Padmapani

he has gone commercial i.e. he does regular trance now. on his discogs (https://www.discogs.com/artist/659162-Afgin) you'll see a few newer releases but they got no attention here because they're not psy anymore. as much as i loved old is gold when it came out i don't miss him terribly. his tracks sounded great when new but imho don't have too much replay value (similar to gms, alien project or goasia in that respect).

not enough singing and limiting. also nhjo at least made the perfect tracks for the season. may i remind you of this masterpiece:

i couldn't agree more. i don't think we'll ever see a new album by vibrasphere or silicon sound again, but mwnn apprently has a new album almost ready to release for some time now. let's hope it doesn't go the way of astral's new album

if we can get some people to commit to this idea, i'd glady contribute something. at least sharing big files should be easier now than it was for the last attempt

a limiter on top of already limited music? i would expect sound crews already do some loudness normalisation between sets manually. i think the problem doesn't really lie in big festivals but rather your average club. the sound systems there don't have any sort of levelling and with the most popular stuff that draws the biggest crowds sounding louder than the rest i don't see much interest in the people responsible to make any change. -8 would be quite an ok standard (if you're talking about fullon or similar. goa trance would ideally have a little more room still). the usual -6 or so does take away a bit off the transients already. -2.8 is definitely just insanity, but still people are asking "how do i get my tracks as loud as that". if we continue down that road, ending up with pure square waves to max out what is possible loudness wise isn't far away the limiter for home use is an interesting proposition (with the upside surely being that we'd then only get unlimited music to play though, so no more great tracks ruined by atrocious overlimiting), but if that some day becomes the norm (though i doubt it with the majority of people caring so little that they listen to any crappy music that happens to be played on the radio now through crappy speakers), we still have a long way to go. having to re-adjust the settings for every track you listen to would be quite a hassle and even modern automated mastering systems like landr often enough butcher a mix quite badly.

for home listening the loudness wars have pretty much come to an end with so many people using streaming services that normalise loudness. but for parties (and we're talking about edm here) i don't see any change yet or not even a solution on the horizon. pa's are not infinitely powerful and as long as there's a loudness limit (also enforced by a limiter to protect the equipment or maybe to conform to government regulations?), tracks with less dynamic range sound louder and therefore more powerful before they become so squashed that every single element gets lost in a world of mush. in most clubs "modern" progressive sounds infinitely clearer and fatter than goa trance for that reason. to make matters even worse i recently had a conversation elsewhere (not psy-focused site), where some producers (!) said they prefer hard limited clipping tracks for their harsh aggressive sound. they gave an example of a dubstep track mastered to a whopping -2.8 lufs. if you match the loudness to any properly mastered track it sounds extremely wimpy and flat, just like pure garbage (a term that i'd also use to describe the track musically btw ), in comparison.

so you want to make another goabase?

imho we've already been there. pleiadians - ifo or hallucinogen is to early techno (take something like interactive - dildo or chimo bayo - asi me gusta mi) as pink floyd is to rocknroll.

both globular and geoglyph, this is going to be good! sadly no cd release, i would have liked to add this to my small collection. i have no way to play a vinyl record. btw, here's the link to the kickstarter that's apparently missing in the first post: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/8616209/globular-and-geoglyph-a-new-collab-album-straight-to-vinyl/description

i actually had a slow down phase where i started to appreciate progressive in addition to goa and fullon many years ago, but the most recent change in taste is that i started to also enjoy forest some time ago. so no slow down here either the best bpm range is still 140-150. i do also have a little higher tolerance for cheese nowadays, but that only goes so far as to include more fullon and trance classics rather than any pop music from the last few decades. absolutely. the gems from the past have never lost their status.

sounds like cheesy singing with a rattling diesel engine in the background. not even weird hitech noises. i'll pass. i seems the commercalisation that has killed off so many genres and subgenres before (signified by the ability to remix anything into that genre by simply adding a stereotypical beat) has reached hitech now.

i actually know that guy in the middle of the "o" of goa.

we've heard so many samples of new tracks now (most of it sounding very good, starting off where the astral we know and love have left off years ago), that the new album has to be a quadruple album when it finally comes out in 2030.

i think most governments are doing this… i agree. a "drop" is or rather used to be a different thing. but now when reading discussions with producers of other electronic music most (esp. those that make more commercial stuff) almost use the term interchangably with "chorus" or any main part of the track. it's been so overused that it almost lost its meaning. i like the "drop" at 3:42. it's a not even posing for a climax, it's just a clever way to switch from one section to another and actually goes into a break. e-clip has sacrificed some of the magic his early works had and picked up more elements from what's more popular now, but he's still a very good musician.

i have no idea why people go wild to something like that when at a festival or when listening at home, but i understand it in clubs with shitty pa's and the dj playing deep into the red. then it's the only time you'll actually hear and feel the kick and bass and it's not disappearing in a horribly limited mess. that said i do use the "drop" to kick and bass in my own tracks. but i don't see those parts as a climax, but rather as a starting point to build toward a climax or even as a sort of break. if a simple kick and bass is the climax or your track, it's most likely a very boring track.

