Astrix

Avi Shmailov, known to the world as Astrix, is one of the most recognisable faces of modern psytrance. Born in Tel Aviv in 1980, he came up through the explosive late-90s Israeli psytrance scene — a scene which took the genre's Goa roots and pushed them into the higher BPM, more melodic, more arrangement-heavy direction now called full-on. His debut album Eye to Eye (2002) and the follow-up Artcore (2004) helped define that modern full-on sound. Through the 2000s and 2010s, Astrix built one of psytrance's most coherent global brands. He has performed at Boom Festival, Ozora, Burning Man, Tomorrowland, and just about every major psytrance event in the world. His Trust in Trance event series, launched in 2014 as a tribute to the influential mid-90s Israeli compilation series of the same name, has become a destination event with editions in Israel and around the world. Astrix is also notable for his activism on behalf of psytrance and dance music more broadly. He has spoken publicly about the genre's social impact, its capacity for connection, and the political importance of dance culture. He has also crossed over into the broader trance world in ways few psytrance artists have — collaborating with Vini Vici and Armin van Buuren on the 2017 ASOT-favourite "Alienn," which went on to become one of the biggest psy-trance crossover records of the modern era. Live, his sets are known for narrative pacing — long opening passages that build tension before unleashing peak-time energy. For listeners new to psytrance, his catalogue is a natural entry point: melodic enough to be accessible, technically sophisticated enough to reward deep listening, and connected to the broader trance world in ways that make the bridge between the genres clear.