Psychedelic music was the single greatest invention of the 1960s and remained the dominant genre in the 1990s. The 1960s coined a number of psychedelic styles, and they were still the basic psychedelic styles of the 1990s: the psychedelic pop of the Doors, the psychedelic freak-out of the Red Crayola, the psychedelic trance of the Velvet Underground, and the acid jam of the Grateful Dead. Among the innovations introduced during the 1980s, dream-pop and shoegazing were still popular in the 1990s. Far from merely plagiarizing the classics, the most significant bands of the decade contributed to re-define the art of the sonic trip.

Mercury Rev (111), originating from upstate New York and featuring John Donahue on guitar and Dave Fridmann on bass, achieved a synthesis of historical proportions. Yerself Is Steam (1991) was a psychedelic extravaganza that spanned three decades and three continents. Emotionally, it ran the gamut from Red Crayola's anarchic freak-outs to contemplative/meditative ecstases in the vein of new-age music. Technically, it blended and alternated pop melody, ambient droning, mind-boggling distortion, oneiric folk, martial tempos, pastoral passages, infernal noise and lyrical lullabies. Far from being merely a nostalgic tribute to an age, Mercury Rev's operation started with the hippie vision of nirvana on the other side of a swirling and chaotic music, but tempered the optimism of that program with an awareness of the human condition, and poisoned it with fits of neurosis and decadent atmospheres. The fantasies of Boces (1993) were even more variegated and imaginative, veritable collages of sonic events. The dense and busy arrangements, that owed more and more to Fridmann's command of keyboards and orchestration, did not interfere with what was fundamentally a much gentler mood, a distant relative of Kevin Ayers' fairy-tales. The progress towards a joyful and serene sound continued on See You On The Other Side (1995), which frequently embraced poppy melodies and facile rhythms, whereas Deserter's Songs (1998) marked the zenith of their phantasmagoric orchestrations.

Luna (1), formed by Galaxie 500's guitarist and vocalist Dean Wareham, Feelies' drummer Stanley Demeski and Chills' bassist Justin Harwood, specialized in shy, tender, whispered/conversational pop tunes, best on Bewitched (1994).

Minneapolis' Motion Picture (1) achieved zen-like grandeur with Every Last Romance (1998).

In Indiana, Arson Garden (1) sounded like the Jefferson Airplane performing renaissance psalms on Under Towers (1990).

Flaming Lips' lunatic pop influenced New Jersey's Tadpoles (1), whose He Fell Into The Sky (1994) matched the demented grandeur of the masters, the Wallmen in upstate New York, Jennyanykind in North Carolina. Mark Kramer's school of psychedelic pop continued to yield cauldrons of melodic oddities, for example Uncle Wiggly's There Was An Elk (1993).

Midwest groups tended to be derivative of 1960s' psychedelic-pop (Electric Prunes, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Blues Magoos) and garage-rock (13th Floor Elevator, Seeds). Notable albums of this kind were: Green Machine's King Mover (1993) in Minnesota; Outrageous Cherry's Outrageous Cherry (1994) in Michigan; Trunk Federation's The Infamous Hamburger Transfer (1996) in Arizona.

Original Sins' bizarre leader, John Terlesky, created one of the most irrational corpus of music ever recorded under the moniker Brother J.T. (2). Albums such as Vibrolux (1994) and Music For The Other Head (1996) conceived composition as an utter mess. Mostly, his "songs" were a hysterical rambling over cacophonous imitations of rock'n'roll. The longer tracks sounded like hippie music of the Sixties sucked, chewed and defecated by a psychedelic black-hole. It was a (hazy, incoherent, deranged) mental state, not an art.

Rhode Island's Space Needle (2), featuring keyboardist Jud Ehrbar, were responsible for the titanic nonsense of Voyager (1996), an amateurish work that relished technological primitivism and mystical noise. The no less cryptic hodgepodge of The Moray Eels Eat The Space Needle (1997) indulged in instrumental prog-rock jamming, ambient ballads and shoegazing ecstasy.

West Coast 1992-96

Medicine (1), formed in Los Angeles by Brad Laner, ex-Savage Republic's drummer but now on guitars and keyboards, delivered Shot Forth Self Living (1992), a therapeutic shock that owed both to My Bloody Valentine and to Sonic Youth. Trance and noise were also the pillars of follow-up The Buried Life (1993).

Seattle's Sky Cries Mary (11), which had adopted an eclectic fusion of jazz, funk, world-music and acid-rock on the EP Exit At The Axis (1992), converted to hippie/new-age spirituality with A Return To The Inner Experience (1993), which blended Klaus Schulze's cosmic music, David Byrne's African polyrhythms and Nico's catatonic ballads, thereby coining an anti-rethoric form of psychedelia, one that was more an ambience than an ideology. Their masterpiece, This Timeless Turning (1994), focused on the intersection between early Pink Floyd and dance music, but hip-hop beats, Hendrix-ian riffs, industrial tornados and ancestral rites percolated through the loose, flaccid lattice.

