The evening in Tel Aviv had begun so pleasantly: an unexpected Shabbat service, nice people, a bit of nosh, and a nap at nine o'clock. Then I awoke-the pale hostel stench of fried tennis shoes wafted over me, and it all went to hell. It would have been nice to stay in bed, to take a break from the hectic pace of Tel Aviv life, but I was on a mission, a quest to find out why trance music had captured the minds of the Israeli youth. And so off came the Shabbat khakis and the knitted kippah, and on came the polyester bellbottoms and the hair gel.

I wanted to know why trance posters were enveloping the city; why loud parties were threatening the very lives of neighbors, the infirm, the elderly, and the Tel Aviv feline population; why 14-year-olds in the rich, eerily trendy suburb of Ra'anana were painting their hair blue and their cell phones green; why Israeli women, on leave from the army for a weekend, were leaving their houses in the middle of the night wearing tight, feathered pants and shoes with heels thicker than an encyclopedia set. "Can't you remember?" I snarled under my teeth, as I stormed angrily out of the hostel, adjusting my beaded necklace, "You're all Jewish! Go listen to David Broza or Paul Simon mix tapes or something; don't pretend like you're like hip or anything!"

Admittedly, this secret agent wasn't entirely bitter. "It's just music," I tried to tell myself. I actually admired some of the stuff for its youth and cleverness. Top trance DJs mix everything from organs to classical guitar to disco melodies into drum machine rhythms with impressive panache. And there's little question of trance's wide-ranging influence since its rise in the early 90's-electronic forms like breakbeat, trip-hop, downtempo, and garage have all benefited from the trance craze.

Trance took the rising popularity of dance music and pushed the medium past the simple drum machine with computers, Eastern melodies, and more complicated compositions. Record execs, clubgoers, and magazine writers can't shut up about how techno and spiritual music came together to form trance, roughly eight years ago in Goa, India, and how the craze took hold in "underground" clubs in the U.S., Europe, and notably in Tel Aviv. Trancers just love to brag about these underground roots. But if there was ever evidence of trance going mainstream, here it was: a huge techno/trance dance event complete with lights, subtonal bass, and packs of over-indulged tenth graders. All this in the basement of the Dizengoff Center in Tel Aviv-the Times Square, if you will, of Israel's largest city. The irony was as glaring as the neon "PIZZA" sign that glimmered on some kid's t-shirt as he smoked outside gate five. Nothing more mainstream than being "underground," I thought to myself as the escalator descended the dimmed mall to the inferno below-especially when you're thumping away under the most expensive real estate in the Middle East.

"I was there in the beginning," said my tattooed cigarette donor-of course he was. "It was huge scene ... real underground." He rolled his "r" Israeli style; I nodded and surveyed the crowd. It was 12:30, early, as they say, and the normal fashion cold war was shaping up. All-blacks wore tight swaths of darkness; the army guys on break showed up in horizontal stripes; the younger girls hid behind thick makeup and large bags. The ravers also went tight, but colorful; seventies as ever but more textured, incorporating a variety of flavors of pomp. The unsightly handful of real fashion derelicts hung out on the fast-food style tables, doffing blue jeans and sweatshirts and jackets that were neither tight nor puffy enough.

"Israelis just like partying," a young woman in Teflon colored pants said impatiently, when I asked why she thought trance was so popular among Israelis. This didn't seem a wholly satisfying answer. Israeli DJs have become international trance superstars, having developed the so-called Nitzchonot, or Victorious Trance-a smooth blend of Arabic and Eastern melodies in front of breakneck-speed backdrops. One Israeli DJ, Ofer Dikovsky, told me that he traveled the world playing for different crowds. The guy had become a genuine rock star. He now goes by Oforia.

I turned back to the woman for a better explanation of the Israeli love affair with trance, but she frowned at her cell phone and got up. Was my print shirt just a bit too Aloha for this eye-shadowed soldier of the dark side? "I'm going inside," she said.

I followed her in. Two all-blacks drifted by me, tapping to the pulsing bass. A few more conversations, and I was starting to lose touch-I had to remind myself that they were the ones on drugs, not me.

