’s most vibrant and influential underground movements.While the influence of dream house continues to echo through the ages, the style was at its peak between 1989 and ’94, when producers across Italy delivered a high volume of loved-up, wavy and occasionally blissful productions that fused contemporary deep house tropes – most notably from Chicago, New York and New Jersey – with elements borrowed from ambient, jazz and Balearica. It’s this six-year period that provides the focus for Welcome To Paradise Volume 3, which draws together a spine-tingling mixture of sought-after classics, unheralded gems and little-known delights from the original Italian dream house movement. Thrillingly, Welcome to Paradise Volume 3 co-curator Young Marco has managed to source two previously unreleased tracks during the dream house period: the gently unfurling, sunrise-friendly bliss of Jacy’s “Resounding Seashell” and a special “Longer Edit” of Neurostate’s brilliant “Dance To The House”, a track that – somewhat surprisingly – has never previously been issued on vinyl before. Elsewhere, there are plenty of treats to set the pulse racing, from the must-have deep house brilliance of Leo Anibaldi’s “Universe” – a rare foray into dream house territory from the Italian techno pioneer – and the Afro-bleep-goes-dream-house trip of Golem’s “Sun City”, to the cowbell-driven, New Jersey garage-influenced warmth of Deep Choice’s “Children Trip” and Cosmic Galaxy’s “Walkin’ On The Moon”, a Detroit techno-influenced outing with a deliciously saucer-eyed, extended ambient intro. You’ll also struggle to find a more inspired house record than Green Baize’s “Tramp Heart”, which mixes familiar dream house elements with spacey electronics and tribal chants that recall Italy’s early ‘80s Afro-cosmic scene. It all adds up to another essential selection of rich, glassy-eyed dream house treats tailor-made for sound-tracking drawn-out Adriatic sunsets, Mediterranean sunrises and loved-up parties the world over. More

(2023 Repress) Safe Trip is taking one final deep dive into the warm waters of Italian dream house with Welcome To Paradise Volume 3, the concluding chapter in the label’s journey through the previously overlooked world of one of dance music’s most vibrant and influential underground movements.While the influence of dream house continues to echo through the ages, the style was at its peak between 1989 and ’94, when producers across Italy delivered a high volume of loved-up, wavy and occasionally blissful productions that fused contemporary deep house tropes – most notably from Chicago, New York and New Jersey – with elements borrowed from ambient, jazz and Balearica. It’s this six-year period that provides the focus for Welcome To Paradise Volume 3, which draws together a spine-tingling mixture of sought-after classics, unheralded gems and little-known delights from the original Italian dream house movement. Thrillingly, Welcome to Paradise Volume 3 co-curator Young Marco has managed to source two previously unreleased tracks during the dream house period: the gently unfurling, sunrise-friendly bliss of Jacy’s “Resounding Seashell” and a special “Longer Edit” of Neurostate’s brilliant “Dance To The House”, a track that – somewhat surprisingly – has never previously been issued on vinyl before. Elsewhere, there are plenty of treats to set the pulse racing, from the must-have deep house brilliance of Leo Anibaldi’s “Universe” – a rare foray into dream house territory from the Italian techno pioneer – and the Afro-bleep-goes-dream-house trip of Golem’s “Sun City”, to the cowbell-driven, New Jersey garage-influenced warmth of Deep Choice’s “Children Trip” and Cosmic Galaxy’s “Walkin’ On The Moon”, a Detroit techno-influenced outing with a deliciously saucer-eyed, extended ambient intro. You’ll also struggle to find a more inspired house record than Green Baize’s “Tramp Heart”, which mixes familiar dream house elements with spacey electronics and tribal chants that recall Italy’s early ‘80s Afro-cosmic scene. It all adds up to another essential selection of rich, glassy-eyed dream house treats tailor-made for sound-tracking drawn-out Adriatic sunsets, Mediterranean sunrises and loved-up parties the world over. More

Following the success of the first Planet Love compilation, Safe Trip has delved even deeper into the roots and formative years of trance music. The result is a vivid snapshot of heady, trance-inducing music released between 1990 and ’95.

Like its predecessor, Planet Love 2 does not deliver a straightforward chronological run-down of influential ‘proto-trance’ cuts and key early anthems. Instead, it casts its’ net far wider for inspiration, joining the dots between trance-inducing tracks in a disparate mixture of interconnected styles.