Both the hippies' philosophy and sound reincarnated in a bizarre San Francisco project, Anton Newcombe's Brian Jonestown Massacre (2). Despite the clumsy recording quality and the amateurish stance, Methodrone (1995) and Their Satanic Majesties' Second Request (1996) were monumental encyclopedias of psychedelic music, from the Jefferson Airplane to Hawkwind, from the Rolling Stones to the Velvet Underground. Subsequent albums alternated between superbly derivative, such as Take It From The Man (1996) and Give It Back (1997), majestically musical, such as Thank God For Mental Illness (1996), arranged with a wealth of instruments, and dreamy/melancholy, such as Strung Out In Heaven (1998). Newcombe mostly followed in the footsteps of deranged street folksingers like David Peel, but his naif folly could also explode in noise collages.

Quasi, formed in Oregon by Donner Party's guitarist and Heatmiser's bassist Sam Coomes, specialized in applying old-fashioned, and frequently out-of-tune, keyboards to catchy pop tunes, for example on Early Recordings (1995).

Oregon's most hyped band of the 1990s, the Dandy Warhols (1) managed to fuse Brit-pop and the Velvet Underground on Dandys Rules OK (1995), but then sold out to generic power-pop with Come Down (1997) and Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (2000).

The dominant styles of the 1980s and 1990s were still being revised, but the well was clearly drying up.

American shoegazing 1992-96

The influence of My Bloody Valentine and of the whole "shoegazing" movement became pervasive in America from 1992 on. Notable among the early albums of the genre were Fudge's The Ferocious Rhythm Of Previse Laziness (1992) in Virginia, and Drop Nineteens's Delaware (1992) in Boston.

Pennsylvania's Lilys (1) evolved from the quiet transcendental bliss of In The Presence Of Nothing (1992) to the dilated, majestic amorphous melodies of Eccsame The Photon Band (1995).

Boston's Swirlies (1) added mellotron, Moog and found noises to the guitar tremolos of Blondertongue Audiobaton (1993).

Chicago's Catherine (1) bridged shoegazing and grunge on Sorry (1994).

New York's Saturnine 60 (1) sculpted languid ballads that soared with epically distorted apotheoses on Wreck At Pillar Point (1995).

New Jersey's Lenola expanded the genre both forward, in terms of structure, and backwards, in term of melody, on The Last Ten Feet Of The Suicide Mile (1996). So did Georgia's Seely on Julie Only (1996).

New York's Bowery Electric (1), after the embryonic Bowery Electric (1995), a collection of lengthy guitar drones, enhanced their trance with dub reverbs, sampler, loops, drum-machines on Beat (1996).

Kansas' Shallow enhanced shoegazing with quasi-orchestral arrangements of flute, dulcimer, piano, organ and cello, besides loops and samples, on High Flyin' Kid Stuff (1997).

New Jersey's Flowchart wed My Bloody Valentine's droning symphonies and Enya's magical fairy tales on Cumulus Mood Twang (1998).

Beyond space-rock 1992-95

By fusing the extreme styles of psychedelia that favored the extended, free-form jam (acid-rock, space-rock, raga-rock) over the oddly-arranged tune, a number of groups sculpted epic sonic endeavors.

Lenghty and mostly improvised space jams took up ambitious albums such as: Fuzzhead's Mind Soup (1993) from Ohio; Lorelei's Everyone Must Touch The Stove (1996) from Virginia: Temple Of Bon Matin (1)'s Bullet Into Mesmer's Brain (1997) from Pennsylvania; etc.

Crawlspace (2), the creature of Indiana-via-L.A. singer Eddie Flowers, produced works such as Sphereality (1992) and The Exquisite Fucking Beauty (1995), both anarchic and erudite, that went even further into the formulation of psychedelic free-jazz.

Mooseheart Faith, formed by the Angry Samoans' bassist Todd Homer (now on autoharp) and (black) guitarist Larry Robinson, squeezed the entire psychedelic vocabulary (from space-rock rave-ups to dilated ballads, from catchy ditties to abstract electronic passages) into Magic Square of the Sun (1991).

A group of Los Angeles musicians straddled the line between industrial music and acid-rock, and produced intriguing works such as Pressurehed's Sudden Vertigo (1994), featuring vocalist Tommy Grenas and keyboardist Len Del Rio, the Anubian Lights' The Eternal Sky (1995), featuring Del Rio, and Farflung's 25,000 Feet Per Second (1995), featuring Tommy Grenas.

