Established in August 1994 initially as a collaboration between Zoom Records and three young DJ's and producers: James Monro, Dominic Lamb and George Barker. After a year with Zoom and four releases (ZFR 001 - 004), Flying Rhino became an independent limited company handling all of its own manufacturing, distribution and promotion (AFR 005 - ). They aimed at goa/psytrance and later at progressive trance/house as well.
The label shut down in 2002. In late 2007 they returned by offering most of the label's back-catalogue as free MP3 downloads. A few new releases have followed since.
i started buying flying rhino records around 1997 & they quickly grew into one of my favourite lables, i now have a pretty good arsenal of their stuff(all on vinyl, fucK mp3) mostly EP'S & a few various artist LP'S such as airborn which is quiet a good album, Psy Ivan below made the interesting observation that most of the artists stopped recording around the same time the label shut down, i think this is quiet indicative of most artists from the 90's and not just Goa trance but practically all styles, techno,trance,psy/goa ect i have sifted through a lot of artists from the 90's on discogs and the one common factor they seem to share in common is that their discographies abruptly end in the early 2000's. all i know is that the stuff being produced now just doesn't have the spirit that the oldschool stuff had!!!!
Flying Rhino Records was primarily focused on releasing EPs in beginning. Pleiadians, Green Nuns Of The Revolution, Technossomy - all these genre-defining groups released their best EPs on this label. All their vinyls had really nice design, so when it comes to EPs, Flying Rhino was probably the most successful Goa Trance label back in the days along with TIP Records and Matsuri Productions. On the other hand, albums released on Flying Rhino cannot be considered as essential. Technossomy's Synthetic Flesh from 1997 had some great tracks, but they were already released before on their EPs. New tracks were just an average tracks. Similar is with GNOTR's Rock Bitch Mafia from same year. This album included tracks released few years before that on many releases, and new tracks were not nearly good (I don't even like some of them). I would probably have more respect for these two albums if they included remixes of old tracks instead of original versions. Darshan's Awakening from 1998 was nice album, but not essential. Their second album Spectra from 1999 was disappointment, not because it wasn't Goa Trance anymore, it just wasn't good enough (track named same as album is pretty decent though). Label tried to move to more Progressive side of Trance and that's where they failed. Blue Planet Corporation was the only ex Goa Trance project that had some success in that, maybe because Gabriel Masurel still had Goa flavor in his production. Blue Planet album from 1999 is label's best release from this period, but still not good as BPC's old releases. When it comes to VA compilations, ones that were released between 1995 and 1997 are pure Goa Trance, rest is pretty much combination of Progressive Trance and hybrid Psy-Trance from late 90's and early 00's. Main problem with their compilations is that most of them included tracks that were released few times until then already. As far as I know, there are only two Goa Trance compilations from this label that didn't include previously released tracks: Boyd In The Void (1995) and First Flight (1996) which is considered as one of best Goa Trance compilations ever released. It's interesting that not only label shut down in 2002, but all major Flying Rhino's projects stopped producing new material around that time as well (Darshan, Slinky Wizard, BPC), and some even before (GNOTR, Technossomy). I wish they stayed on same track and didn't follow the trends of late 90's, I am sure that we would have more great Goa Trance releases from them.
transition-metal
November 7, 2013