i wouldn't call it good old protoculture. this is more progressive than fullon and a bit more commerical (not in the negative/cheesy sense, but it's sorta inoffensive, appealing to a broader crowd) a than his first two albums. if course it still definitly has his signature sound and is high quality easy-going psytrance. approved. not the music that shoots you into space in the middle of the night, but the kind that puts a smile on your face before you decide to leave the dancefloor and go to bed after an exhausting night. my favourites up to now are gaia, the vertical mode remi and jungle rocket. but up to now the best shadow chronicles track imho is still another earth.

i thought we wanted not to get into that topic. tbh i don't care if it's mixed live or in the studio. if it sounds good it's good i agree. fullon and esp. progressive are a lot easier to mix than goa trance (newschool goa often is most of the time even worse than oldschool. on my own adventures with virtual dj i can make an halfway ok (djing is not my speciality) oldschool set but i've never been able to make a smooth transition both to and from a filteria track). so the reasons are not valid anymore for most subgenres but the tradition of not focusing on good mixing continues. of course the flow should be there, but that can also be achieved without fancy or perfectly seamless transition but also with a good track selection. and i don't give a fuck about unreleaseds. i want good music, not necessarily music that no one has heard before. there is so much psy released these days that it's a rare and pleasant occurrance when i actually know the track played in a set. and i do try to keep up with new music from different subgenres.

i've seen james monro play at ozora. and i've also met people there who were really excited for his set. boom shankar is another one who's pretty popular around these parts (and who sometimes plays at ozora). and of course we have anoebis. howeve i agree with the notion that djs and artists should not be the main point of attention at parties, but rather situated behind the speakers. psytrance shouldn't need any sort of star cult, let the music speak for itself. that's one thing where i've always prefered how things are handled in the freetekno scene as compared to psytrance. i think the main point is that dj sets are often, as you say, less consistent and not so great compared to live sets. so in most cases i'd rather have the latter if a have a choice. i vividly remember when i saw talamasca the only time (when zodiac was still fresh). his live was perfectly on point, but his dj set was an utter cheese fest. as ap has said there are always some local guys you know are good djs and others you know to avoid (mostly because they'll always play at least some ultra-commercial tracks even if it does fit neither to the mood of the party nor any of the other music played there). bad transitions are something that sort of has tradition in the psy scene, starting with people like goa gil who "mixed" simply by pressing stop/play on dat players back then (no vinyl in hot goa). partly also because goa trance is notoriously difficult to mix. the tracks are produced in a way that they can stand on their own and don't have dj friendly intros or outros at all. personally, i don't need supter sophisticated transitions at all. as long as the track selection is good and the transitions aren't total crap, i'm happy.

i bet you're not playing into the limiter of your volkswagen nor is your car a converted pedestrian underpass with especially atrocious acoustics. i really have no idea why djs choose to go into the red so much (it doesn't even get louder at that point). i tried to simulate the horrible sound of a particular party at home and iirc had to push the limiter more than 20db as well as choose completely wrong settings and an extra bass boost in the eq before the limiter to get it into the territory of what i was hearing there.

full quality version: realy nice bassline. but that melody at 2:30! thanks for posting this. still i prefer this bassline: deep, warm and flowing.

the basslines of u-recken are surely not as snappy and puchy as those from spirit architect, djantrix or the like (which are also an acquired taste for us old folks ;) ), but i'm still loving those of neural mantra and his frequent flyers remix.

it surely does depend on sound systems and the technicians. at balkan goa fanatics i was quite surprised how good everything sounded compared to other locations. on most systems it's easier to make other psy sound good, but some clubs even manage to make astrix sound like a shitty amateur production. he's definitely talented. when i heard his first tracks in 2017 i wondered why he wasn't on suntrip even if the album is more suited for home listening it's still fine. the chances to experience goa trance on the dancefloor are far in between anyways. it's the same thing as with e-mantra and mindsphere. imho too much of a good thing is still a good thing. even if just a few spectacular tracks would of course be better than a whole album with >50% tracks you can't tell apart if you haven't already listened to the album ten times or so. but i do understand it somewhat. once you've found a way that works for making a track that's guaranteed to be good, it's hard to throw that overboard and start fresh with a new approach.

it also sounds fine on monitors over here but i get what you're saying. it seems as if the kick is the only element not fighting for space. most of the time it has a relatively pronounced click and it has the whole sub for itself while the bassline sort of blends into the leads.

this is often the case for newschool goa with its multitude of layers. it sounds fine at home on monitors or good headphones, but at clubs where sound systems aren't perfect it quickly turns into mush and you don't even notice the melodies anymore. often kick and bass get lost too. i remember a party where it took me listening halfway through a track, then only at the break with less things playing i could make out it was actually one of my favourite tracks (i don't remember which one, it was either something by khetzal or ra). the same thing happened again with mindsphere at the same party. when you finally recognise the track you can fill in the blanks in your mind, but when you cannot (or don't know the track) it's just one big mess. even when i saw filteria at ozora (they really don't have a bad sound system there, far from it) a similar thing happened. many melodies got lost and kick and bass sounded very weak compared to the sets before and after.

i've not yet given it the attention it deserves. all i can say right now is that sand of time is a stellar track. probably my favourite track released on suntrip since earthcall.