Michigan had one of the most fertile scenes. Fuxa, whose Very Well Organized (1996) harked back to both German avant-rock of the 1970s and Spacemen 3's shoegazing psychedelia. So did Medusa Cyclone (1), the new project by Viv Akauldren's keyboardist Keir McDonald, on their debut album, Medusa Cyclone (1996). Asha Vida's Nature's Clumsy Hand (1998) stretched as far as to free-jazz and musique concrete. Gravitar (12) were the noisiest of the bunch, and one of the noisiest groups of all times. Chinga Su Corazon (1993) and Gravitar (1995), totally improvised, were maelstroms of cacophony. Truculent rock'n'roll progressions built thick walls of noise. Each piece (especially on the second album) was a symphony of spectral dissonances harking back to Throbbing Gristle's macabre "industrial" rituals. Gravitar had endowed Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music with a rhythm. Now The Road Of Knives (1997), featuring a new guitarist, brought a bit of structure in their abominable chaos, revealing Chrome and Jimi Hendrix as the band's role models.

Chicago's Sabalon Glitz (1), led by keyboardist Chris Holmes and vocalist Carla Bruce, offered a more electronic version of Hawkwind's space-rock on Ufonic (1994).

Oregon's King Black Acid And The Womb Star Orchestra (1) crafted some of the most eclectic, encyclopedic and exhilarating space jams on Womb Star Sessions (1995).

Pelt (3), in Virginia, further experimented on the format with Brown Cyclopedia (1995), a studio-savvy cross between Royal Trux's Twin Infinitive, Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation, the Velvet Underground's White Light White Heat and Pink Floyd's Ummagumma. The free-form instrumentals of Burning Filament Rockets (1996) and Max Meadows (1997), that merged mind-bending psychedelic distortions and mind-opening world instrumentation, the three epic tracks of Techeod (1998), that obviously homaged minimalism and free-jazz, and the colossal title track from Empty Bell Ringing In The Sky (1999), led to the tour de force of Ayahuasca (2001), whose "ragas" defined a post-psychedelic and post-ambient music bridging John Fahey, Grateful Dead, Ravi Shankar and LaMonte Young.

Connecticut's Primordial Undermind (2) evolved from the garage-rock of Yet More Wonders Of The Invisible World (1995) and the space ballads of You And Me And The Continuum (1998) to the Hawkwind-style jams of Universe I've Got (1999) and the free-form space-rock of Beings Of Game P-U (2001), two albums which rank among the most "cosmic" and transcendental of the time.

New York's Escapade (1) performed all-instrumental music straddling the line between kraut-rock, hyper-psychedelia and progressive-rock. The three lengthy acid jams of Searching For The Elusive Rainbow (1996) and the two epic-length excursions of Inner Translucence (1997) led to Citrus Cloud Cover (1998), containing the 30-minute The Sunlight, a tour of the force within the tour de force, and the best formulation of their conflagration of free-jazz and avantgarde electronic music.

Towering over every other space-rock band of the era, Philadelphia-based Bardo Pond (12) turned the acid-rock jam into a major art. Bufo Alvarius (1995) coined a new form of music built around supersonic drones. The average piece was a rainstorm of guitar distortions, strident turbulences and catastrophic drumming, halfway between MC5's heavy blues and Spacemen 3's shoegazing. It was the soundtrack of a cosmic trauma that still haunts the firmament. While no less brutal, Amanita (1996) revealed a spiritual element that harked back to both Popol Vuh's Hosianna Mantra and Pink Floyd's A Saucerful of Secrets; but nothing could be less religious than the apocalyptic chaos of Lapsed (1997). These albums were as musical as Einstein's relativity.

The members of Bardo Pond (guitarists John and Michael Gibbons, drummer Joe Culver, bassist Clint Takeda) also shone on two magnificent collaborations with guitarist Roy Montgomery, both credited to Hash Jar Tempo (110), Well Oiled (1997) and Under Glass (1999). The former, a seven-movement instrumental jam, is a cosmic hymn of monumental proportions, the psychedelic equivalent of a symphonic mass. Guitars compete for and concur to a universal "om", first running against each other, battling for the highest form of enlightenment, and then joining together in unison. The music emerges from spacetime warps, propelled by seismic rhythms, only to delve into deeper and deeper abysses, hypnotized by an unspeakable force. The second album was even more experimental, less dependent on guitars, and explicitly inspired by classical music. It alternated between glacial, imposing structures and chaotic noise collages, reconciling Wagner and Amon Duul, Verdi and Hawkwind, Bach and Red Crayola.