Before trance became rigidly defined in the late 1990s, the term was more loosely used as a descriptor, with the tag variously being attached to tracks that combined elements of techno, ambient, breakbeat, deep house, electronica, progressive house, acid, tribal and new beat. What unified these disparate musical strands was an emphasis on groove, melody, atmosphere and – more often than not – psychedelic intent.

You’ll find all this and more amongst the 12 colourful and emotive tracks from around the world that make up Planet Love 2. The hard-to-pigeonhole, early ‘90s New York rave scene is represented by the immersive ambient of Lazer Worshippers’ ‘Free Flight’, Revelation’s trippy gem ‘First Power (Domination Dub)’ and the delay-laden drums, held-note new wave chords and psychedelic electronics of ‘Time Warp’ by Moodswings.

The UK’s rarely discussed role in the development of early trance – often via tracks that touched on ambient techno and progressive house – is represented by the Obsession Project’s prototype melodic trance obscurity ‘Untitled Part 3’, the Arc’s fast-then-slow rework of The Moody Boyz ‘The Pygmy Song (Nocturnal Version)’ and ‘X O Surf’ from The Deep, a breakbeat-driven workout that defies easy categorization.

Naturally, the popularity of early trance in Europe is reflected in the track listing, too. Check the formative progressive trance of French producer Innertales’ ‘Odysee’, two tracks from Italy (T.E.W’s ‘Doubt Int’ and Alien Signal’s melodic ‘Deep Sky Delights’), and a trio of often overlooked cuts by German artists (early Svan Vath number ‘L’Esperanza’, the Jam El Mar co-produced ‘We Come in Piece (Desert Mix)’ by Dance 2 Trance, and ‘A Source’, the opening track from Tobias Beldermann’s first EP as Redeye.

Offering a deeper and more diverse definition of early trance than volume one and packed to the rafters with sought-after and overlooked gems, Planet Love 2 is a fitting follow-up to Safe Trip’s first collection of formative trance treats. More

An echo through the ages, channelled and tuned by Young Marco. Feelings of tactile, loved-up naivety, transferred to musical waves of colour, rhythmic energy, and hallucinatory aural visions. This is ‘I’m Still Mellow’ and the psychedelic yin to its’ yang, reverse alternative version ‘Wollem Lits M’I’.

Both are imaginative 21st century takes on ‘Mellow’, a long-forgotten Amsterdam-born sub-genre of dance music that took the house template and re-imagined it for Dutch dancefloors in the early ‘90s. More

Repress!
Having previously celebrated the deep and colourful world of late ‘80s and early ‘80s Italian house via the popular Welcome To Paradise compilation series, Safe Trip has now turned its attention to the roots and formative years of trance music.

Planet Love: Early Transmissions 1990-95 showcases the roots and formative years of trance via 13 loved-up, psychedelic, colourful, melodious and surprisingly varied dancefloor experiments from Europe, Australia and the United States.

The compilation includes pioneering proto-trance and early trance tracks from the likes of Hawke (AKA influential San Francisco producer Gavin Hardkiss), Epilson 9, Spooky, Oliver Lieb, Holy Ghost Inc, Morgan Wild (an outfit whose members included early NYC techno titan Damon Wild), Mijk van Dijk, Glam and Paul van Dyk.

Packed with must-have cuts, slept-on gems and sought-after rarities, Planet Love: Early Transmissions 1990-95 maintains the loved-up, listenable vibe of Welcome to Paradise while broadening its musical horizons. It is not a definitive history of trance music’s early years, but rather a colourful, life-affirming celebration of the varied strands that came together to create one of dance music’s most popular and enduring styles. More

It’s been all go at the Safe Trip Institute of late, with a visiting professor of Cosmic Numerology and Solar-Psychic Channelling joining us in the laboratory to conduct intense analysis on more audio artefacts. Dr Prins Thomas is currently on secondment from the Full Pupp College of Scandi-Science in Oslo and has provided his own aural interpretations of audio held in the file ST012, colloquially known as “Tulipa Moves”. This file was said to be the work of an associate fellow of the Institute known only as “Darling”. We have subsequently carefully considered his musical re-configurations, which can be found in file ST016, and would like to offer the following observations: • His extensive experimentations on the artefact known as “Kiss The Glass” tie in closely to his exploration of astronomic numerology. By adding together the various numbers used to represent specific musical elements contained in the recording – synthesizer leads, TB-303 style’ acid motifs, machine drums and so on – we arrived at a startling total: 84626852. Coincidentally this number is also the given codename for one of the galaxy’s most confusing stars. • Dr Thomas’s other re-framing (of ST012 artefact 05, “The M Song”) is even more ear catching and eye-opening. We observe that the echoing electronic note sequences, chiming motifs and shuffling rhythm represents the transfer of data between two points; one above the surface of the Earth, the other within its hollow interior. This is a significant breakthrough on many levels. More

