There will be a lot of reading but the reason for this is that both me and Vassilis want to show you every side of this story. I believe that Metapsychic Records made a great effort into the Goa community even though we have had some public disputes due to various reasons. For starters we where in love with the music Filipe made as Lost Buddha, I think many people feel this way about his old productions. And when he asked me (even though we had talked about making a label before) to join his newly created label I was very happy. I got to know Vassilis over this time and for one Filipe gave me something out of this whole mess, a new very good friend & brother. For this I'm in a way very happy that I got involved with all this.

Second when Filipe started he was with SunTrip, we heard a lot of disturbing stuff from his mouth about what they had done to our precious friend. I have a good friend in this label as well and when I talked to him about these issues he couldn’t confirm them since he's “only” a artist there. But my gut feeling said that some things might not be as they are shown to me. But anyway SunTrip was something I didn’t want to be involved with so I merely ignored the public disputes we had with them. And frankly today I'm very glad about this since today I know where the liar is and it was in my own home base, Filipe. He had made out stories for us so that we could feel sorry for him and that he would know we where on “his side”.

So in the beginning MetaRec was doing very well, releasing Pyramidal Trancendence was in my eyes one of the milestones in our community. When people got to know there is a free releasing label out there to help the community and artists we got very positive response. A lot of new artists where interested in our concept and on top of all they loved what we where doing, giving out quality releases for free. It felt like people had sensed our mission and tagged along with this. Right here you could see that people started to think in another way, looking for alternative methods to promote their own label.

After we released Human Hyperactivation there was a confusion though, our first pay-able release on the net. We got a lot of complaints about what not, bad quality, high price, no wavs (that later came), complains for a REAL CD release. So taking this information and critique we decided to take it to the next level. Becoming a “real” label with CD pressed releases. During this time Filipe had moved to Ireland to “start a new life” and said he wouldn’t have much time for MetaRec. So me and Vassilis started to work even closer than we had before.

Our first release would of been (the now free release) Mindsphere’s album since he had everything ready for this. This release was actually planed for a online pay-able release but since we got the bad critique for the HH album we didn’t want to make the same mistake with this album. Now I started to work really hard (on top of working 12h shifts 5-4 nights) and put a lot of energy and time into MetaRec. I bought a high quality printer (IP6700D) with the ability to print on CD-r and a lot of quality papers (240g / paper) just so we could send quality promotions to distributors. I had been in contact with Wirikuta distribution that told me to send in our stuff to them. So with my printer, computer, papers and what not I started to make a compendium containing all our released stuff and a paperback folder with our mission and goal. All in all a package weighting over 3kgs with printed Cd-rs and information was sent to them.

Unfortunately since they merely distribute Darkpsy they weren't interested in our stuff, even though I had warned them that we release Goa Trance before I sent the package. So we hit the wall but not the fly. But I'm to stubborn to quit with one answer. I started to look elsewhere, old swedish distributors for Destination Goa (Why Not Records) and other people that’s been involved in releasing Goa Trance in the past. I even checked out SunTrips distributor Arabesque Distribution but I felt like it was a bad deal. So the hunt continued on Google, because we know if you want to find something google was sure to have it ;)

I found a nice CD presser in Sweden not so far from my town. They would give us a very nice price for pressing Mindsphere album in 500 (maybe 1000) copies. I had worked out a very special deal with them that we would press on black CDs! How many labels have you seen doing this? Remember the old PlayStation games that came with black bottom, this was just what we would use for Mindsphere and Pandemonium!s album. What better way to promote a label going for its first CD release when you open the package and turn the CD and its all BLACK! =) I was so hyped by this deal that we started to work even harder, like that was possible =)

During all this time Filipe (our self proclaimed owner) wasn’t online much, we could see each other on Msn from time to time. He had moved back to Portugal to once more “fix his life” and still have no time with MetaRec. But when we got to talk about our plans and my investments into this project he told me (and I'm sorry I don’t have logs of this) that since I would put my savings money into this I would be the “new owner” of Metapsychic Records. My reply to this was that all three of us would be the owners, since Vassilis is handling the public relations and was the guy that had the most contact with the artists and community. Filipe, well he was busy with his life but he put the team together and made music for us so I still wanted him to be one of the owner as well. But Filipe insisted that I was the owner of the company and so did Vassilis even though I had explained to them both that we all do different things in this label and are equal owners no matter if I put money into this and others don’t, we would be on the same level.

