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Hey-hey. How's it? This is a bit of a large scale topic to tackle but I've been thinking about it every now and then. So the main question is - how's everything changed considering psytrance culture? What do you think? It's obviously a question that's intertwined with our technological/social/human progression. It's difficult to start making an analysis but to get things started... I'm arguing people are in collective terms less focused. This means what we "consume" needs to be easy and fast to digest. Any person needs to make a conscious effort to withhold a long attention span in the age is smart phones and social media. A shorter attention span is not the only thing - if you browse through endless amounts of data (phone/computer...), the creators of this data are in battle to win your attention. Your attention is money, straight and honest. It's views, likes and ad revenue. As you might have noticed, this battle is intense and ugly. It's almost like as if you've suddenly landed in this weird zoo with endless amount of monkeys hitting cymbals together. The loud and obscene run the show. Attention is also a drug like phenomenon, some people crave for it and are willing to take any measure to achieve it. And it certainly has been this way before the invention of internet, but nowadays you can't escape this toxic energy that easily. We're physically less in contact and digitally affected by behavior that we can easily classify sub standard. But isn't it so, that we've actually developed a skill to avoid the negative aspect of internet to some degree? That skill is indifference. People are far more indifferent than before. We just have to ignore a lot of things, because the amount of stimulus has significantly risen in the 10-15 years or so. In global terms the rise of indifference is great for the ones in control. But for the majority, for the planet, for the evolution of mankind... it's toxic. It creates a world of apathy and that's when things get dark when we run out of empathy and hopefulness. Let's see how the aforementioned, in my opinion, affects psytrance culture: 1) Drop of quality / When it's "fast-food" it means you only have to figure out a few things like production standards to achieve the pop-appeal. And sure, there's a place for easily digestible music and it can be fun too. But how about the very opposite? The ruthlessly difficult yet intelligent sound? The reason to do music, the idea behind it, has certainly changed for the worse. The big names are very clinical in their approach and pretty much create the same track over and over again. These days there's more ego & less Soul. 2) Drop of interest / People are less engaged. Less focus means we give each other, not to mention our art, less time and appreciation. We hardly stop to admire a great work even when we hear it. We don't write reviews. Those take time and who cares! Right? That's just the way cookie crumbles these days. 3) No more classics / There's no consensus on what's good and what's not. Just a few single opinions at most. There's no real indicators of quality and popularity these days neither, because views and stardom can be bought. We can all probably agree Hallucinogen's Twisted is a classic yes? But come to talk about anything from the last 10 years I wouldn't know. I couldn't know. 4) Less story-telling albums / ...and more digital singles! Because singles can be released more often therefore staying "active" as an artist/label. Activity is one of the key elements to gaining attention online. A full length album? Yesterday's antics.

Friend just posted this. Thought it was well written and aligns with how I feel... We, the ravers. We, the music lovers. We, the psychedelic trance scene. We stand for peace. We stand for love. We do not stand for hate and senseless violence. We stand for peak experiences of joyous hedonism in harmonic juxtaposition of seeking our truth, finding ourselves in epiphanous states from philosophical inquiry and dance floor ponderings. We are proponents of sharing the joys of life with one another and the psychedelic experience, which allows us to transcend the dreariness of the banality of our everyday rat race existence. We celebrate visionary art, provocative inquiry, dissolving the status quo, and transformational experiences in our lives taking us to our next levels of self-actualization. We resoundingly reject hate; we unanimously refuse your vitriol. The global psytrance community is not homogenous or monolithic in nature, but together we collectively embrace and promote LOVE through our MUSIC across this entire planet, from parties off the map made up of 10 people in a cornfield dancing furiously to darkpsy from dusk to dawn and beyond on some Mackie monitors and a blown out sub, up to our massive festivals where tens of thousands of psychedelic trance pilgrims congregate from hundreds of countries from around our planet, to unite together and stand what we have ALWAYS stood for: peace, love, unity, and spending time together dancing to some of the best f*cking music on the planet. We will NOT be afraid. You will NOT take away LOVE from us. We will continue onwards but we will NEVER forget those that were murdered in cold blood during the most beautiful and loving moments of their lives. We have always been the torch bearers for the ultimate experience of peace, love, and music in this world and will continue to do so. With love, and in memory of those we lost.

Thanks for mentioning and getting my attention This is an importnat thread anyway. I'd like to do a "check in" too: My life has turned very much upside down, in a positive way (new relationship), but it was very challenging for me. I've also moved and am in a different flat now, still living out of boxes. I was quite under pressure during the last months. I'm really happy that there was no urgent matter here, for it could very well have been the drop that is too much for me to take... It has now calmed down a little and the cracking and creaking noises in my universe, which apparently was already suffering a little under the velocity of its expansion, have stopped or at least died down ... and I am now using the "calmer seas" to sit down and send out a little signal, that all is well in my life and that I will never forget this site and always will come back, now more than in the months before - it's a pleasure to be an admin and I thank you for it