The history of underground electronic music is littered with inspired releases that, for one reason or other, slipped through the cracks. It would be fair to say that Trans-4M’s 1992 debut album, Sublunar Oracles, is one such release.
The full-length originally appeared on Belgian dance music megalith Buzz, an imprint whose output tended towards the more commercial end of the dance music market. Initially, Sublunar Oracles failed to make much impact and was championed only by a small group chill-out DJs; these days, it’s rightly considered a lost classic and one of the most overlooked albums of the ambient house era.
It’s certainly an inspired set with a story to tell. It was the product of the blossoming studio relationship between brothers Stefan and Dimitri Van Elsen. The former, the elder of the two, had been making a living as a club DJ on the Belgian scene since the early 1980s, taking up electronic music production following years spent playing experimental and industrial fare on local pirate station Radio Centraal. Dimitri, meanwhile, spent his days studying jazz piano and his evenings working on tracks.
The chance to release a collection of their bedroom productions came via a friend who worked for Buzz. The Van Elsen brothers grasped the opportunity, sequencing and tweaking a set of evocative, otherworldly tracks that had initially been written and produced over the best part of four years.
Despite Stefan’s status as a working club DJ, Sublunar Oracles largely looked towards the vibrant chill-out and ambient house scenes for inspiration, combining their own manipulated synthesizer sounds, dreamy jazz chord progressions and gentle beats with a smorgasbord of spoken word samples and home-made field recordings.
The Antwerp-based brothers designed the set as a concept album of sorts, with a clear narrative thread running through the album’s eight intoxicating and ethereal tracks. However, they never made this concept public, and it’s down to a new generation of listeners to piece together the story themselves.
26 years on from its initial release, the Van Elsens’ lost classic is getting a new lease of life via a Safe Trip reissue that stretches the original’s eight inspired tracks over two heavyweight slabs of wax. Beginning with the breakbeat-driven bliss of “Arrival”, the album bobs and weaves its way through deep ambient house, sublime horizontal soundscapes, saxophone-laden electronic mysticism, dusty downtempo grooves and glassy-eyed positivity.

More

June 2018, Amsterdam, NL: 12 months ago we concluded a series of experiments with a test subject named Ben Penn. A year on, we decided to repeat this experiment at his Tilburg base. Once again, the results were startling...
After being provided with a sizeable dose of an enhanced and notably stronger derivative of 4-Ho Met (codenamed ST011), Penn not only reported intense hallucinations but also enhanced music production capabilities. With the aid of electronic instruments and hardware, he worked quickly, producing both his trademark “higher level inter-dimensional funk” and compositions that defied our previous expectations.
During the early stages of his ST011 experience, Penn completely ignored the provided Rhythm Composer and instead crafted a colourful, humid, jazzy and beat-free track entitled “Nix”, which boasted loose and fluid synthesizer motifs. As his hallucinatory experience intensified, Penn giddily tapped out tropical rhythms on the provided beat-making device, smothering them in alien electronics and sticky melodies. When we asked what this devilishly good cut was called, he simply replied: “Not Important”.
As the test went on and the most intense symptoms died down, Penn was much like his old self. Before the ST011 wore off completely, he was able to finish two examples of his trademark “inter-dimensional funk”: the skewed, introspective, bassline-driven wooziness of “Ben” and the mazy, kaleidoscopic goodness of “People”. The latter composition was particularly potent and ear pleasing, suggesting that his ST011 experience had finished on an intense high. More

Den Hague's Dazion (who previously released a 12" on MFM's Second Circle imprint), with a 2 tracker for Safe Trip More

