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That's true but it's not because artist are not trying. Problem is in listeners i must say. That's what's holding us back. Goa came from many different styles, merged to become Goa Trance later. Now most of us whos doing this thinks same, about doing something 'fresh'. Ofcourse you can't merge it with Jazz or Country music but more to with other subgenres of Psytrance or techno (like Zenon does) or trance, euro trance etc. Then we do this, using patterns and technics used in other styles which were used back in 90s aswel: - offbeat or triplets from Progressive - FM/zap fart sounds - so called 'fullon filters' on kick/bass group - many other things... Not so unique but still not used in Goa Trance, and when you combine all of different technics from different styles and put into Goa, then it becomes something different. Then you spend months and months of that track, playing and testing around on dancefloor, finaly get it released, you are really happy with some fresh work and blaaah... Then you get from 'true Goa' people something like: - Meh, it's not old school! Bro, this kick is too sharp. That bass too phat, cmon that's fullon! Mate, that's not Goa, listen to Astral Projection or Hallucinogen! You worked on this track 6 months? You fucking wasted your time... At first you are being acused for ripping off Goa from 90's. So you take your time and energy and you try something new. Wrong, now you betrayed true spirit of Goa Trance. With Goa scene being so small and limited you literaly have no much freedom for evolving. You will try, release something you think is different, people won't accept that new thing, sales will sucks and label will say NO. So you can't release music you made by your taste and what you love, without releases there is no promotion - no gigs - no money, you loose chance to upgrade your equipment and to advance. You are being tired and depresed by this and you stop. One by one will stop doing it or switch to other style or genre. I am having a lot of conversations with other artists last few years and I must say lots of them are depresed by such matter. That's a huge problem! But you see, younger generations love and accept those changes, fresh things, modern sound. Yet older guys can't accept that is not 1995... And then you get most funniest/stupid comment like: Ah bro, this music is too loud, can't listen it because my kid is sleeping in another room????? Cmon. I understand we all have families and no much free time for parties and festivals, but don't judge music without hearing it at dancefloor! GOA TRANCE IS DANCEFLOOR MUSIC! I am not pointing out to anyone, with this post I just wan't you to think about it. As a Goa lover you are presenting your self, do you really love this music and try to keep it alive or destroy it? Goa is small as I said and this is one of places where you come to share it with others, to hear their opinion. To most of artist this place has value. But somehow we have no more freedom regarding how to produce what we love, we can't have mastering we like because you need more dynamic range, we can't have covers we want. Basicly no freedom. No freedom - no inspiration, no inspiration - no music. In other subgenres there is no such problem, you can make whatever you want and it will be accepted and supported.

ридинг кириллик ис нот те проблем. андерстендинг рашен ис.

Actually there is only so much you can do with analogue synths based on simple waveforms and basic LP/HP/BP filters (no matter how awesome they sound, their sonic range is still limited) and small mixers. Late 90 was the time when digital synths like Access Virus and Nordlead became poplular which offered more waveforms, more filters, frequency modulation and stuff like that, then DAWs were invented I believe this to some extent influenced the transition from goa driven by TB-303 to psytrance where the new possibilities of the new gear were heavily used. Today we can do everynthing within the computer and there are plugins which do that late 80's/early 90's analogue thing quite well and also all the "modern" FM and wavetable and whatever else kind of stuff. But I think people who are into goa have some image in their heads what goa should sound like and they try to follow some patterns in writing tracks and making sounds in order to stay true to goa or something like that. So while in 90's people tried to push the boundaries of their limited setups today the producres try to artificially limit themselves in order not to step outside of the "niche". This all is merely a speculation, I was never specifically focused on goa though I think I've heard large part of the most important newschool releases. It's just when I hear most of the new stuff I often think "why they are trying to sound like all the new technologies invented after year 2000 are not available to them?"

https://metapop.com/psychasm/remixes/the-last-trip-hidden-empire-125bpm-psychasm-rmxwav-remix/18736

Actually, this is a very good comment. I wouldn´t say atonal, or disharmonic - that´s over the edge... ...but the rest is in place. Not so much (including us, to some extent) artists involve advanced spacing techniques for their mixes, mostly layering stuff until boxed to hell. And brickwalling lot of stuff. This is very good observation, and I fully agree with this, our next album should take this manner more serious - because it makes tracks more listeneable and gives them that "breathe" space in listeners ears. On the spot, sir!

we have to consider that the golden era of goa trance was 1995-1998 that is only 4 years new school goa as it called has been produced for over 10 years now so of course many are growing tired of it also an underrated factor, many successful artists of the past were bands of 2, 3, 4 (sometimes more) people: astral projection, mfg, dimension 5, infected mushroom, etnica, koxbox, x-dream were all composed by several artists, which mean maybe more ideas and more talent combined sure some others succeded by working alone on some projects: hallucinogen, oforia, elysium, chi-ad to name a few, but lots of the best music was produced by combined talent of several producers nowadays, almost all projects are solo projects, several people working together are very few (lunar dawn comes to mind) almost everything released to be honest

