Depending on your point of view you can write a whole book about this man. You can either love his productions more than those of the famous artists or you can hate him more than anything else and curse all his productions. I am somewhere in the middle of the line.

Jake Stephenson counts 50 (yes fifty!) and more aliases, and perhaps only God knows how much more aliases there are. These excluding the groups. His first (solo) releases under the Shamanic Tribes On Acid moniker are, simply said, amazing. They are mind boggling, multiple layered, ultra fast tunes that defy all boundaries of the psychedelic genre. His collaborations with Matt Hillier (Crystal Moon) and Brian Trower (Optica & Optic Eye) are for me some of the most innovative psychedelic productions ever.

Some time between 1998 and 1999 this artist started to write whole albums for labels like Rumour and Jumpin & Pumpin under “Various Artists” guise when in fact all titles where written by him. This mainly with artists like Dave Hendry (aka Transequece mainly) and Phil Merrall (mainly Jupiterhead). Releases came out mostly in the form of 4 CD box sets where each artist wrote a disc each. What I hated is that at times the same track is found on another compilation under a new alias, sometimes guised under a different title too, obviously to fill in compilations.

However I am still much lured by a lot of Jake’s productions, and surprisingly at times I seem to love more his ambient and downtempo productions more than his full-on material.

Let’s pray for him to rest in peace and for those who love(d) his productions let’s continue our adventure in discovering more material and aliases.