healium

Thanks for the recommendations - will check them out! Yes though, Conundrum Concoction is one of the finest psychill V/A's ever in my opinion.. The Tnegri album is awesome also - darker indeed.. Conundrum Concoction and Tengri are both excellent but both are in the earthy foresty fairytale realm of psychill.. A downtempo album in the vain of the first Kindzazza album would be great also.. You would think there would be the psychill version of dark minimal or techy maximal psytrance - for some reason though producers make the psychill either Ultimae style or the earthy/hippy/shamanic type..

What the world needs is more dark and techy downtempo. Think X-Dream "Radio," Sensient, or Hux Flux - but downtempo type style... I like the psychill style with the vocals and hippy vibe and all that - Shponglle, Entheogenic, Slackbabba - that is all great stuff, but so much of it is in that style.. Ultimae releases have a darker style - certainly not the hippy shanti style - but the Ultimae releases are 1) not really that dark (more like "moody") and 2) certainly not twisted and uber-psychedelic - you don't get a lot of weird tripped out sound effects in Ultimae releases.. We need more dark robotrip downtempo - no vocals, no eastern melodies - twisted melodies, post-apocalyptic soundscapes, and mechanical fx instead..

"Kuobo Lover" is awesome!

Just ordered this album via preorder on the Z-Plane records website - getting a signed copy - woo! Looks like general release is gonna happen very soon.. The other Z-Plane records compilation has some heavy hitters on it also - looks like Hux Flux and Logic Bomb are getting along well these days..

I dunno man I thought that Digicult/Hux Flux track was great - one of my favorite full-on tracks ever.. Anyhow, from what I've heard the new tracks on the album are more in the melodic maximal style psytrance similar to his earlier work.. Certainly "psychedelic" - Hux Flux has for sure not sold out to mainstream - his beat structures have full-on elements sometimes but in general the tracks were totally psychedelic and I would think great for home listening/headphone journeys.. The tracks I heard live were more similar to Cryptic Crunch, Errorhead, and Time Slices/Perceptor than to the "Division by Zero" album which was not very melodic at all.. I didn't care much for the "Division by Zero" album - not too accessible for me except on headphones.. Here's the Digicult/Hux Flux track - yea it is full-on but what do you expect? - Digicult makes full-on and collaborated with Hux Flux on this track - it has so much emotion and the melodies are killer.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACGePKHVYc

The cut of "Tarantula" he has on soundcloud is all messed up - that track is massive though, and it's on the album - just wait!

January 2015 - the long-awaiting new Hux Flux album - released on Dennis Tapper's new label Z-Plane Records. Oops, the title of the album is actually "Circle, Sine, Sound" - maybe a moderator could change it in the topic title? http://z-planerecords.com/RELEASES.html

"Back to Space" is easily my favorite new-school goa album - those are some catchy and emotional stormers there... Been hoping for something new from him for awhile..

Well, Los Angeles CA USA will have all those things, except a lot of psytrance - maybe 1 show a month and usually not the best artists..

Is that Jon Cocco in the American flag shirt there?

Your reviews are awesome - thanks! Hilarious too..

Wow some tracks on this album are so killer! The opening track has the most superb trancey melody toward the end of the track - and they let it run for a couple minutes or so you can really bliss out on it.. Love it!

Glad you enjoy! I'm really keen on new artists in the progressive genre - not that many new ones these days..

Just discovered this artist - killer dark and groovy style - kinda like Beat Bizarre but darker - superb music, really hypnotic and psychedelic.. He has released one album - "Empty Space" (2013) and some EPs. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV_eWqPsaUQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azgAuPkYjmk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64hBAPWyDLw

Check the full track - "A Quarter of a Milligram" - out on the 2013 album "E7" - killer!!

This one hasn't grabbed me.. I like the last track, which is fully goa trance.. The others though, they are very similar in style to other Entheogenic tracks, and not particularly catchy either.. Entheogenic has put out a couple stormers though in the goatrance department over the last couple years - I vote they do an entire trance album - that would be epic!

Wow, what a great list - thanks for providing this! Quite a few on there that I will be checking out.. New Abakus and Electrypnose albums - yum!

You know, Manxcat, when I first heard "Twisted" I didn't like it either - and for pretty much that reason - sounded harsh and almost like a video-game. But now I love it, at least the tracks I listed.. I totally agree with what Vercohr said above - the music serves the psychedelia, not the other way around - it's just primal, unfiltered, psychedelic brilliance.. Specifically, "Twisted" is the LSD sound, the sound of the minds of the acid-tripping goa culture - it captures the semi-synthetic, alternately beautiful, alternately dark, wild wild ride that acid is - when I listen to "Twisted"it really takes me somewhere emotionally, and takes me into Simon's mind as a young psychedelic musician.. Hux Flux - "Cryptic Crunch" is similar for me - very raw, very brilliant, totally inspired by psychedelia - and didn't like that one the first time I heard it either.. "Inspired" - maybe that's the word for it - some albums just sound way more inspired thn others - like the artist just absolutely had to get out what was inside of them..

