Other Metaray
Ray Castle Moon Juice Stomper Gob Lit DMT FM

Ray Castle’s Moon Juice Stomper is a gonzo Goa odyssey that tells a version of the origin story of psytrance from the authoritative perspective of someone that lived, danced and DJed through the thick of it. The narrative spans what were arguably the glory days of Goa as a postcolonial enclave for Western techno-hedonists, seekers and misfits; from 1987, the germinal phase of a subculture that was propelled by psychedelic drugs, Indian mysticism
and the fresh, eccentric electronic dance music predominantly coming out of the USA and Europe, until 1996, by which time the once-eclectic sounds of a Goan dancefloor had been distilled into the conventional soundscape of psytrance and propagated around the planet by an ever-expanding network of labels, producers and DJs who had been infected by the Goa mythos. Castle’s keen eye for the subcultural minutiae of this specific time and place make for an immersive literary experience that dynamically conjures the sights, the sounds, the smells, the total sensory assault of India, of Goa, and of a Goa party in particular.
Castle’s mad-libbing, freestyling narrative voice is at its most unfettered, most sublime and is most at home; I’ve certainly never read anything that comes so close to capturing the euphoria, intensity and illogic of dancing to techno on acid.
— Nick Taylor
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