Before Goa became a global phenomenon, it was an outlaw paradise held together by music, madness, magic and lunar cycles.
On the palm-fringed beaches of India's west coast, an eclectic tribe of wanderers, DJs, smugglers, seekers and dreamers created a world beyond convention. Beneath the full moon they danced, traded, fell in love, chased enlightenment and forged a culture unlike any other. For a fleeting moment, Goa felt like the centre of a new frontier of freedom.
But paradise was never destined to remain hidden. As the underground scene explodes in popularity, rivalries intensify, corruption spreads, authorities close in, and the forces that once sustained the dream begin to tear it apart. Caught in the turmoil are those who have staked their identities, fortunes and souls on a way of life that may not survive its own success.
Drawing on first-hand experience of Goa's legendary underground at its peak, Ray Castle delivers an immersive, unflinching portrait of a vanished world. Rich in atmosphere, humour, danger, romance and cultural collision, Moon Juice Stomper captures the rise and fall of a countercultural movement just as it was transforming global dance culture forever.
"Every epic era needs its chronicler, and in Moon Juice Stomper, Goa has found its Homer. Set in a Golden Triangle for cultural exiles and outcastes, a haven for human flotsam and jetsam surging up the electric shores of the Arabian Sea, where bodies are levitated above the sands of distant languid beaches, this story does not release the reader from its spell. Remixing the music, politics, intrigue and psychodrama of the era, Ray Castle amplifies a movement in its un/making. Under the guidance of a master dada-jockey, we are transported through cosmo-psychic dimensions of this scenius, with the building tension achieving its climax at full moon party under the Banyan Tree in 1988. In a story sculpted in peerless patois, and with attention to detail reminiscent of Castanada and Hunter S. Thompson, Castle commands a scintillating white-knuckled ride though the mystical anarchy of "Gonzo Goa." Capturing the atmosphere of this freak nadir at its explosive peak, Castle gets inside the minds of the habitués of this remote crossroads, even as they're going out of their minds. And in doing so, he does what any freakologist worth his salt should do: he delivers us into the heart and soul of the matter."
-Graham St John author of "Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT"
