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In this very exciting mushroom.tv interview Jeremy Van Kampen aka Laughing Buddha talks about his origins as a Trance musician, his epiphany on the dance floor, the twilight in the middle, and future plans.

Laughing Buddha

You’ve been around since the early days of Goa, maybe even before we started to call it Goa. Please tell us the story when Jeremy became Laughing Buddha.
Laughing BuddhaThe time was back in the early 90s. I had just been taken to a Goa reunion party in London when I had my epiphany on the dance floor. At this point I decided I wanted to help people to feel the things I had experienced, feel the astonishment on the dance floor. Like with any magician, you want to know their tricks. I was a guitarist at the time, but quickly signed up for electronic music production courses. I thought I could die happy, if I had just one track that I had written played in the party. Once I’d achieved this my ambitions kept growing to releasing a track, then an album and so on, but it was hearing your music played at the party which was the real thrill.
What was your magic when you converted to Trance?
I found a kind of freedom in this music, and it was exciting, new, different. It sounded like it had not been made by people but by extraterrestrials in some space ship somewhere and was just beamed into my brain, incredibly exciting. And it felt like there was no limit to it, endless opportunity musically, creatively, to explore, experiment, be creative.
What’s your music formula?
The challenge for me is to find ways to break existing formulas, to do something that is breaking new ground, exciting, experimental and interesting. For me its about writing real psychedelic music, about finding the balance between light and dark, the twilight in the middle, that makes people feel happy, safe to get really twisted, so you can play with some very far out, twisted sound and crazy psychedelic noises which does not feel scary to people but makes them feel happy to dance… That’s what is really exciting me at the moment.
What more can we expect from you in the near future?
I am currently here near Hamburg working on a collaboration with my good friend Fernando, otherwise known as WAIO which is great fun. I have also been working on new material of my own back in the UK. Most excitingly, my good friend Tristan has moved to the countryside between Stonehenge and Glastonbury, a very sacred part of England and very close to where I live. We have already begun writing new material as our project ‘Fearsome Engine’ so a new album is on the way… very excited about that.
Laughing Buddha on facebook
Laughing Buddha on Nanomusic.net
Laughing Buddha on linked.in
This article appeared first in our print edition.




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