“Never changing. Forever true. In the name of love. Dance for paradise”. This is the kind of music DJ Skazi has created in his life. Leaving an everlasting impact on minds of thousands of fans around the world with his beautiful psychedelic masterpieces, DJ Skazi has been living the life of an electronic music superstar. Gained some heavy support from trance fans in India, DJ Skazi believes that a quarter of his total fans are in India only.

Over the course of 15 years, since he operated his punk rock roots to make psy-trance with rock riffs, DJ Skazi has become a household name in India with more than 20 appearances on local home land to his glory. So, for the love his fans have given him, he recently visited India on a three-day tour and gave us his mind blowing performance like never before. The very first leg of his tour began from the capital, New Delhi and with thrilling buzz around in the town, made it too exciting for electronic music lovers in Delhi.

Ideally one would say that Skazi is a single artist but it’s a matter of fact that Skazi is a duo, not just a single psy God. Skazi was formed in 1998 by Asher Swissa and Assaf B-Bass, to form a duo producing Soft Psy-Trance Electro Punk music. Having met in the trance scene in their inhabitant Israel, Skazi are among the vivid pioneers of psy music. Apart from Psy-trance and Hard Rock, they have flawlessly flirted with unusual genres influencing their music with Hard House, Techno, and very frequently Dubstep.

On 6^th of September, it was time for Delhi to be treated not by just one, but two Psy-trance hot personalities in the industry. Yes. Along with DJ Skazi in the club we got Neuromotor in the courtyard of Blue Frog. When Submerge Music announced the complimentary act of Neuromotor, we had no choice but to prove ourselves that we Delhi-ites can handle an extra push as well. Neuromotor aka Frederick Ali Talaa, one of the perfectionists and beating hearts of the global psy-trance scene has been on a phenomenal musical journey with lot of fans overseas as well.

It was quite a rainy evening and I had left early in a bid to cover Neuromotor as well. Surprisingly Neuromotor had to play at the same time as DJ Skazi, but in the courtyard. Thinking upon the dilemma of choosing which of the two fabulous artists to attend first, I settled down as the warm-up DJ Leon Russell prepared the crowd with some foot stomping psy tunes. The crowd has just started to gather and we started getting signs of master DJ Skazi to get on the decks. As expected, it was 11.30pm and DJ Skazi had taken the stage waving towards his fans ready to destroy the dance floor with his vicious tunes. Seeing the energy and spunk in the crowd, I decided to stay inside the club for DJ Skazi whereas Neuromotor fans supported his act outside in the courtyard.

Taken over the decks, DJ Skazi addressed the gathering by stating that he’ll be throwing out some new psy-trance bombs and then whatever we like. The crowd had gone crazy and he threw his first cracker that left the audience in ultimate ecstasy. As the crowd pumped up, without wasting any time DJ Skazi moved on to play some of his popular tunes like ‘Falafel Part I’ and his latest single ‘I Like To Move It’. Blue Frog has always been my favorite club in terms of sound especially and his powerful hard-hitting beats just made me fall in love with it more.

His music is rock hard and uplifting at its finest and the psy vibes bend your body in the direction it pleases. His musical influences from dubstep and punk rock make his sets different from other psy trance artists. DJ Skazi’s set would not be complete without the blockbuster hits from his recent album ‘My Way’. Everyone in the crowd danced to their favorite tunes ‘Talking about Love’ and sung out loud the mechanical ‘Warrior’ which turned to be a highlight of the night for me.

Further moving on to some huge anthemetic hits like ‘My Way’ and ‘The Drum’, DJ Skazi made sure no one in the crowd at any corner stood without dancing. More we moved towards the end of show, the power of the bass and the spicy taste of his music began to increase. Even after a few technical glitches, DJ Skazi kept the crowd high with his tunes and returned back in full effect. The wicked bass and sumptuous piano riffs of ‘Davai Davai’ made the crowd go fanatical.

DJ Skazi didn’t take his foot off the pedal, as the audience hardly seemed to tire at any point of the night. The vigorous cheering of the fans was rewarded as he treated with some more psy-trance delicacies, ending his surprising set, reflecting that Delhi had lot more energy and never wanted to stop soon.

It was a big psy delight for Delhi that nobody present there is ever going to forget.

Thank you Skazi and we hope to see you soon again.

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Special thanks to the team at Submerge & WMS.

Review by Varun Luthra

Edited by Angelica Syiemiong Pereira