For many young psychonauts Terence McKenna's voice is synonymous with tripping your faces off (at least one of you may never fully regain that face). For a while, during the 90s, I think I had every album he was ever on - Spacetime Continuum, Zuvuya, The Shamen, Psychic TV - and it's only now that I know why. At the time I'm sure I thought it was the words that drew me in ; his Machine-Elf visions of a global out there, his fractal logic, his archaic revivals.
It's stuff that appeals to a teenager; Matrix-level the world is not where we are stuff (which still appeals, tbh) I thought that maybe he was hinting at a cosmic scene beyond the rainy days in Somerset and Swansea and other exotic locations in the UK...but now, I know the real answer: Terence McKenna's voice is the kind of thing you want to hear when you think the world is collapsing. The words didn't matter at all, the voice is everything. He could have rambled on about Christian Fundamentalism and he'd still have drawn me in.
He sounded like a counter-cultural John Noakes
Or a psyched up and out John Peel,
Or that scientist on the Fast Show.
He sounded like I wanted all old people to sound and somehow I think that was comforting at a level I'm still reluctant to fully explore (I can still hear myself sobbing: I was a push of love child, I was a push of love child...)
Listen... he'll make you smile.
