Padmapani

the "fluid" synths in the background totally sound like transwave. but it could be that they are sampled? (the track doesn't sound quite as professional as transwave usually does.)

@g.o.a. but modulation is goa trance. the topic was about psy that's not goa

you're all wrong. his best track is the star cloister. @topic fits perfectly to cold, horrible weather and being busy, only getting 4-5h of sleep a day.

interesting find. but i'm really disappointed by the first track. the stop-and-go beat makes it feel like a long break lacking any sort of build or climax. also the synths are unpleasantly harsh. the second one is simply great. lots of atmosphere, smooth, lots of effects and lots of things going on. the third one is exactly in the middle. the beat is strange and reminds me of captain hook at times (which is not a good thing), but the melodies and effects are nice. the track seems as if could have been on the last hux flux album.

i cannot decide which one is better. one has the awesome acidlines in the foreground, the other has all those gated sounds and effects massaging the inside of your skull...

isn't the croatian bora a wind frome north east (over the mountains towards the adriatic sea)? it would be unusual for sand from the sahara coming from the north east... we have the opposite of bora here. the "föhn" is a warm wind coming over the alps from the south (the air heats up due to coming down from the mountains), responsible for most of the (on average) 10 days of the year when we have over 30˚C, and sometimes it carries sahara dust with it. the downside is that it only occurs for 1-3 days and always introduces front with rain and cold air. @starkraver i didn't know it could rain so much that it washes away the eggs. i thought more rain always leads to more mosquitos. interesting. it's logical that way.

i see. the thought that someone (except belgians) might already have heard lunar juice at a party didn't occur to me . it's not a very famous track and slinky wizard is unknown even to many of the local oldschool freaks.

so what is usually the rainy season is "harsh summer" now? wouldn't they be much more of a problem in a year with more rain than usual rather than the other way round? @richpa that's a really nice looking town. those ruins are surely nice to party in (as long as it isn't too bad with neighbours calling the police; it looks as if it's very close to inhabited houses.)

thanks. please don't tell me that i'm getting too old for the internet at 30 years of age i'm actually surprised at how good those top 10 are. mirage is decent, even he.art is quite ok. rigel is usually also quality psytrance, while the goa sessions compilation is full of uk psytrance which isn't too shabby either. earthcall has a prominent spot and there's even a second goa album with sky technology... not too long ago the charts would be dominated by cheesy fullon and minimal techno/proggy crossover.

you asked for shitty stick? not that it's a bad track, but if i had to choose one slinky track it definitely wouldn't be the first to come to my mind. lunar juice would be a more obvious choice. but i guess it's better than a poke in the eye with a...

well, it's not quite as bad all of the time in summer. typically we have a weekly rhytm with nice but cold and windy weather on monday/tuesday, getting progressively warmer (maybe 26˚C) up to thursday, and as soon as the weekend draws near it starts to rain and cool down again. most europeans (especially those who have never experienced the perfect-for-months weather in nearly all of south/southeast asia) wouldn't necessarily agree with me. i just can't stand the cold.

on their new website i can't even find the top10 anymore. it looks like a mobile version missing all the features even though i'm on the computer.

you haven't missed anything. our seasons are: -cold and windy, but at least no snow anymore -rainy but at least not cold anymore (only every 5 years or so we have a summer that actually deserves that name) -cold and foggy, everything decays -freezing cold with snow, you cannot stay outside for any amount of time without discomfort and there's barely any sunlight at all.

i have a roland a300 pro and i'm happy with it. it has 32 keys and i really wish i had room for more. i cannot imagine being too productive with less keys. there are plenty of knobs and sliders, having play/record/... buttons right on the keyboard is handy and the keys feel much better than those on the ancient cheap keyboard i had before (once you get used to them being a bit narrower). the only issues (besides only having 2.5 octaves) i see is that for activating aftertouch you need to press so hard that you think you're going to break something and that after a few years of usage the knob i use for cutoff rotates a lot easier than the others.

serbia is not (yet) in the eu.

they do their own thing, regardless of if it's considered to be psy or not. they simply don't care about genre boundaries. again there are a few really good tracks while i don't like the rest. but i have lots of respect for juno reactor: instead of selling out and making music because it sells i think they are just following their own vision.

the newer albums have more and more tracks in the same vein. thankfully the psy community has come to the conclusion that this is not psytrance. but ten years ago those tracks were actually played at parties (because infeted were considered to be big heroes due to their earlier output). when that was the case i really hated them. actually i still hold a bit of a grudge — they were the first to really bring commercial pop music elements into psytrance and many copied them, leading to a huge wave of horrible fullon. that development was probably happening anyway but infected were at the forefront and became exemplary for the commercialisation of psytrance.

