Hi, congrats on the new release! We’re very happy to interview a young, talented, and productive Goa Trance project. We always rejoice when new stars appear on the horizon of our favorite music genre. Tell us a bit about your project — how it was founded and what the name means.
Thanks a lot for the invitation and the support of my music!
I started playing guitar and busking when i was 14 years old and learned to play the drums in a psychedelic rock band five years later. At that time i was also mixing concerts at a small venue here in my hometown, hosting bands as a sound technician. Later I discovered electronic music and especially goa trance and instantly fell in love with the spiraling melodies and alienated sounds all over. Soon I picked up some dj equipment and learned to spin this music myself on local parties.
Over the following five years the idea of making my own music had been growing in my head. I felt like starting my own electronic project would be the next logical step in my musical life where i could combine all these different musical experiences that i have gathered before and thats what i did in 2019 – appreciating the flexibility and freedom of a solo project from the very beginning on. Just shortly after i learned the rudimentary use of a DAW and wrote the first tracks COVID came to the world and suddenly i found myself having more than enough time to seriously get into music procution.
About the name: “Morioun” is an old celtic word for a psychoactive plant known as belladonna, which was used over decades, not only in the region where i grew up, but was widely spread over whole middle europe and still is. It was a known ingredient of the so called “flying witch ointments” or “magical salves” in the middle ages. While I would highly not recommend anyone to experiment with these kind of substances as they can be a serious life thread, I was rather interested in the mythological and historical use and age old implementation within the local shamanic culture here in europe, that seems to be forgotten in present times and literally got burned down with the witch trials. Furthermore i thought choosing a name resembling my actual cultural roots was much more suiting than some random indian goddess 😀
What tools do you use to create music? Please share more details about your DAW, VSTs, and analog synthesizers. This information could be interesting for other musicians and especially important for beginners.
The DAW of my choice is Ableton Live simply because its the one i started learning from the beginning on. I believe it doesnt matter which tools you are using as long as you know how to use them. Very soon after i figured out how to actually create songs with ableton i started digging into free VSTs and basically everything i could find on youtube about psychedelic trance production.
There are tons of great freeware plug ins out there like the PTEq-X by Ignite Amps, Nord Rack 2X or Vital. Never forget about Delay Lama too! 😀
I am obviously using some of the major ones too, like Serum, Fabfilter, Arturia Collection or Vanguard and Sylenth1.
It was pretty soon that i realised that mouse and keyboard alone are very limited for music production and that i would like to tweak some actual knobs, press pads and play some keys, which i believe really elevates the whole process to another level by adding the possibility to actually play and record parts rather than programming them within the DAW only – and so i bought my first MIDI controller after the third track that i finished.
As a vintage lover all over i was always fascinated by old analoge synthesizers and slowly started buying affortable synths from ebay like the Kawai K1 or KORG MS-20IC (which is not even a synth but a controller for the KORG Legacy Collection) as well as the Novation Bass Station Rack from Morphic Resonance, when he updated to the newer version.
Over the last few years i could add great other synths like the Roland JP-8000, which is getting completely restaurated right now, a Roland JV-1080, some Behringer Clones like the MS1 and TD3-MO as well as two KORG VOLCAS (which i dont really use too often be honest).
So from quite early on my music started beeing a fair combination of hardware and software and i am enjoying the best of both worlds really.
To be fair I want to point out though that probably 70% of my music is still produced in the box – with the hardware beeing a real fun boost and spice that is added on top of the whole soup.
What do you do in everyday life — what field do you work in, and what are your hobbies and interests?
You’re one of the few artists who owns a label. Tell us about your achievements and plans for the future.
There are many things to mention here. First of all i have a degree as an event technician and i am working in the state-theater of my hometown Karlsruhe since 2015. More precisely i am employed as a lighting technician in the opera and ballet house of the theater and do this job with great joy and appreciation for the amazing team i am working with.
As i mentioned before i am also playing drums in a psychedelic rock band (We are called MØRF and just released a new album ;).
Furthermore i really enjoy spending time out in nature with my wonderful girlfriend, having long chats with good friends and family, and was quite a traveller in my early 20s.