Texas 1990-95

By far the most active scene was in Texas. Texas psychedelia had been the craziest since the 1960s, and it claimed again that supremacy in the 1990s, led, of course, by the achievements of the Butthole Surfers. Except that, during the 1990s, this school diverged from punk-rock and moved towards a more experimental form of music, hardly "rock" at all. Spearheading the renaissance were severely irrational Butthole-ian bands.

If possible, Ed Hall (14) even increased the psychedelic-madness quotient of the Butthole Surfers, beginning with the repellent bacchanals and hallucinations of Albert (1988). At the least, they grotesquely increased volume and speed on their classic Love Poke Here (1990), a gargantuan, shameless blunder that evoked Captain Beefheart's blues, voodoo exorcisms, drunk cowboys' hoedowns, Jimi Hendrix, breakneck hardcore and redneck boogie. Gloryhole (1991) was the punk equivalent of Beckett's absurd theater. The slightly more serious (at times even melodramatic) Motherscratcher (1993) and the slightly better structured (at times even linear) La-La-Land (1995) were also their densest stews of heretical sonic events.

The Cherubs (1), a spin-off of Ed Hall, added sampling, dissonance and hard-rock riffs to Ed Hall's already explosive mix, particularly on second album Heroin Man (1994).

ST 37 (1), instead, followed in the footsteps of lysergic cosmic couriers a` la Hawkwind on albums such as Glare (1995).

Other notable works of Texas' virulent strain of psychedelia included: Bag's Midnight Juice (1991), Lithium Xmas's Helldorado (1994), Brutal Juice's Mutilation (1995).

The hynpotic, transcendental form of acid-rock was also popular in Texas. 7% Solution (1) gave more melodic and dynamic depth to the drone-driven ambient psychedelia of the shoegazers on All About Satellites And Spaceships (1996). Furry Things (1) crafted the feedback-driven trance of The Big Saturday Illusion (1995) at the intersection of prog-rock, ambient music and acid jams. Its "songs" were grotesque deconstructions of rock'n'roll that twitched under clouds of swirling drones.

Two schools stood up among the various psychedelic acts of Texas, one based in Houston and one based in Dallas.

The Houston school was the more conventional of the two. Mike Gunn (1) displayed a morbid fascination with Black Sabbath and Jimi Hendrix on Hemp For Victory (1991) and capitalized on it for the slow-motion ragas of their most original work, Almaron (1993). Mike Gunn's bassist Scott Grimm became Dunlavy, devoted to instrumental space-rock; while

Mike Gunn's guitarist Tom Carter started Charalambides (2), who experimented with deranged ballads, bizarre samples, guitar freak-outs and tape manipulation on the 100-minute cassette Our Bed Is Green (1992) and especially the double record Market Square (1995). The monolithic psychological explorations of Joy Shapes (2004), recorded by a trio of guitarists, even ventured into avantgarde music and free-jazz. Pared down to the duo of Christina and Tom Carter, Charalambides eventually achieved the naked melodic quintessence of A Vintage Burden (2006), that almost sounded like the negation of their original "acid" program.

Linus Pauling Quartet (1), who originated from the same proto-group as Mike Gunn, filled Immortal Classics Chinese Music (1995) with languid, whacky ballads a` la Flaming Lips but the extended jams Improvise Now (1996) and The Great Singularity off their best album, Killing You With Rock (1998), aligned them with the boldest sonic surgeons of their era.

A completely different route was followed in Dallas. The Vas Deferens Organization (12), or VDO, founded by New Orleans-natives Matt Castille and Eric Lumbleau, highlighted the link between psychedelic culture and the century-old cultures of dadaism and futurism. They specialized in a form of narrative nonsense for electronics and percussions that relied on a vast sonic puzzle. The three mad suites of Transcontinental Conspiracy (1996), featuring Medicine's guitarist Brad Laner, fluctuated between the most childish compositions of Frank Zappa and the most daring pieces of the classical avantgarde. Saturation (1996) combined the Mahavishnu Orchestra's wild jazz-rock with Terry Riley's keyboards-driven minimalism, musique concrete with raga. Abandoning the reckless frenzy of those early works, the five compositions on Zyzzybaloubah (1997) flew with more aplomb, displaying a brainy, pretentious attitude where merry pranksters used to play.

The VDO tribe spawned countless projects. Matt Castille recorded a lengthy suite of psychedelic excesses on Muz (1998). Eric Lumbleau formed Sound (USA) (1) and recorded the audio montage of Drunk On Confusion (1999), worthy of Frank Zappa's most amusing and iconoclastic moments. Mazinga Phaser (1) assembled the unfocused collages of Cruising In The Neon Glories (1996) by juxtaposing chamber music, elegiac bebop, gothic dub, space soul, ethereal bossanova and discordant drums'n'bass. Scott Sutton vented his Jimi Hendrix fixation on Late Nite Songs (1996), as J. Bone Cro, and his Syd Barrett fixation on Owners Manual (1997), as Jaloppy. Further emancipating themselves from the stereotype, Ohm (1), a keyboards-bass-clarinet trio, composed ethnic and electronic music on O2 (1997).

