The story behind Maze of Madness
Maze of Madness is the joint hi-tech psytrance project of German producer Highko, born Heiko Quast, and Portuguese producer Filipe Oliveira, better known as Agressive Mood. Instead of using the name for a single collaboration, the two built it as a dedicated project in its own right, combining Highko's long history in fast psychedelic music with Oliveira's darker, high-energy production style.
The project was formally established around the album Maze of Madness, released through Blast Records in 2020. Its tracks lean into rapid tempos, aggressive low end, abrupt edits and a deliberately unstable sense of motion. Follow-up releases such as You See Things, Eccentric Realms and The Maze expanded the identity beyond the debut and showed that the collaboration was intended as an ongoing studio outlet , not a one-off meeting.
Within the hi-tech scene, Maze of Madness sits between the older European darkpsy lineage represented by Highko and a newer generation of producers working with extremely detailed, high-speed sound design. Both members continue to maintain their own solo work, but the project has remained active into the mid-2020s and is a parallel collaboration with its own releases and aesthetic.
Origins of Maze of Madness
Formed by Highko and Agressive Mood as a dedicated joint project , not a single collaborative track credit.
The early years
The project arrived publicly with an album-scale statement on Blast Records in 2020.
How the career developed
Subsequent EP material established Maze of Madness as an ongoing project through the mid-2020s.
Maze of Madness sound
Fast Hi-Tech Psytrance built from dense bass pressure, rapid edits, metallic and synthetic effects, dark psychedelic atmospheres and an intentionally maximal dance-floor energy.
Place in psytrance history
Maze of Madness reflects the mature Hi-Tech scene’s use of persistent collaboration identities, combining established producers under a catalogue distinct from their solo work.
Maze of Madness today
Current Blast Records project in 2026.
Selected releases in the archive
Related projects and collaborations
Artists with overlapping styles
Highwar
Hi-Tech Psytrance project of Highko and Rawar, combining two long-running fast-Psytrance producers in a dedicated duo identity.
Audiopathik
Mexican dark Psytrance duo of Alex Urias and Gilberto Wendlandt, associated with fast, experimental and high-intensity psychedelic sound.
Cosmo
Slovak producer Peter Kubala, whose hyper-detailed, acid-heavy psychedelic trance helped bridge early darkpsy experimentation and the faster sound later identified as hi-tech.
Crazy Astronaut
Nikolay Golutvin’s melodic, rave-driven high-speed psychedelic-trance identity, distinct from his more experimental Furious project and strongly associated with OSOM Music.
Dark Whisper
Manuel Bellini’s dark, experimental psychedelic-trance project, associated with Alice-D Records and spanning Darkpsy, high-speed Psytrance and later Hi-Tech overlap.
Frequency Navigators
Mexican Hi-Tech Psytrance project joining Kashyyyk with the Audiopathik duo, established in 2023.