Most really potent music has a strain of pain running through it, and this pain is the music’s active ingredient. The pain can be expressive of itself — but it is most interesting if it is sublimated. Some examples: Nick Drake’s best work has sublimated depression as its primary ingredient. The Kinks at their 1966-71 peak was rich in sublimated nostalgic sadness immediately recognizable to any parent of older children.

The active ingredient of psychedelic music is sublimated dread in the face of infinity.