Texas had its share of conventional psychedelic poppers (Flowerhead, Starfish, Monroe Mustang ), but their feeble melodies paled compared with the bolder acts. The notable exception was Sixteen Deluxe (1) with Backfeedmagnetbabe (1995).

San Francisco's noise psychedelia 1991-96

Mason Jones is a San Francisco-based guru of noisy, post-psychedelic, post-ambient, post-cosmic and post-industrial music. His manifestos were the first two collections of experiments released under the moniker Trance (1), Automatism (1991) and particularly Audiography (1993), whose compositions range from symphonic movement to ethnic watercolor. The formidable wall of noise of Delicate Membrane (1996) began the saga of Jones' Subarachnoid Space (12), featuring Melynda Jackson on guitar. The pieces were fully improvised, the sound was majestic, and the mood ranged from suspenseful trance to sheer horror. Ether Or (1997) showed that the distance between their therapeutic mayhems and free-jazz was negligible. The idea was further refined on Almost Invisible (1997), a massive hodgepodge of astral chaos, frantic ragas, oceanic psalms and abstract soundpainting that represented an ideal soundtrack for the marriage of heaven and hell. Jones had virtually resurrected early Pink Floyd and provided their biography with an alternative ending: a terrible mutation of A Saucerful Of Secrets rather than Dark Side Of The Moon. Endless Renovation (1998), their first studio recording and a more sophisticated variant on that idea (that quoted casually from Frank Zappa, Terry Riley or Colosseum) and The Sleeping Sickness (1999), a collaboration with the Walking Timebombs (the Pain Teens' Scott Ayers), simply increased the stylistic confusion around Jones' and Jackson's wild guitar distortions.

Mandible Chatter unleashed Helios Creed-ian guitar fury on the black mass Serenade For Anton (1992), before turning to sound manipulation on Hair Hair Lock & Lore (1994).

Guitarists Steven Smith and Glenn Donaldson focused on free-form instrumental psychedelia with Mirza's mini-album Ursa Minor (1996). In addition, Steven Smith released several solo works of eerie instrumental pieces created via a process of gradual composition, from Gehenna Belvedere (1996) to Tableland (2000) to Lineaments (2002). Those dense and meticulous blends of ancient, modern, acoustic, electric, western and ethnic instruments reenacted Smith's private ghosts, the primordial spleen that was the undercurrent of his avantgarde projects (the abstract and cacophonous Thuja, the pan-ethnic Hala Strana).

Six Organs of Admittance (1), the project of acoustic guitarist Ben Chasny, coined a psychedelic form of Sandy Bull's and John Fahey's western ragas with east-west meditations such as Sum of All Heaven, off Six Organs of Admittance (1998), and VIII, off For Octavio Paz (2003).

The golden age of British psychedelia

The golden age of British psychedelia was not the 1960s: it was the 1990s. Never had England witnessed such a deluge of psychedelic bands. The scene of raves created an inexhaustible demand for drug-induced, drug-related and drug-facilitating music.

The poppy version of psychedelia (the one that wrapped facile melodies in eccentric arrangements) went hand in hand with the booming phenomenon of Brit-pop: the Telescopes's Taste (1989), a more robust version of shoegazing; the Inspiral Carpets, who focused on the nostalgic Farfisa-driven sound on The Beast Inside (1991); Verve's A Storm In Heaven (1993), which predated their world-wide hit Bitter Sweet Symphony (1997); Sundial's Reflecter (1992), a bridge between California's Paisley Underground and British shoegazers; the Auteurs's New Wave (1993), a nostalgic tribute to the hippie era; Whipping Boy's Heartworm (1995), in Ireland, a work drenched in neoclassical melancholy; Kula Shaker's derivative but exuberant K (1996).

Plus Jellyfish Kiss, the Dylans, Jack, Freed Unit, etc etc. What was truly remarkable about these bands is how derivative and predictable they could sound.

A more sophisticated form of psychedelic pop song was devised by Curve (1), whose Doppelganger (1992) aimed for a lush, catchy and dance-oriented form of dream-pop; the Cranberries (1), an Irish band whose No Need To Argue (1994) was an album of desolate lullabies propelled by the operatic, guttural and melismatic vocals of Dolores O'Riordan; Rollerskate Skinny (1), also from Ireland, who were among the few bands to match the soulful madness of Mercury Rev on Shoulder Voices (1993); and Scotland's Beta Band, whose first two EPs, Champion Versions (1997) and The Patty Patty Sound (1998), were devoted to intense sound sculpting and disco-oriented shoegazing. In Belgium, dEUS crafted the eclectic and baroque Worst Case Scenario (1994).