Then there is our Label Kandiszucker Records, which i co-manage with Echino and DJ Aurifex, master tracks for, create artworks and do some of the distributional work as well as organizing our own events, so its not getting boring here any time soon 😀
Talking of achievements with the label, which was founded in 2021, we are really grateful to have worked together with so many talented artists from all over the globe and i think we have achieved a certain twist within the various styles of music that we have been releasing. The biggest achievement is that we have been blessed with a small but strong community all over the world that is buying physical copies, which allows us to keep releasing in the first place.
One great wish for the future would be to earn enough money with the label to pay artists not only with copies of the CDs, as investing our private money beforehand and breaking even in the best case later, for now is the way that we have been going with.
But there are many more releases planned of course. A full album by Jago / Spawn Of the Forgotten is in the making, as well as a pure goa trance VA!
What are your favorite Goa Trance projects? Name a few tracks that have greatly influenced and inspired you. We’d love to see a mix of both old school and new school tracks on that list. Also what are your musical inspirations outside of the goa trance universe
On the oldschool side of things i need to mention the notorious Astral Projection straight ahead as they have made some of the very first psychedelic trance tracks that i got to know, like Kabalah, Mahadeva and their old school remixes, so they will always have a special place in my heart, remembering me of the first parties and festivals that i attended.
Also Battle of the Future Buddhas entire work needs to be mentioned quite upfront here in the list as his style has influenced me from the very beginning on and who gave me the oppurtunity to be released on the first Mycken Compilation on his iconic label Schlabbaduerst Rekkords. Furthermore i wanna mention some tracks that i really love from various artists in no particular order. Dimension 5 – Deep Space 5D, ManWithNoName – Own The World, Cosmosis – Cannabinoid, Shakta & Ping Pong – Crack Between The Nothing, Kode IV – Prayer, Electric Universe – Orange Night, Pigs in Space – Solar Quest, Hallucinogen – Deranger / Snakey Shaker …. this list could go on for ever!
For the newschool ones for sure that would be Triquetra with pretty much all their releases, Agneton – Achter de Schemering, which i think is one of the best goa trance tunes of this year, GhostOnAcid – Fireflies, Galaktik Wizdom – Twisted Minds, Dragon Twins – Out Of Cyan, Filteria – Skywalker Remix, Mindsphere – Back to the Roots.
Regarding new school goa artists i think there are quite a few really interesting projects out there and i am happy to see this music finds more places on line ups of the major psytrance festivals within the last years.
Outside of the goa trance universe i have a huge soft spot for old rock music like the Doors, Pink Floyd, early Genesis, Black Sabbath, Bob Dylan, Jethro Tull or more obscure german krautrock projects like Can, Grobschnitt, Eloy, Guru Guru or the early pioneers of electronic music like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze.
Also i enjoy more recent bands like All Them Witches or Greanleaf, but sometimes jazz, country or classical music can be really inspiring too. I guess there is inspiration to find in almost anything, it just depends on the way you look at it.
What parties and festivals have you performed at, and which ones were the most memorable for you?
I havent been playing any major festivals or crazy huge venues of the scene that i could mention here but for sure memorable was playing a DJ set on Moon Mountain Festival in Thailand back in 2018, which is taking place on a giant boat, floating on Kanchanaburi lake for three days. Also Surya Spirits by Suntrip Records in June 25 was a real blast, not only that the location of an old zoo outside of ghent was kinda special, i also felt highly appreciated for my music and was welcomed by a great and professional organisation, and an especially lovely crowd that really gave me the feeling my music is happening at the exact space and time where it belonged. I had goosebumbs many times during my set, it was an awesome gig really!
Also want to mention the private Pan-O-Rama Festival with the most stunning view of the open atlantic ocean in La Gomera where i played twice.
Of course there were also some really nice underground parties i played at and me and my friends organized plenty of rave partys in the forests around my hometown more than ten years ago and created some very special memories that i’ll probably never forget.
Tell us about your favorite movies and books. Do you play computer games? If yes, share some of your favorites with us.
Speaking of movies i really enjoy watching psycho-thrillers like “Shutter Island”, “Shining”, or “Se7en”, but i also like the movies by Jim Jarmusch, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and not to forget: Studio Ghibli!