"You want to know why I love trance music?" asked a particularly wide-eyed youth. "It's because the inner nigger from my dreams told me so." I swallowed the slur and explained that that just wasn't so cool to say, regardless of how hot his English was. The idiot thought for a second: "You just gotta listen to your inner nigger."

Another tripper was more laid back but touchy; I assumed ecstasy. He was stroking his girlfriend's beeper nervously as I scribbled away. "I like all of them," he said, mumbling something about Astral Projection, a two-man group that one DJ had told me were considered the "godfathers" of Israeli trance. "You know I don't think I believe you're with a magazine," he added. He told me that he had left the army, and a bit more recently, reality. I wished him good luck, and told him I was off to an "exclusive" party. He looked really impressed for about three seconds, then went back to watching his hand run across the linoleum table. "Well I think you might be a journalist," he said, glancing at my pad, "but you also could be crazy."

I actually wasn't lying about the exclusive party. I had gotten something the wannabees in the mall couldn't muster that night: an invite.

"Just don't wear all black like the Arsim," Chen, my inside source on the Tel Aviv scene had warned the day before, lashing out at the more mainstream clubbing culture. She then passed me some colorfully decorated two-sided invitations. "This one's tonight, that's tomorrow, and this one's the next day-that's ours."

Chen was short, spunky and confident in just how good trance music was for Israelis. She and some friends had started SunShine productions and were now throwing parties and pulling trance DJs in from around the world. Selling Hong-Kong-made cutting-edge pseudo-psychedelica by day, and kicking it up in her day-glow jammies by night, Chen was living about as high as you can go on the trance food chain without being a real star-a DJ. She fingered through her bag for a fourth invite. "And don't tell anyone who gave you this invitation; it's going to be a small one, and I don't want anyone to think?" Yeah, I know, that you were the gonzo that passed on the invitation to this wack American.

Out on the street, I hailed a cab in the rain. I arrived at the address on Chen's invite, but everything was silent. Darkness. Where was everyone? Then I heard the sound that any partygoer, regardless of how messed up on drugs, can appreciate: deep, fast, pumping bass. And there it was, below me, the scene opening up like a pan shot in an action movie. Bright blue light poured in from the dance hall; an anxious crowd by the barricades; lights spinning inside the inferno and bodies moving within-the mix flying. I was almost there.

The throng of partiers at the gate gave me resentful looks as I flashed my invitation. But for all the self-importance, in the scheme of the Israeli party scene, this was a small and insignificant event. Illegal parties, organized by word of mouth and held in parks were legendary and an important part of trance's ascendance.

"The party scene is essential for us," producer Oren Cristal of Phenokol records had told me, describing how early CDs sold by the bushel at the outdoor concerts. "Trust in Trance-one of our first Trance compilations, in 1993, was an overnight success here in Israel, almost without press." The parties were the fuel that Israeli trance ran off of in the early '90-instant publicity that launched the careers of Israeli trance stars like DJ Duvdev, DJ Sunshy, DJ Ari, and the like.

"Five years ago we had something like 15,000 people up in the Carmel," Chen had told me. "Trance just feels right in nature, away from the club-what an atmosphere of love, togetherness."

I guessed the atmosphere of love was why the security guard was padding me down oh-so intimately. I hadn't had this much trouble getting back to Israel from drug-soaked Sinai. "For some reason the police think trance parties have more drugs than house parties," Chen had pouted. A drug-sniffing dog tugged a policeman towards the club as I emptied my pockets: notebook, tape recorder, gum, wallet, keys, pen-"This shaving cream-why?" the guard demanded.

I shrugged-he had reason to search. If you ask the partiers themselves, drugs are as fundamental to the trance scene as the music. The drug culture has found its way into Israeli slang with words like "saroot," literally scratched, like a record, but meaning blown on drugs, and "machok," or erased, which means almost the same.

"Israelis are always looking for a way out," a pair of 22-year-olds had told me, both saving up for their tour of Europe, a rite of passage that most Israelis out of the Army aimed for. To them, drugs were just another trip. "We're a traveling people. Trance is simple-it's a way to make it in this fucked-up country."

