It is thought – by musicians, listeners and music theorists alike – that music has the
ability to mimic, mirror or reproduce the effects of psychedelic drugs: a concept of
immense significance considering the expansive corpus of literature attesting to the
therapeutic value of such drugs. This thesis attends to how music can be meaningfully
compared to the effects of drugs like mescaline, psilocybin and LSD.
The musicological theories explaining the relationship between the effects of such
drugs and music are based almost entirely on prototypes: the complexity of a
psychedelic pharmacopeia reduced to LSD, LSD’s extraordinary array of effects
reduced to three, and the three effects theorised, for the most part, in relation to a
particular style of rock that crystallised around San Francisco in the 1960s. This style –
acid rock – has been most extensively analysed in relation to the question of how music
can be psychedelic, resulting in a list of sounds understood to recreate the effects of
such drugs for the listener.
In this thesis I demonstrate the prevalence of these same sounds in Goth, a diverse
collection of popular music styles associated not with drugs but rather the Gothic. By
demonstrating how the various sub-styles of Goth – which have many analogues in the
wider popular music repertoire – are rich in precisely the same sounds understood to
reproduce the effects of LSD, I suggest two broad conclusions: either Goth(ic) music is
psychedelic, or acid rock is not because the theories that explain the ways it
reproduces the effects of such drugs cannot be held to account.
I propose both conclusions are true. Goth is psychedelic by the current academic
model, but this model is problematic; in particular its reliance on prototypes has had
the unfortunate side-effect of imposing a culturally biased understanding of
psychedelic drug experiences upon the repertoire to which the term might refer.
Whilst I demonstrate how music analysts might map out a more stylistically inclusive
definition of psychedelia in a manner that is mindful of the prototypes involved, I
suggest the highest potential for understanding how music is able to reproduce the
effects of such drugs lies in a pharmacological concept known as set and setting