not to all of us. except for the gathering, i like one track from bp empire and one from classical mushroom. the rest is just not that good in my opinion. i don't understand the craze about infected at all. so to me it's no big loss that they sold out.

style: i don't let subgenres dictate my taste, but what i like and don't like is often separated by genre boundaries (e.g. i dislike anything that's house. i have yet to find an exception. this even applies to acid house while i love any other "acid xxx" genre). this is no big surprise to me because these genres are differentiated for a reason. trance focuses on different elements, storytelling elements than techno, conveys different mind states and feeling, and therefore has other strengths and weaknesses for appealing to a person. complexity/originality: it can go from minimalistic to maximal (though the minimalistic tracks should ideally have more drive/energy to compensate), it just cannot be "empty", in a sense like vegan food tastes empty. even though it fills your stomach you still are never full and content. i'd rather have an artist copy the "meat" from the genre-template than serving to meat at all. i don't like music that's different for the sake of being different. some artists just do their thing, which happens not to conform to any genre conventions, and it's awesome. but i got the impression that some deliberately try to be unconventional/extra-creative/set themselves apart, eschewing the tried and true recipes while having no clear "own thing" going to replace it with. and this probably results in what to me sounds like "vegan" music. so in short, if artists struggle with being "nonconformist" creating sub par output, they could still make good "conformist music". not everything needs to be super unique and innovative. what i'd rather object to is that it's mostly the conformist aritsts that just add good production to the simplest and most overused templates who get the most recognition in the larger community and draw the biggest crowds. content: music needs to paint a picture in my head, it needs to be translatable to a mental landscape. this is the most important thing and the majority of music out there doesn't satisfy that criterion. it is most often accomplished by atmosphere/melodies, but a repetitive rhytm can sometimes be enough. neelix or any other utterly boring me-too artist will obviously fail here. to be psychedelic it imho need to be soothing and challenging at the same time. if artists want to be super psychedelic by just making, everything complicated, unnatural, aggressive and challenging to listen to, i'll just perceive it as noise. this is one of the most psychedelic tracks i know and there's nothing harsh about it. in fact it is very pleasant and soothing — but at the same time it has those slightly unsettling flowing patterns moving in only seemingly unrelated directions. only some psytrance manages to create a comparable balance (d5, chi-ad, braincell, logic bomb, ...). @antic come on, human evolution is a fun track @imba i agree about everything except the noise snare (why not?) and tracks without ups and downs. you don't like bpc - micromega? such tracks are the defintion of trance music to me.

if you give every album that deserves it a fair chance, you won't have too much time for other things i am actually surprised at how good skipping through a track works for me to assess if something is good enough. i very rarely go back and change my mind after more extensive listening. that's how it works with pop music and i agree that it's happening more and more in electronic music (psy is by far not the worst genre). though i disagree that you cannot find/notice the complex/interesting stuff in short samples. if you know where to look you'll easily recognise challenging, complex music (and if you don't know where to look you'll probably prefer the simple catchy stuff anyway ), partly because it's unusual, captivating your attention and partly because the formulaic flashy tracks are so drenched in clichés (and apparently increasingly so over time) that it immediately comes to your attention. imho it's just that most people don't care, choosing instant gratification over devoting more of their time and "brain power" to music... (though such discussion is probably more suited for your thread in general psytrance instead of the review thread?) seems i missed the 3/5 and probably interpreted your comment in the ticon thread to be a bit more negative than it actually is. that certainly explains listening to it.

you call that a review? it's just a comment explaining the rating (before someone asks me to). why do that when you don't like it? depends on where you draw the line. for most ticon albums i'd agree regardless of the defition. but if mirage is not psytrance, then 90% of progressive psy is not psytrance either

sure, why not it's a shame the norwegian initiative couldn't give the peak to finland as a birthday present. fuck "territorial integrity". it would have been such a nice gesture and would have hurt no one.

want back the old offtopic? let's post some pics of finland's steep mountains!

i loved this when it came out. but over the years i've realised that goasia is to goa what gms was to fullon. easy to get into, fun to dance to, but also easy to get bored of. in hindsight the melodies seem too obvious or even annoying after repeated listening. the overall sound picture isn't as clear or spacious as modern newschool releases either. this music still has its place and i like listening to some of the tracks every now and then, but i'm really happy that the forefront of goa trance has progressed way beyond the level of from other spaces.

i was giving it a listen on youtube after reading for comment in the ticon thread. i have to agree with psyshops classification of (progressive) house. this is not psytrance. 2/5 because house is boring music i cannot stand (while being seemingly creative and well-executed). but i agree that it's similar to jaia - fiction, which i hate just as much for the same reason.