AFTER BREAKING OUT OF OUR HOLDING FACILITY IN EARLY 2017, WE TRACKED THE HUMANOID ALIEN LIFEFORM KNOWN AS "DARLING" TO A DEEP BUNKER IN AMSTERDAM. WHILE WE WERE UNABLE TO GAIN ENTRY TIO THE INNER CHAMBER, AN OPERATIVE SUCCESSFULLY PLACED AN EAVESDROPPING DEVICE CLOSE BY. WHILE MONITORING THE LIFEFORM'S MOVEMENTS, WE WERE ABLE TO RECORD EIGHT MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS OF VARYING LENGTHS THAT IT HAD CREATED USING A RANGE OF ANALOGUE AND DIGITAL ELECTRONIC INSTRUMENTS. More

WHILE ATTEMPTING – AND FAILING – TO APPREHEND THE SHADOWY FIGURE KNOWN AS “MAX ABYSMAL” DURING A FRENZIED CHASE THROUGH THE UNDERGROUND AMSTERDAM ARTS ESTABLISHMENT “HET SKATECAFÉ”, WE RECOVERED A BOXED REEL OF QUARTER-INCH TAPE. INTELLIGENT ASSETS HAVE CONFIRMED THAT THIS CONTAINS MUSICAL RECORDINGS OF THE TYPE USED TO PASS ON CODED MESSAGES TO THE SAFE TRIP ORGANISATION. THE FIRST RECORDING WE HAVE TITLED “DONNA, DON’T STOP”. WE INCLUDE IT WITH THIS MESSAGE SO YOU CAN PERFORM YOUR OWN ANAYLSIS. NOTE THE USE OF A RISING AND FALLING ELECTRONIC MOTIF CAPABLE OF INDUCING A TRANCE-LIKE STATE IN THOSE UNTRAINED IN LISTENING TO ELECTRONIC MUSIC THIS POTENT AND EMOTIVE. “SUTEKH’S MIRAGE”, THE SECOND CODED COMPOSITION, IS BOLDER AND WARMER IN TONE, MAKING USE OF DAZZLINGLY COLOURFUL MELODIC PATTERNS AND PASSAGES OF PERCUSSION THAT REFERENCE POLYRHYTHMS. DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THE SURFACE BEAUTY OF THIS RECORDING: IT IS CAPABLE OF INDUCING HALLUCINATIONS AND IRREGULAR HEARTBEATS, AND THEREFORE COULD BE VERY DANGEROUS IN THE WRONG HANDS. More

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL: WE WRITE TO YOU WITH ALARMING NEWS ABOUT THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL SPECIMEN DISCOVERED IN THE FORBIDDEN FOREST IN JULY 2017. THIS LIFEFORM, CODE-NAME “DARLING”, ESCAPED FROM THE TOP-SECRET SAFE TRIP ORGANISATION HOLDING FACILITY LATE LAST NIGHT. ALL THAT WAS LEFT INSIDE THE SUBJECT’S ENCLOSURE WAS A PRESSED POLYVINYL DISC CONTAINING TWO PIECES OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC. THE FIRST, WHICH WE HAVE TITLED “WHEN SHE HATES ME”, SOUNDS LIKE A CALL TO A DISTANT MATE OR PARTNER, COMPOSED AT SUNRISE AND SHOT THROUGH WITH BLISSFUL POSITIVITY. THE OTHER, NOW KNOWN AS “ISLE OF RED”, COMBINES SURGING DRUMS WITH POIGNANT AND MELANCHOLIC SOUNDS THAT ARE CLEARLY UNEARTHLY IN ORIGIN. More

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: FOLLOWING THE RELEASE OF THE RECENTLY DISCOVERED MUSICAL RECORDINGS OF THE ESCAPED EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL LIFEFORM KNOWN AS “DARLING”, WE HAVE UNEARTHED TWO MORE AURAL EXPLORATIONS THAT WE BELIEVE THE SAFE TRIP ORGANISATION MUST MAKE AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC. THE FIRST WE ARE CALLING “SIM”. IT IS THE SUBJECT’S MOST ALIEN AND OTHERWORLDLY COMPOSITION YET, COMBINING MIND-ALTERING RHYTHMIC ELEMENTS WITH ELASTIC ELECTRONIC BASS AND CHORDS FROM BEYOND THE STARS. THE SECOND, “MOON FLEET”, CAN ONLY BE DECRIBED AS NEXT-LEVEL SCI-FI DAYDREAMING. SINCE “DARLING” HAD NO ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC HARDWARE OR MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS DURING HIS TIME IN OUR HOLDING FACILITY, WE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA HOW THIS MUSIC CAME INTO BEING. More

Amsterdam based Darling with a six tracker for Safe Trip. More

new on Young Marco's Safe Trip More