Psychedelia

Psychedelia is the broad current of popular music that grew from 1960s psychedelic culture, using the recording studio to suggest or accompany altered states of consciousness. Its hallmarks include experimental techniques such as tape reversal, phasing, echo and feedback, extended improvisation, drones and non-Western instruments, together with surreal or visionary words. The current runs from British and American psychedelic rock, in the work of *The Beatles*, *Pink Floyd* and *The Jimi Hendrix Experience*, through folk, soul and electronic variants, and its methods were absorbed so widely that they became part of the general language of popular music.