Dig Into Psytrance With Freedom Fighters

Around the world, there are pockets of electronic music preferences. You’ve got house in Chicago, techno in Berlin, EDM in Las Vegas. But an entire country gets down to a genre little seen in the United States. Psytrance is the movement dominating Israel, with the global leaders in the genre originating from the country. One of those leading the way and bringing the sound to the masses is 25-year-old producer/DJ Freedom Fighters. Following the release of his debut album, Rebel, the budding artist tells us more about the LP, discusses his home country’s music scene, and explains why you should give psytrance a chance.

What was your earliest entry into the world of electronic music? How did you end up making psytrance?
I started making music when I was 16… Psytrance was always a big deal in Israel. Like you guys in the US grew up on pop and R&B, a lot of kids in Israel grew up on psytrance because that’s the core of what we have there.

The psytrance scene in Israel has prevailed for many years.
It’s existed for a while; it’s still huge. You get a huge psytrance party at least once a month in Israel. You can get 10,000 people or more just at random psytrance parties that have nothing besides psytrance there. During the week, you get at least two or three club parties with psytrance music. Infected Mushroom grew out of the psytrance scene in Israel back in the ‘90s and became really big in the US.

In the US, many haven’t experienced psytrance. What would entice newbies to check out the genre?
Psytrance is the sound of the future, because it’s not commercial; we don’t use many vocals and stuff like that… The breed of new trance artists are playing something that has psytrance inside of it. I see playlists, and they always incorporate four or five pure psytrance tracks in their sets, which is amazing and means trance is going somewhere. If it’s not really commercial, it’s going back down to the underground and a dark vibe, and that’s where psytrance is at. It’s been there for ages, but now people are tired of old trance, with the big breaks and melody; it’s always basically been the same.

“Psytrance is the sound of the future.”

Psytrance is way more unique, and you have so many styles inside of it. I would say to the EDM kids, especially the ones who are looking for the underground [for the first time], psytrance is a good thing for them because it’s really different and sounds different than anything they’ve heard before. It’s well produced, it’s banging on the dancefloor, and I’m pretty sure they’ll be happy and step into the scene just a bit more.

What is the journey you’re going for with your debut album, Rebel?
I’ve been making music for 10 years, and I’ve never had an album. I always felt if I was going to write an album, I’m going to do it 100 percent from my heart, regardless of anything that works or doesn’t work, or what people want to hear or what they don’t want to hear. I wanted to have an album where I could look back in five or six years and say, “I’m still proud of this piece I wrote, and it wasn’t made for the wrong reasons.” People tend to write albums because they want to get more gigs and go with what works now. I’m not that guy. I write music from my heart and wherever I get inspired. I believe if you write music you don’t really like, it won’t stand out and you won’t be here in a year. I really want people to dive into the album, because it’s a part of me. It’s like I put part of my heart into this album. It was a hard journey.

What other cool surprise elements have you incorporated into your music?
There’s a song on the album called “Million Little Pieces,” which is one that stood out, to be honest, and everyone played it. The things that give me the most influence now are movies and trailers. I watched a trailer of Transformers, and I was like, “There’s really cool sounds there; it sounds like dinosaurs, so I want to use it”… All of the tracks on the album have something from a trailer. It makes it sound really unique. This is the main trick on the album, and the fact that it’s really dark, but it’s really dancefloor-oriented. I like to see people move; this is what we do. I tried to make something that is melancholic, a bit dark, serious, that still works on the dancefloor. This is my approach here for music nowadays.

Rebel from Freedom Fighters is available now on HOMmega Productions.

Deanna Rilling is psycho for psytrance. Follow her on Twitter.

Follow Freedom Fighters on Facebook | Twitter

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