COSMOSIS: A Dancing Madman and Cosmic Explorer - Tokyo 2007

Ken from ST Magazine spent some time with Bill Halsey aka bilbo bagginz aka COSMOSIS on his recent trip to Japan to play the Earth Energy festival.
It was at the Marquee Club, London in 1994 that Cosmosis played their first gig. But long before that Bill Halsey had a career as a professional session guitarist.

He recalls playing and touring Australia in an 12 piece Acid Jazz band called UTE and also working as a session guitarist for many bands on the London music scene in the late eighties /early nineties. With the advent of new recording technology: Samplers and readily available guitar loops on sample CDs... his days as a session guitarist were over.

"The studio work for session musos just dried up so I figured if you cant beat 'em, join 'em (laughs) "But interestingly I found that I had a much less conservative attitude to the new music technology than most of the jazz players that I was playing with. Some were surprisingly closed minded about computers and technology based music generally. Whereas I found it exhilarating being able to finally get my hands on equipment that I could actually make records with. So I set about building a small MID studio running from my Atari ST computer fitted with a whopping great one megabyte of RAM." ...

So started Bill Halsey's journey into the realm of dance music and later into Goa / Psychedelic Trance Music...

The first time I saw COSMOSIS was in Melbourne in 1995, at a small party organized by Green Ant, this was around a year after their debut performance at the Marquee Club, London. Bill had long hair back then and danced like a madman. It was truly infectious and the party people joined in the madness... a crazy party!

12 years later, the long hair has gone but the crazy dancing and infectious live performance remains... the connection with the dancers and performance on stage is something Bill understands intimately:

"I like to be as close to the audience as possible. I like to have my equipment close to the front of the stage and have space at the very front edge of the stage where I can go and play my guitar, dance and interact with the audience and co-create the vibe with them." he goes on, "For me a Trance party is a celebration of being alive. It's always been about interaction with others on the dancefloor, about those moments when you catch someone's eye and share the joy of being in the music in the present moment together, dissolving the sense of personal separation to create a giant love bubble"

 

COSMOSIS first album Cosmology was released in 1996. His 6th solo album Psychedelica Melodica was released in July this year. I asked him about his musical progression over the last 12 years and what direction he is taking his music with his latest release;

Goa Trance music was driven by melody, today's Psytrance is driven more by the kick and bassline... These days the kick is so much more powerful and in your face.... I mean it's around 6db louder than the kick of Goa Trance - which is a whole lot louder. Obviously artists have been concentrating cranking up the the kick because it's ane easy way to produce an immediate results on the dancefloor... you can see how the crowd react to a powerful kick after a breakdown. What I'm attempting to do is combine this powerful new kick and bassline with more of the storytelling melodies of Goa... hence the name of my last album Psychedelica Melodica." "I often get requests to play retro sets and that's alright but I much prefer to play my new stuff... its just more interesting for me. Also it's very difficult to mix the two because of the different levels on the kick." "The newer music is just so much more powerful rhythmically, but maybe less powerful emotionally"

COSMOSIS is originally from London, England but is now based in the countryside in Switzerland. "The weather is better " he says, "I had to escape the dreary grey skies..."    "the Skiing is good too. It's a good base because Switzerland is right in the centre of Europe and so perfect for touring and playing gigs around Europe."

COSMOSIS has not only a busy touring schedule in Europe but also all over the world... Japan, Australia, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Taiwan, New Zealand, USA, Mexico, Bali... just to name the ones that popped into our conversation.

Maybe Billy gets his energy for touring the world from his strict vegetarian diet... no meat, fish or eggs. This diet can be very hard to maintain in the fish eating paradise of Japan. However we did find an Izakaya that serves a Fried Tofu dish and some other dishes that he really enjoyed. In fact, COSMOSIS has been to Japan more than 10 times in his career. He really enjoys the nature, people, green tea, matcha and food (what he can eat). "Total Sensory Overload" he commented as we took in Shinjuku Gyoen Gardens and the crowded Omotesando Street on a Sunday afternoon. "Japan is a great place to shop for music equipment and guitars. I often end up with new equipment after having played in Japan." He said smiling.

One really interesting thing I found about Billy is his sense of not harming any living thing, whether it be mouse in his kitchen or a slug attacking his vegetable garden. Regarding his use of humane mouse traps which trap the mouse without killing it "To kill an innocent little mouse would be bad for my karma - it's also bad for the mouse's karma" he says laughing. It's strange, he doesn't have this same sense when blowing people's minds on dance floors all over the world!

Do yourself a favour and see COSMOSIS live on his psychedelic journey. Let this psytrance pioneer and journeyman bring you to a higher state of consciousness with his mind expanding music and performances.

TURN ON, TUNE IN...