We are not crying because neogoa is not like old school. We're, I am, butthurt because it's not AS GOOD as old school. So we should give them best grades because they are making music they like? No. We are on the receiving end and we judge. If the process of making music satisfies those producers, then great and they should not care about what someone says on this "grumpy" forum. The difference between this forum and others is that most people here were old enough to hear what existed before neogoa while the crowd nowadays is not. "As scene is small its hard to get international gigs, and yes if artist want to be heard and want to play he must respect some 'standards' of today." and this is how this music takes it's turn for the worse. You let needs of the mass dictate how you should make your music so that you get to play on international festivals? So be it, but lets make it clear that that is called commercialization. You change music so that a bigger crowd likes it instead of letting it get attention as it is. Proof enough. These are facts IMO and Im not trying to be toxic. Dont get me wrong though. I have been listening and exploring neogoa releases for past 2 weeks. Not a single old school one. Some releases are A M A Z I N G, while most are not. I am not against change, but lets look at what ends up with musical change around the globe... Yup it changes for the worse because producers are trying so hard to satisfy needs of a bigger crowd, and the need of this high crowd is next to nothing. And what is interesting about neogoa is that one of the best music I hear is FREE on ektoplasm. See my point?

yes and yes. there's no difference. let's take the first oldschool and newschool copilation that i find in my library: it turns out to be: VA - Tribal Science. the only good tracks on here are imho space tribe - flipout the dolphin (voodoo edit), mwnn - silicon trip and cydonia - animals (which is the track why i downloaded the comp in the first place). the rest is mediocre at best. the psychaos track are very average, just like tip, the sounds in prana gets on my nerves within a few seconds and even the second mwnn track has a horrible, uninspired melody in the middle (which is surprising because there's hardly a track by him that i don't like). for newschool is was: VA - Goamystica Vol. 1. the good tracks here imho are khetzal - damocles, imba & jagoa - unidentified flying spores and fiery dawn - feelings. space elves and somnesia have melodies i don't like, cactus arising and maiia303 are nice, but not special enough to get a "good" rating in my library, afgin is horribly cheesy and the rest is just average. surprisingly there are exactly 11 tracks in both compliations (no i really didn't pick them or plan this) so the comparison is easy to make. 3/11 tracks are good in the oldschool compilation and 3/11 tracks are good in the newschool compilation. the rest is just average. i've been disappointed by newschool and have therefore turned to oldschool instead multiple times, each time only finding that the percentage of good music wasn't better back then, it's rather that the average and bad tracks sound different. much of that used to be amateurish, boring music with bad sound design, now it's music with "standardised" sounds playing a constant and tiring stream of forgettable eastern. maybe we disagree because i wasn't there in the golden days and don't have fond memories of the time?

It is actually good, if we are talking about prog or full-on, 95% of it is mediocre to piss-poor (but the rest 5% is as awesome as it gets, actually I believe that the golden era of psytrance has just began because today we have really amazing possibilities for production and sound-design which weren't available or at least were prohibitively expensive 5 years before). Yesterday I gave a spin to Trust in Trance, and I was actually surpruised how many mediocre tracks it contains. Yes, there are Kabbalah, People Can Fly, Enlightened Evolution, but most other tracks are boring and simplistic. Mindsphere's Mintal Triplex/Presence released this year is much more interesting and diverse album. I understand that if there weren't Trust in Trance there was no Presence, but still, goa has improved a lot (if we judge it accoridng to the best releases).

The sounds have been heard before... But the compositions!!! It's like with Rock... A guitar has been done 10000000 before, and still, the right melody/combination/composition can still do wonders! Same for goa... which is far less explored then rock for instance still enough possibilities

I can only agree that there is a very homogenous sound in many releases. Old school had wider variety of elements in the tracks and a bigger emphasis on sound design. For example you rarely hear tribal elements in modern goa. Though I have to admit there are a-plenty of forgettable melodies in otherwise well produced tracks (e.g. Cosmic Dimension/Innerspace), soa gain Goa doesn't always need melodies in your face, even good rhythms(attention to the other elements) can make a track huge. And the artists that produce darker music just vanish or there are just a few. (Amanians...)

Did you ever heard about Sturgeon's law? Imo, the ratio of great releases to mediocre crap stays more or less the same throughout the whole history of psy/goa trance but the great tracks become classic while the the crap is being forgotten, therefore we may think that old goa was all killer stuff unlike today. Maybe today we just have more of everything because indeed the tools needed to make pro-quality music are more easily accessible (plugins are cheap or free, yeah, but still, you need at least a powerful machine and decent monitoring) and running a digital label is probably much less expensive than pressing real vinyls or CDs - thus we have more crap, but also more great stuff.