Y3K

Time travel is easy. Perhaps you've already time travelled. One nice way to is get lost in "the groove", as some big trance sound planes out to somewhere to you don't know where and the dance floor recedes in the mass of colour and light. For a moment you might capture a glimpse of a place that you've built. It doesn't exist yet, but you see the path to it in sharp relief. You can see yourself intimately connected to this vision. In that strange moment future and present are one and time could flow in either direction, simply on whim. If a chanced or fortunate moment places you there, here's a good suggestion: leave a message for your future self.

Once a couple of years ago, I was snowed-in after a rave in the Southern Alps. Along with seven other assorted crew and groupies, we crashed out for three days in the lounge of one of the organisers. There was nothing much to do, plenty of hoo-ha and time to be whiled away talking and fondling the opposite sex. On the third day there however, a rather strange incident broke the routine. A wizened-looking guy dressed entirely in iridescent merino thermals, with a mungeing great Getafix-style beard and bare feet, rocked on up to the door and addressing me by my full name, handed me a magazine - not just any magazine, but a magazine from the future. I can't reveal the name of this magazine, because I think it would spoil the surprise, but suffice to say this magazine held me in awe. One particular thing that sticks in my mind was an article titled 'Infinite dimensions : virtual worlds breed new generation of explorers'.

Hmmm... now it seems to me that that's essentially what we're aiming to do here: in this digital space, we're building and exploring new dimensions, exploring them with our minds, exploring them through our music. The prime difference between music of today and music of yesterday is not in structure; plenty of electronic music follows forms better known for classical works. (Compare and contrast a 20-minute deep trance epic with a symphonic piece for example.) The difference is that today, we have at our disposal the near-perfect freedom of the digital domain, which allows the designer and composer to clearly delineate the signal from the noise. This sets up a solid communications channel to the listener.

No one can create the future by themselves. Look around you; you're surrounded by people every moment of your life. Even when you're alone people fill your memories, your thoughts and your plans. So if you happen to have a vision of your future, you're going to need to take other people with you on the journey, or else you might end up living in someone else's vision of the future rather than yours. You need to communicate your future to the people around you, and as I'm hinting, one rather excellent way to do so is to create the sound, vision, and emotion so that other people may slip the shackles of time and drift off into your vision of the future too.

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