In 2009 I interviewed Alain Eskinasi in his studio in Amsterdam. This was a very special experience for me because my first encounter with trance dance coincided with the sounds of the music Alain and Pim Kilian made in the 1990s.
It was in Hilarion, a new age shop in Nijmegen, where I spent a lot of time as a student. This time, I noticed a book in the window, “Trancedance, the dance of life,” by Frank Natale, which was sold as a package with the CD “Shaman’s Breath.” The shop owner put the CD on for me, I put on the headphones, and the sounds touched my eardrums… what an experience! I had never heard anything like it and knew from the first few seconds that I had to have this CD. In the days that followed, I devoured the book and danced my first steps with my eyes closed in my student room. A few houseplants died, and my roommate thought I was crazy, but I didn’t care. Suddenly I was home and moving. Life would never be the same again…
Not just for me, but for many people worldwide, Professor Trance’s music is a gift. Alain and Pim were at the cradle of contemporary trance dance music, and together with others, they did the pioneering work to which we owe so much…
Where were you born and raised? Do you have children?
I was born and raised in Amsterdam. My mother is French and my father is Dutch. I live with my 10-year-old daughter above my studio in Amsterdam.
When did you start making music?
I was 9 years old when I first dreamed of performing in front of an audience. From that moment on, I was nagging my parents like crazy… After three months, they gave in and bought me a guitar. I played in my first band when I was 15, by 18 I was a professional guitarist, and by 25 I taught myself to play the keyboard.
What influences do different cultures have on your music?
I used to listen to soul, funk, African music, reggae, rock, and jazz… and I’ve always been fascinated by foreign cultures and sounds, ethnic music, and unusual instruments. Always searching for that new sound, that new color… (I actually wanted to be Indiana Jones, but that job had already gone.) In my work, you’ll find influences from African, Australian, Polynesian, Jamaican, Asian, Brazilian, Native American, and European shamanic music. Musicians like Brian Eno, Jon Hassel, Klaus Schulze, Steve Roach, and Pink Floyd have also had a huge influence on me.
Do you enjoy dancing yourself?
Yes… and especially in the studio, when I’ve just made something and no one sees it, haha! As a percussionist, it’s also very difficult to sit still… but I’d much rather write, play, and spin the music that gets you dancing.
When did your interest in dance rituals and trance arise?
As a child, I lived near the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam… I was there almost every day. The people at the music-ethnology department thought I was a funny kid. They told me about the instruments, and I was able to try out a lot of them. My interest grew even more during my collaboration with Jim Wafer and Frank Natale. I noticed that New Age music is often very vague and doesn’t connect much with the earth. When I saw Mandingo and Lakota dance rituals, I was fascinated by the combination of spirituality and grounding. Earth is my element. I always try to bring this into my music.
How did the Brainscapes project come about?
In 1989, I performed a lot with my new age project “Dreamscapes” and released cassettes. Didgeridoo player Jim Wafer was playing all over the city at the time… we practically met for a year… when we met, we clicked immediately. Jim Wafer is the best didgeridoo player I’ve ever worked with. We were among the first to combine didgeridoo and electronic music. Jim had built a “brainwave synthesizer” that I could connect to my synthesizers. (Until then, brainwave synthesizers produced a highly annoying array of beeps; this invention put an end to that.) The live healing music project “The Electric Dreamtime” was born, and we released about ten cassettes under that name between 1990 and 1992.
Jim Wafer had a system that allowed us to provide 50 people with headphones and brainwave glasses for a recumbent concert. We improvised live on stage based on the brainwave patterns using didgeridoo, Tibetan singing bowls, synthesizers, samplers, and percussion. After two years of touring, we released a CD in 1992 in collaboration with the New Age center Venwoude. It was a small edition, intended solely for our healing music practice, but it was a huge success. The album was titled “Brainscapes,” and it was released in 1995 by Higher Octave Music. When I released my second album, “ChakraDancer,” Higher Octave advised me to release it under the project name “Brainscapes.”
When did you meet Frank Natale?
Frank approached me in 1993. He used “Brainscapes” in his trance dance practice and wanted me to create a similar album for him, incorporating his lyrics and concepts. I asked my writing partner and best friend, Pim Kilian, to collaborate on this project. The album was titled “Energise” and was released as a cassette through TNI Music. Somehow, it ended up at a garden party in Miami, where Chris Blackwell of Island Records heard it, and that’s how it evolved into “Shaman’s Breath.”
Which albums did you make with Pim Kilian and Frank Natale?
Between 1993 and 1999, we made the following albums together: Energise (cassette), Shaman’s Breath, Kiva: Dancers of Eternity (cassette), MegaOm, Rites of Passage, Shamans Double Drumming (cassette), Medicine Trance 1 and 2, Tarantella, The BullshitDance, Sacred Rites… and a lot of unreleased material. In 1999, Frank Natale moved to San Francisco, where he created another Professor Trance album in collaboration with the musician Wolfman: “Dance Your Animal.” And then there’s “Breath of Fire,” the album Frank made before he got us involved.
We know Frank Natale as Professor Trance. Were you one of the Energizers?
Frank came up with that name. He was Professor Trance: the creator of the concept, an anthropologist, a psychologist, and he called himself a “neo-shaman.” Pim Kilian and I were the Energisers: the composers and musicians. We also released several tracks under the name “Natale, Eskinasi & Kilian.” Since Frank departed for the next world in 2002, we’ve been carrying the musical trancedance torch high, and are therefore both Professor Trance and the Energisers…
How did the collaboration go?
Frank Natale was a fantastic lyricist and conceptualist, a spiritual and driven person. He listened to our work and developed a concept around it that inspired us to write and rewrite track after track. He made field recordings of music and rituals during his travels and had a vast library of world music and books on the use of music in shamanic cultures. For three years, my studio was above the dance hall of the Trancedance Centre in Amsterdam… I practically lived there. Our tracks went straight from the mixing console to the dance floor… so we could immediately try out whether they worked.
I found a few old cassette albums: Elemental Dance and Kiva. Will they be released on CD?
‘Elemental Dance’ is a trance dance project I produced with friends in California, and the CD is available online in America. The catalog of the ‘Soundings of the Planet’ label contains more CDs from this band, now called ‘The Sedona Shapeshifters’. The old cassette albums were limited editions and can only be found online on compilation websites. Pim Kilian and I have started the label ‘Xingu Records’ to reissue these works in the future: www.myspace.com/professortranceandtheenergisers
Professor Trance:
Eternity 2009 – 4:54
I am Uman:
Trance Two – 7:08
I am Uman:
Crazy Wolves – 4:26
I am Uman:
Not Bedtime Yet – 6:58
I am Uman:
Second Born – 5:52
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