So I’m having contact with the distributor and fixing copyright issues with NCB and Vassilis reaching out to Mindsphere for his details we one day receive a msg from Filipe. He’s saying he got a nice offer from another label to release his upcoming album. Okay here we where both of us trying to put MetaRec into the vortex of a real label and without asking us how far down the rabbit hole we are with the pressing he tells us this. At a point we weren’t surprised by this and at another we where. Since after he had left Shivlink (to once more come back to MetaRec) he had told us that this was the final of all the label changing. He would stick with his own label and release this album and others to come, with us. Me and Vassilis talked about this and one day passed. That day Filipe decided to give me a ultimatum since the deal he got involved him getting a lot of money for his album.

The ultimatum was that I had to give my personal promise to him that I would release his album before I go to Asia in late February. This really pissed me of and I will explain why. Filipe had known about my trip for a very long time, this is a trip I’ve been planing on doing for 6 years! Due to real life issues and obligations my trip had been postponed many times but now finally I had seen the light and had everything ready to go. I had the savings money (some of which would have gone to the CD pressing) I had the free 6 months from work and everything was clicking. I had even worked out that a friend of mine would help me with the distributing of the CDs we would press and what not. I had every corner backed-up and everything focused on getting the Mindsphere and Pandemonium! album out on CD. He knew this and still wanted me to give him this promise.

A promise that in my eyes basically told me this: Hey listen you fuckers, here I am with a ready album and here you are still not pressed our first CD. I got a offer for money, listen to me MONEY! FAME! RESPECT! and why should I stay with you idiots if you cant give me this promise. This was what I heard him saying to me when he told me this ultimatum. Because for me a promise is something I keep. Its something I dedicate my life to. I don’t go around promising people something and then not do it. For me that’s lying and I don’t lie to my friends! He knew and I knew that to give this promise to him I had to basically quit my work or take 1-2 months vacation, because working 12h night shifts for 5 nights in a row doesn’t really give you space to do what you want in life. I would have to cancel my trip or at least postpone it even further (and that’s what I had been doing the last 6 years!) and I just couldn’t handle this. Not one more obstacle AGAIN! between my life and my trip it was to much. I was very very pissed, I emailed with Vassilis and cursed Filipe for this, I even added I'm sorry Filipe for the cursing in the email if he would eventually read it. But this was what I felt and I couldn’t stand it.

Vassilis and I talked on the email that we would let him go, we had done it before and its not like he's active or involved in the label so frankly it wouldn’t be any harm. Because we knew that Filipe was all about money and fame, every time he left us it was for one of those, if not both. But we didn’t blame him, he had problems in life, he didn’t want to work a “normal” job, he wanted to live on his creations. As a graphics artist I know this feeling so we said to each other if he gets this money for his album…god bless him. And there you have it, Filipe was no more MetaRec but Phototropic Records now. Me and Vassilis would put our focus mainly on the Mindsphere album…or so we though.

Few days later when I get home from work I see a Msn msg from Vassilis where he's asking if I’ve changed the passwords to our accounts. Hmm I though, all I’ve done is logged on to the email and nothing more. I see that he's online and we start to talk and come to the conclusion that its Filipe that has been into our stuff and changed the passwords. But you already know about this story from the public announcement so I wont go into that in here.

We where just amazed that a friend of ours could do this to us, to take everything we had worked on and block us out of our creation. Since I’ve meet Filipe in real life I though that somewhere he must feel that its wrong what he's doing. Vassilis had already been kicked out of the label and I was trying to get on Filipes “good side” by text sms’ing his gsm and talking to him on Msn so I could get the passwords back and continue to work as we had always done. Eventually he told me on Msn that I would get the passwords and he will run MetaRec with me and a few others. He even asked how far I was with the Mindsphere CD release (imagine that!).

So maybe a week goes by and not much activity happens in MetaRec, I try to tell Filipe that he needs to update the MySpace and promote the party in Ukraine and add a new live act to our main page. He does it, but not they proper way, there are 2 party entries in the MySpace both for the same party. He adds the new live act just in the bottom of the page and no news about that he joined us, in other words its not like Vassilis is updating the page & MySpace. At this time Vassilis had recovered the passwords but I wanted time with Filipe to see how far down the rabbit hole he was going with this before he would decide to give me the passwords personally.

That day came when I was at work and using webmsn and you can read about that story from the menu on the left if you haven't already. That same day everything changed in MetaRec, Filipe was already out of MetaRec, he was now Phototropic Records but still he’s claiming ownership of MetaRec and refusing to give me the passwords. He deleted the web page we had and told me to fuck off. From work I send a text message to Vassilis gsm saying that when he wakes up he must change the passwords because I feared that Filipe would remove everything we had created and most importantly all the emails we had gotten and saved. In the morning the “re-takeover” is done and we now had control of all our accounts.