The hippie spirit, and their favorite style, raga-rock, was resurrected by Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, particularly with the eccentric Tatay (1994), which Euros "Childs" Rowlands's keyboards and John Lawrence's guitar turned into, alternatively, a poppier Incredible String Band, a less caustic Bonzo Band, or a more bizarre Brian Wilson. The latter's orchestrations would provide the inspiration for the more conventional Barafundle (1997) and Gorky 5 (1998).

Far less successful commercially, although far more creative, in Britain was the noisy and free-form version of psychedelia that wed Hawkwind's space-rock and early Pink Floyd's interstellar ragas.

Porcupine Tree (2), the project of guitarist Steven Wilson, went through three stages. Initially, On The Sunday Of Life (1992), sounded like a compendium of Pink Floyd-ian sounds, from Syd Barrett's oblique ballads to Ummagumma's symphonic pieces. Then Japan's keyboardist Richard Barbieri helped fine-tune the languid, fluid, transcendental mini-concertos of The Sky Moves Sideways (1994). And, finally, a cohesive combo crafted Signify (1996) and Stupid Dream (1999) in a fashion reminiscent of early King Crimson's majestic ambience, an idea that eventually led to the slick production of In Absentia (2002).

Terminal Cheesecake (2) played space-rock the way avantgarde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen would have played it. Echoes of Chrome, Pop Group and Throbbing Gristle turned Johnny Town Mouse (1989) and Angels In Pigtails (1991) into nightmarish experiences.

Skullflower, a loose group of musicians affiliated with guitarist Matthew Bower, performed heavy, droning psychedelic music on Obsidian Shaking Codex (1993) and Argon (1995), a symphony in four movements, Another Matthew Bower project was Sunroof, devoted to a psychotic version of cosmic music on the double-disc Delicate Autobahns Under Construction (2000). After a hiatus of seven years, Bower resurrected Skullflower erect the impressive walls of noise of Exquisite Fucking Boredom (2003), containing the four-part super-doom suite Celestial Highway, Orange Canyon Mind (2004) and Tribulation (2006), slowly drifting towards the idea of music as one long modulated massive distortion.

The Heads concocted Relaxing With (1996), a demented soup of Stooges, MC5 and Blue Cheer.

Latter-period shoegazers abounded. Ride (1) adjusted the cliche` to the era of raves on Nowhere (1990). So did Ride's best imitators, Blind Mr Jones, on the mostly instrumental Stereo Musicale (1992). Swervedriver (1) turned guitar distortions into an art of quasi-zen vespers, best on Mezcal Head (1993), while bridging the gap between the shoegazing acid-rock of My Bloody Valentine and the hard-edged garage-rock of the Stooges.

Both Loop and Spacemen 3 spawned a new generation of bands:

Spacemen 3's guitarist Jason Pierce formed Spiritualized (3) as the natural sequel to his old band, with the same rhythm section, Mark Refoy on guitar and newcomer Kate Radley on keyboards. Lazer Guided Melodies (1992) was notable for the wildly schizophrenic dynamics that flung most songs between acoustic and quasi-symphonic passages. Pierce's abuse of drones and tremolos to create hypnotic lullabies and wavering ragas reached an almost baroque peak on Pure Phase (1995), recorded by the trio of Pierce, Radley and bassist Sean Cook. By then, Pierce had developed a process of scientific layering of sounds that was, basically, an exaggeration of Phil Spector's and Brian Wilson's production styles of yore. The lush trance-pop of Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (1997) was almost the antithesis of his old "shoegazing" style. Overflowing with quotations from multiple genres, traditions and styles (and a penchant for gospel music), it exuded grace and majesty, even when it indulged in instrumental orgies. Pierce's cynical reappropriation of other people's music induced a Babylonian merry-go-round that outdid everybody at their own game while not playing their games at all. Abandoned by both Cook and Radley, Pierce recorded Let It Come Down (2001) with help from dozens of external musicians, but the result was a concept album on the subject of "getting high" that did not break any new ground. In general, the point with Spiritualized was whether theirs was art or technology.

Other spin-offs were Darkside, formed by Spacemen 3's bassist Pete "Bassman" Bain, Alpha Stone, formed by the same Bain, Hair And Skin Trading Co , formed by Loop's rhythm section, Slipstream, formed by Mark Refoy, the veteran Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized, and Lupine Howl, formed by Spiritualized bassist Sean Cook. They marked the meeting point of shoegazing and ambient music.