Israel's fight against drug use brought trance into the spotlight two-years-ago, when police raided one party after another, confiscating ecstasy tablets, marijuana, and LSD. The controversy prompted leading DJs to do a special performance in the Knesset as part of an effort to convince lawmakers that trance wasn't to blame. When this failed, a "Give Trance a Chance" rally took place in Kikar Rabin. Despite the pleas of the trancers, public opinion polls indicated a strong majority of Israelis supported the police actions.

Shamai Golan, a spokesman for Israel's Authority for the War on Drugs, told the Jerusalem Post that trance music attracted a certain culture of drugs-especially acid. "At trance parties most of the people arrive knowing they're going to take drugs that night." Hundreds of young people each year need psychiatric care after having bad trips at trance parties, Golan said, and dozens have to be institutionalized.

At the entrance table I showed this party's trancemaster-general my invitation. Could she actually hear her cell-phone over the din of the speakers? "Yala-bye," she dismissed her call, and looked up at me distastefully. "Eighty shekels," she demanded.

I sagged, knowing I only had a 50 and some change. But it wasn't all going to lame waste-after all, I mean, in her striped Flash Gordon jacket, her rectangular spectacles, and her studied nonchalance, this woman was soo down! Whatever. The aura of importance with which trance surrounded itself just wore through the universal soul I was told we shared at such events.

The whole scene was all trying a bit too hard. Tel Aviv outlets for psychedelic merchandise called themselves "Opium" (spelled out in loopy neon Hebrew), "Stuff," also in neon, and, the most fumblingly provocative, "SPERM," arranged in bold, dumb English letters. The ravers on line behind me were complaining as I stared at the woman. I turned around and left the entrance area. Trance is just a vehicle for Israelis to feel hip, I bitched to myself, and tried to sell my invitation to some limp-looking punks who hadn't even made it to the security check. I took my leave as the rain puttered on.

The walk back to the hostel followed Allenby, somewhat of the main drag in Tel Aviv. Clubs dotted the way; the strolling basslines bled into each other as I hurried through the drizzle. Close to home I stopped to marvel at one club-all but empty and covered in Russian promotional posters. "Put your hands up / put your hands up / put your hands up in the air" went the all-too-MTV refrain. The popmeter was off the charts. Dear me, I thought, techno like that just will not do in today's day and age in high-art Tel Aviv.

I awoke by two PM-guess I'd missed breakfast at the hostel. I rubbed my eyes as it dawned on me that my last chance to hit the trance floor (something I was genuinely anxious to do) was that afternoon. Called an afterparty, Chen's SunShine productions had organized an event to start at two and run until midnight or later. I suited up once again and made my way to Jaffa, where the party was waiting at some dive called Studio 49.

This time I brought enough money, and the security guards were nicer. Chen waved to me as she ran past towards the main room. Inside were the telltale blacklights, the spinning lights, and dozens of striking, painted records, evidently decorated spirograph style by pouring glowing paint on rotating LPs. Especially nifty was the gargantuan ova hanging above the dance floor, attracting a legion of glowing sperm from the corner of the ceiling. The place was packed-bouncing, really-but the bartender looked bored. For most of the dancers, I guess, the daytime drugs were of the less regulated, if not more subtle variety.

The music dived into a lull and a pulsing drum eased the crowd into a wavy break. A youngish balding guy was intently spinning up on the stage-I was told he was DJ Jon Om from England. Om's music was fast, textured, and catchy.

I stopped jotting on the pad after a while and began dancing-it felt good to move so freely. Trancers dance smoothly, or jaggedly, or like string puppets, depending on the music. I soon started to lose myself in the rhythm. I'd close my eyes and hear each layer, one on top of the other, like the paint on the spirograph records.

The crowd was youngish, but varied; the usual fashion battles raged across the room. But the music seemed to be bringing the all-blacks and the ravers into temporary harmony; I even saw a couple kids in jeans jumping for joy in the corner, one in a clearly fake Nike shirt. They were a happy, energetic group.

Something Chen had told me kept returning to my thoughts as Israel's next generation swirled around me. What had happened to the pioneering youth of Israel, I'd asked her a few days before. Hadn't they once built bridges and drained swamps and built the country, with Israeli folk dancing around the fire in the evenings? "We've changed," she'd told me, beaming. "Now we do drugs and make parties."

Eli Kintisch, New Voices' Israel correspondent, graduated from Yale University in June of 1999.