Books that mean something to me are “Narziss & Goldmund” and “Siddharta” by Hermann Hesse or Michael Ende’s “Neverending Story” but also pretty much everything written by Stephen King is great.
Sometimes a small break can really help getting back into music production, and then playing computer games can be quite fun. I am a vintage driven in this field again with the games i played in my childhood like the “Silent Hill” Series or “Grand Theft Auto”, “Lylat Wars”, “Legend Of Zelda” or “Tomb Raider”, but sitting in front of Ableton keeps beeing the best computer game ever! 😀
What do you think is the meaning of life? Are you drawn to a philosophical or religious view of existence?
Here we go with the mother of all questions.
To make it short as i could obviously write a novel about that and most certainly wouldnt be the first one to do so, I am not part of any religion and even though i was baptized as a protestant christian i wasnt really raised in any religious way.
I was always more drawn towards the philosophical and scientific explanation of existance. I find Holiness in nature and the cycle of life. With its law of conservation of mass, meaning we are all part of the same material over and over again. Energy cant get lost and so cant we. The world that we are living in is a wonderful and imperfectly perfect system all over, that we havent even fully discovered yet and so I believe in the eternal paradise on earth, which we should deeply be thankful for and take care in the best way possible as we are an integral part of it which we tend to forget.
What are your plans for the future? Share your dreams with us.
It may sound simple but i am pretty happy with where i am and just wish to stay healthy and surrounded by the ones that i love for as long as possible.
Of course there are some things i would love to achieve with my music like more festival gigs and future releases, maybe on Vinyl! Also there are many things i would be interested in trying out.
Something i could really think of would be to make some soundtrack for a movie or computer game one day, travelling to more places of the earth or writing a novel!
What’s the secret of your productivity? How do you manage to create so much interesting material?
The easy answer: I just like making music. Maybe a thing regarding productivity is that i usually try to finish a track before i start with the next one. That has been a “rule” which was working very well for me from the beginning on and so i just keep on creating track after track and there obviously is more and less interesting material inside.
Over the past few years i developed a workflow in which i get things done relatively fast. I need to finish my tracks as long as i feel them and taking too much time inbetween the sessions rather keeps me from finishing them. When beeing in a good flow a whole track can sometimes kind of write itself within one full day in the studio.
But there are other tracks too that dont go so well and need real work and sometimes you just need to focuss yourself to get things done as fast as possible and accept the decision you have made some moments ago, to head on to the next thing. I also think listening through the whole arrangement somewhere out of the sudio and writing down everything that needs to be changed is a big help for finishing tracks too. Seriously lists are one of the best inventions of mankind. Next to the toothbrush maybe.
And finally, what advice would you give to newcomers? Do you have a message for our listeners?
Just keep on believing in your music. It takes time, there will be ups and downs, also within the progress you make, but they are all part of the process. Also learn to live with the idea that a huge part of what you create will never be released and will be terribly rotting on your harddrive for ever.
But finish it nevertheles and just keep going. If someone wants to release it – great! if not – also great, just keep creating either way. Try to give some meaning to your tracks: processing emotions, memories, conflicts, games, history, movies, books, basically anything that is an important part of your life. With doing that also the music that you create will become an important part of your life. Take a walk outside, sit in a beautiful place and watch the nature while listening to your own tunes. Basically make some music you actually enjoy listening! I know many artists dont listen to their own stuff at all, but it works for me.
It also helps to connect with other artists of your genre, be friends with other music enthusiasts and kindly ask for feedback, but learn to develop a sense to which part of the feedback you are putting your attention to and which part to give a fuck about.
And more in general: be true to yourself, be true to the people you meet along the way, be respectful and grateful for smaller opportunites too and be proud of your achievements.
Dont try to play a role that isn’t yours. It will make anything much more complicated. You dont need to be cool. Beeing nice and honest to people pays off much more in the end. At least thats what i believe. The coolest thing out there to be is authentic anyways.
And to all the listeners i wanna deeply thank you for the support of the music, its you who keep the scene alive! Happiness is only real when shared. ♥️
LISTEN FRESH EP GRIMOIRE ON CASSETE AND ENJOY VIBRATIONS OF NEWSHOOL GOA TRANCE!