| Summary: | This article explores the religio-spiritual characteristics of psytrance (psychedelic trance), attending specifically to the characteristics of what I call <em>neotrance</em> apparent within the contemporary trance event, the countercultural inheritance of the “tribal” psytrance festival, and the dramatizing of participants’ “ultimate concerns” within the festival framework. An exploration of the psychedelic festival offers insights on <em>ecstatic</em> (self-transcendent), <em>performative</em> (self-expressive) and <em>reflexive</em> (conscious alternative) trajectories within psytrance music culture. I address this dynamic with reference to Portugal’s Boom Festival.
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