Glad you enjoyed! I think "Tarantula" is such a stormer - I could see that one destroying a mainstream club dancefloor even though it's uber psychedelic as well.. I heard a better mix of it than the one on the soundcloud page though - maybe on his facebook page.. Most of his tracks on Soundcloud are works in progress - he keeps changing them..

Yah exactly - that's what it is for me - it's more like a classy, outer space sort of sound than the earthy shamanic style of Entheogenic, Shpongle, Shulman, etc.. Not as in-your-face psychedelic, but def trancey, and goes really well with forays into altered states of consciousness..

Interesting comments - I agree Johnb820 with some of what you said - I'm not a musician so I can't speak about technicalities - by simple layers I mean, like take "Solstice" and "Alpha Centauri" - both tracks have just a few main melodies, that he just interchanges with each other and repeats - but each melody is so distinct and has so much emotion, psy, and catchiness to it that it comes off as such an excellent composition.. The whole track is epic - whereas with a lot of neo-goa, I feel like I'm just sort of waiting through a bunch of mediocre melodies that all run on top of each other to get to "that part" of the track where the melody I really like is - that's fine too, but Hallucinogen has such a knack for making every layer really stand out..

I would disagree though that Hallucinogen's albums were goa - to me they were the first of the "psytrance" style - I feel the same way about Koxbox "Dragon Tales" too though.. Those Koxbox and Hallucinogen albums are much closer in style to other albums that we usually call psytrance than they are to goa - albums such as Infected Mushroom's early albums, Talpa, Nystagmus, Misted Muppet, Hedonix, Double Dragon, Process, etc.. It's hard to say where goa ends and psytrance begins though..

Almost forgot about this one too - Chilling Matenda - "Mediteran" Beautiful album, sounds like sunny psychedelic Mediterranean music too, whatever that is.. Lots of emotion in this one, really unique and catchy, excellent, memorable melodies in every track.. I find this album psychedelic but it's not in the shamanistic style a la Entheogenic or Shpongle - this is more psychedelic an emotional level.. This used to be my favorite album to put on back when I was into doing intramuscular shots of ketamine - great journey music, not too intrusive or aggressive, but really hypnotic and spacey.. Here's a couple, (wait for the epic spiraling melody on Audio Raj ):

Yah I'm a big fan now of a lot of the neo-goa - Artifact303 particularly, then Mindsphere, and some of Filteria's tracks.. A lot of the older goa had the same issue though, it all just sort of runs together for me - I know this is heresy, but I find a good bit of the Pleiadians/Etnica/Crop Circles tracks to be like this - lots of sounds in the same tone, all running together on top of each other.. That being said "Alcyone" is one of my favorite tracks ever

I've been trying to figure out why exactly this album is so great - and there are many reasons - but here's what stand out to me after many listens. In tracks like "LSD", "Alpha Centauri", "Fluoro Neuro Sponge," and "Solstice," Simon doesn't use a ton of layers, or whole swarms of melodies and sounds - but every layer he chooses is really distinct and memorable. Even though I don't like some of them (in each of those tracks except "LSD" there I find a certain melodic layer that is too harsh for my ears), they are all so distinct - they have so much character, and contrast/compliment each other so well.. The tracks have a very simple, elegant quality to them. At the same time, though, it's totally edgy, dark, and psychedelic - there's lots of mainstream trance releases that just use a few layers and they mostly all suck.. The problem with many of the psytrance releases that followed - especially a lot of the "full-on" and "goa/neo-goa" and "darkpsy" style releases - is that they use lots of layers and sound effects, but so many of them are easily forgettable - it's like they're going for quantity over quality.. Lots of forgettable sounds and melodies with an occasional really good melody that makes the track worth listening to.. And frequently, especially with neo-goa I find this, the melodies are all in the same key or tone range - usually high-pitched, and usually at the same pace - it all just sort of runs together.. It's like the artist has tunnel vision or something.. With Hallucinogen "Twisted", every layer is so distinct and stands out from itself so well - it's like he used 2X less layers than much of other goa trance, but like he spent 2X as long on each layer to make sure each one was memorable.. There is something too about the way Simon ties it together with repeating melodic structures - "Alpha Centauri" and "Solstice" are good examples of this - they have these repeating thematic melodies that connect everything together - so much of the full-on and neo-goa just sort of goes from one thing to the next, there's no main thematic element that unites the track and makes it stand out in the listener's mind..