In England, dream-pop was no less popular than shoegazing. The influence of the Cocteau Twins was felt on works as different as Kitchens Of Distinction's Love Is Hell (1989) and Miranda Sex Garden's Suspiria (1992), a disco-oriented reconstruction of medieval music, Lush's Spooky (1992), scoured by the abrasive guitars and sugary vocals of Emma Anderson and Miki Berenyi, and Earwig's Under My Skin I Am Laughing (1992), the Cranes' Loved (1994) and Sharkboy's Valentine Tapes (1996).

A few acts matched, if not surpassed, the masters of dream-pop, while exploring different nuances of the genre.

The Pale Saints (1), who had debuted in the ethereal and oneiric style of The Comforts Of Madness (1990), introduced hard-rock into dream-pop on In Ribbons (1992).

The trance administered by Slowdive (11) relied on the vocal harmonies of Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, and on triple-guitar arrangements. The hypnotic, velvety whispers, and the smooth, bright sound of Just For A Day (1991) reached for a psychological and even mystical level, that a game of echoes and reverbs merely enhanced. Souvlaki (1993) reinterpreted shoegazing as an abstraction of two formats: Strauss' symphonic poem and Brian Eno's ambient music.

Levitation (1), led by former House Of Love guitarist Terry Bickers, were reminiscent of Echo & The Bunnymen's baroque hypnosis on Coterie (1991).

Catherine Wheel (1) debuted with a formidable synthesis of Neil Young's neurotic folk and Brian Wilson's eccentric pop, Ferment (1992), whose hammering mandalas wove colossal braids of distortions around naive refrains.

Graham Sutton's Bark Psychosis (10) upped the ante of dream-pop with the extended singles All Different Things (1990) and Scum (1993), which were abstract mini-concertos built around ineffable melodies. The method was refined with the slow, lengthy sonic puzzles of Hex (1994), which fused dissonances, electronics, swirling ragas, jazz drumming, ghostly drones, lounge music, soft funk polyrhythms and so forth, into an organic whole.

Whether the pop, shoegazing or dream-pop variation, England was awash in psychedelic rock as never before.

Hyper-psychedelia in the Pacific, 1992-97

Perhaps the most intriguing take on psychedelia came from New Zealand. One of the most significant musicians of the 1990s, Roy Montgomery (23) created a successful hybrid of all these styles with his ensembles Dadamah (10), Dissolve (1), and Hash Jar Tempo (the collaboration with Bardo Pond). Dadamah's This Is Not A Dream (1992), featuring bassist Kim Pieters, keyboardist Janine Stagg and Scorched Earth Policy's drummer Peter Stapleton, was a magic recreation of the Velvet Underground's psychedelic trance, updated to the new-wave zeitgeist of the Modern Lovers, sprinkled with effervescent oddities in the surreal vein of Pere Ubu. Dissolve's That That Is (1995) was merely an ectoplasm for two guitars, but their Third Album For The Sun (1997), by adding keyboards, percussions and cello to the guitar jamming, attained a spiritual solemnity.
In the meantime, Montgomery's solo albums walked an even more arduous path: the impressionistic vignettes of Scenes From The South Island (1995) harked back to the transcendental spirit of John Fahey, to the divine introspection of Peter Green, and to the dreamy psalms of David Crosby; while an obscure, symbol-drenched metaphysics and an obsessive preoccupation with the afterlife led Montgomery through the stages of the imaginary Calvary of Temple IV (1996). His song-oriented career peaked with And Now The Rain Sounds Like Life Is Falling Down Through It (1998), which contrasted introspective melody and metaphysical setting, resulting in a set of rarified, hermetic prayers, each wrapped into a different universe of haunting sound effects. But his philosophy was better expressed with the free-form soundpainting of True (1999). The Allegory of Hearing (2000) overflew with innovative guitar techniques and included the 17-minute tour de force of Resolution Island Suite, which recapitulated the Montgomery's theory of transcendental harmony the same way that the Art of the Fugue summarized Bach's and Rainbow In Curved Air summarized Terry Riley's. The sonic mandala of For A Small Blue Orb, off Silver Wheel Of Prayer (2001) continued his exploration of the individual's relationship with the eternal.

Dean Roberts (1) pursued similar experiments, first with Thela's two albums of lengthy artsy/noisy jams, Thela (1995) and Argentina (1996), then with his solo project White Winged Moth, that devoted albums such as I Can See Inside Your House (1996) to instrumental vignettes situated halfway between John Fahey and Derek Bailey, and finally with the spiritual, ambient, psychedelic and ethnic collections under his own name, such as Moth Park (1998) and All Cracked Medias (1999), his masterpiece.

