I don’t mind the music at all, but I knew over the years a fair few psy-trance DJ’s, promoters and fans and I’ve been really sceptical about how genuinely devoted all of them are to the “hippy” stuff. I’ve got nothing against that either, provided its genuine and not bullshit. However I’ve met a few psy-trance people whose “positivity” means they refuse to discuss or acknowledge any sort of “bad news”, such as how the Goa trance scene involved links with gangsters and corrupting the feds, and initially was almost neo-colonialism – after all how would they like it if loads of Indians bribed the Met to shift heroin in Uxbridge (I appreciate its a bit more integrated in recent times, but there’s still the issue that these and other foreign psy events sometimes take advantage of cops being too impotent to enforce drugs/licensing laws)

Although psy-trance events are generally safer than those of other genres, I’m aware of unpleasant incidents still happening including sexual harrassment of girls and security using extreme violence to oust “unwanted” dealers (i.e those what haven’t paid off the promoters). I don’t just mean what happened with Venom, this shit was going on long before Venom even existed – also on occasions promoters fucked up and picked a warehouse in gang territory and this caused security issues.

I’ve also always thought it a bit unfair that psy trance promoters had got away with blatantly holding what are quasi-commercial unlicensed events whereas everyone else has had to get licensed or risk getting their events locked off and their rigs confiscated.

that said when I was more active in free parties from the late 90s/mid 2000s we’d quite often have a psy trance rig amongst all the others at SE England squat parties.