Now I had to go to Ukraine and this happened two days before my flight was leaving. I had done a web page mirror of our own site in fear that something like this would happen. I had paid for the domain (2 years) and also for the hosting at GoDaddy.com and the current page was running on FreeWebs (where Filipe had deleted it) because I was working on a new interface for the MetaRec page that would have been ready for the CD release. So I hadn’t transferred the nameservers to GoDaddy yet. On the test page I was working on I had bought a dedicated ip address for so I could access and edit it while the current page would still run normally. Anyway I manage to put in the old backup and change the nameservers to GoDaddy so we could host the mirrored page there instead. Hoping that people would not notice what had happened (side note: A few hours before my trip to Ukraine I got some GoDaddy problems where all the domains and hosting I owned on that account was deleted. That’s why just recently after my trip back to sweden the MetaRec mirror page came back up). The same day Digitoxin makes an announcement that MetaRec is dead and that a new label have been formed. The reactions: Metapsychic died? When did this happen? from the people on psynews.

So having to struggle with plans and more obstacles in life I got out and make a minor update on his announcement that a public message from MetaRec will come after my trip to Ukraine. It was impossible for me to get the time to do anything else than this post on psynews. The next day Filipe comes out with a “Very Important Message” where he states a lot of disturbed stuff (you have already read this). Trying to save the confusion for the people I post another message on psynews. Because the Ukraine party promoters are asking me what the hell is going on so I could only imagine what the rest of the people are thinking. All I'm trying to do is telling Filipe & digitoxin to stop their bullshit, if someone is to announce that a label is dead its not either one of those guys and most certantly NOT digitoxin that’s announcing his newly formed label and our death when having no involvement in MetaRec.

So on the 23rd me and Pacifist (Hypnotica Rec) go to play the last gig as Metapsychic Record label djs. I get to explain to the promoters why our label is dead and it hurt my soul to see their reaction. I had really no clue how far down the rabbit hole MetaRec had gone. Here I meet with our new live act that explains to me what impact MetaRec have done on him and how we have helped him understand the music and made him feel welcome in this community. And there I am knowing that this is now taken from him because of one guy that messed up everything! I get to meet his family over dinner and this was the day after the big party when I'm all hung over. Here I am drinking vodka (to restore mental health he told me=) eating radish soup, stuffed potatoes and talking about GOA TRANCE with his parents! They showed such great interest in our community and everyone (including his grandmother) had their eyes and ears on us to really understand why we do what we do. Talking about the soul and the inner life experiences and everyone is involved in the conversation. Me talking poorly russian, my friend translating, some english words get said and its time for another vodka.

This is when I see with my bare eyes what MetaRec once was all about, family. To get the people connected with each other and share the experiences of life and everything involving it. And as I write this, listening to Mindspheres - Operation Side I'm not ashamed to write that a few tears have already hit the floor. It hurts my soul to be right where I am today, when I know that this project could have been so SO much more. But here we are today me and Vassilis both writing our final good byes to you, to our artists and to the community and it’s a sad moment but in the same time a selfish relive. A relive from trouble, disputes, arguments, mind changing, MADNESS because we have had much of that in MetaRec during our active time.

It feels like a backpack weighting 5 times more than yourself is taken of your shoulders. Its finally time to liberate the soul, to go places, to see things, to find out what life can be about away from the computer, away from the television, the radio, the electricity. To be one with a big mountain, to shout your energies into the valley and to hear nothing more than your own echo come back to you. To sit down in green grass and meditate, to connect with the higher self and the cosmos surrounding us. This is what my trip is all about when I leave for the Himalayas this spring, to open a new pair of eyes and connect to the senses we normally don’t use in our every-day life.

But one day I will come back and so will Vassilis after his time off and who knows what inspirations we would have gathered from the time away. The future is uncertain for now but we both love to work together and we feel like brothers today even though I haven't seen a picture of Vassilis, something he today told me on Msn. I will today see the face of the brother I feel so strong about and even this is a odd feeling. There have been some talk about the future but I’ll leave that as it is, just talk. We are both very creative personalities and if we decided that its time, you will be the first to know.

So I would like to thank You for reading this, for Your support that kept us going stronger and stronger during these (soon) two years. Big thanks to all of our artists and djs that have been supporting us with their musical talent and inspiring us, because without them none of this would have been possible…


This is me Martin writing from my heart to all of you.