Eat, sleep, rave, ribbit! How Tribe of Frog became the UK's trippiest, happiest club night

"Saturday's sunset has long gone, but there's so much UV paint glowing in Bristol nightclub Lakota that I feel I might end up with a tan from it. A throng of ravers throw shapes while a shamanic selector, flanked on stage by two dancers, pumps out squelchy beats. Colourfully daubed faces light up with joy and arms swirl into spacey lasers, ready to break through into a different dimension. For one night only, I am an initiated member of the Tribe of Frog, a Bristolian club night that's been putting on mind-boggling parties like this for the last 25 years."

"Tristan Cooke, a DJ and legend of the scene who speaks to me a week before the party, explains that it grew out of partying on beaches and nature, specifically amid the trance scene in Goa, India, in the early 1990s. He says that psytrance enhances the effects of LSD. It's about attempting to achieve a peak experience. In a nutshell, it's spiritual raving."

"Chris Rana, co-founder of Tribe of Frog, never made it to Goa but he did travel across Thailand in the 90s, where he and his late wife Donna (whose artwork continues to adorn the night) fell in love with psytrance. For the first time in our lives, we found this feeling of freedom, he says in the Tribe of Frog green room. Back in Bristol, they started a nightlife decor business called Wildfrogz together."

At Bristol nightclub Lakota, vivid UV paint, kaleidoscopic decor and dancers combine with a shamanic selector to create an immersive psytrance environment. Tribe of Frog has produced mind-boggling parties for 25 years, foregrounding 135bpm-plus, four-to-the-floor psytrance with multi-layered melodies, mesmerising refrains and epic drops. Psytrance traces back to early-1990s Goa beach parties and emphasises enhanced perception, peak experiences and spiritual raving, sometimes in conjunction with LSD. Co-founder Chris Rana encountered the scene in Thailand and, with his late wife Donna, translated that aesthetic into Wildfrogz decor. Frogs symbolize a liminal, mystical existence between water and air.

Read at www.theguardian.com