The saga of the bands built around Scorched Earth Policy's drummer Peter Stapleton was one of the most intriguing and influential of New Zealand. He joined forces again with guitarist Brian Cook for the second album by the Terminals (1), the spaced-out Touch (1992), derailed by tribal drumming and dissonant organ. At the same time, Stapleton recorded the Dadamah album with Roy Montgomery. Flies Inside The Sun (1) were born from the ashes of Dadamah (Stapleton, Pieters, Cook and guitarist/keyboardist Danny Butt), but An Audience Of Others (1995) and especially Flies Inside The Sun (1996) dramatically increased the degree of improvisation and cacophony. In fact, Stapleton, Pieters and Butt recorded the even more abstract Sediment (1996), this time credited to Rain; and then the trio of Stapleton on drums, Pieters on bass and Dead C's Bruce Russell on guitar formed (a free-noise "supergroup") recorded the six instrumental improvisations of Last Glass (1994). Finally, Stapleton and Pieters launched the project Sleep (NZ) with Enfolded in Luxury (1999).

New Zealand's Alastair Galbraith recorded albums, particularly between Talisman (1994) and Cry (2000), that were not so much collection of songs as experiments on sound.

Post-noise in Japan

The most extreme kind of psychedelia (free-form jams that hark back to Grateful Dead, Red Crayola, early Pink Floyd and Hawkwind) was practiced mainly in Japan. The most imitated band was High Rise, but the man who, over a 30-year career, propelled Japanese acid-rock to the top of the world was Keiji Haino, whose numerous projects were rediscovered during the 1990s.

Yamazaki Maso's Masonna represented the link with the previous generation of noise-makers on albums devoted to lengthy free-form jams such as Shinsen Na Clitoris (1990) and Noisextra (1995).

Christine 23 Onna, the duo of Maso Yamazaki (Masonna, Space Machine, Acid Eater) and Fusao Toda (Angel In Heavy Syrup), specialized in wild, distorted, chaotic retro-analog electronic sounds on Shiny Crystal Planet (2000) and Acid Eater (2002 - MIDI Creative, 2006).

Similar to Fushitsusha were guitarist Kaneko Jutok's Kousokuya (1), whose Kousokuya (1991) indulged even more in free-jazz improvisation.

High Rise bassist Asahito Nanjo was responsible for two of the most brutal projects of the era. Mainliner (11), formed with Acid Mothers Temple guitarist Makoto Kawabata, unleashed Mellow Out (1996) and Sonic (1997), nuclear tornados of cacophonous Feedtime-like chaos and Chrome-like martian cadences. The former's wall of noise signaled the advent of a new kind of "rock" music, one that relied on unrelenting impetus (just like hardcore) while retaining the mind-expanding qualities of acid-rock.

The most prolific of this prolific school of space-rockers was, by far, Kawabata Makoto, the (demented) brain and the (logorrheic) guitar behind Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. (4). Synthesizer-heavy progressive jams in the vein of freaks such as Magma and Gong filled their early albums, Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso Ufo (1997) and Pataphysical Freak Out Mu (1999), but subsequent collections, such as La Novia (2000), became more chaotic and orgiastic. The mini-album 41st Century Splendid Man (2002), featuring Tatsuya Yoshida of the Ruins, adopted instead a celestial trance bordering on ambient and cosmic music, and Univers Zen Ou De Zero A Zero (2002) found perhaps the middle path between the two extremes. This natural evolution towards a synthesis of styles led to Nam Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo (2007) and Electric Psilocybin Flashback, off Crystal Rainbow Pyramid Under The Stars (2007), colossal jams built around the ancient Buddhist mantra of the title. Ethereal soprano Cotton Casino was to Kawabata in AMT what Gilli Smyth was to Daevid Allen in Gong.

Musica Transonic (1), a supergroup with Acid Mother Temple's guitarist Makoto Kawabata and Ruin's drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, specialized on a less barbaric fury and even jazzy stylings on albums such as Introducing (1995), A Pilgrim's Repose (1996) and Orthodox Jazz (1997).

Ghost (12), led by guitarist and vocalist Masaki Batoh, fused Japanese folk music and ambient music on Ghost (1991). The surreal orchestration and "ghostly" effects of Lama Rabi Rabi (1996), increased the gothic quotient, while the four-part title-track of Hypnotic Underworld (2004) was the crowning formal achievement of a group of visionary jazz-rock musicians, equally adept at pop songwriting and bizarre avantgarde. In Stormy Nights (2007) featured the 28-minute collage of Hemicyclic Anthelion, constructed in studio by Batoh assembling snippets of live performances.

An all-female quartet, Angel In Heavy Syrup (1) delivered one of the most intriguing fusions of Pink Floyd and Amon Duul II on III (1995).