dhollmusik

wow! well, i love the Bristol trip-hop of the 90's, so am curious how Subgud will sound. I haven't checked online, I'm just going by your recommendation and will premier it on my cd-player (like in the old days!).

I made an order, I'm sure it will be a good one!

Procs... https://procs.bandcamp.com/ Also some Derango side-project stuff:

20 years online, and birthing a record label too, is a damn fine achievement

Fillers (and what are good tracks) is in the eye of the beholder. I bet in any album we all have different ideas as to what is filler, what are the good tracks and which are the big highlights. It'd be a shame to lose out on what some consider filler but others consider killer. I do however agree a shorter length album can often flow better, but only if the album is so constructed as to be a journey (rather than simply a shorter collection of tracks than an 80-minute album). But if we're not talking a conceptual tonal journey, if we're talking an album of dj-able dance tracks, then I would vote 80 minutes (max CD-length) so as to maximise the amount of tracks on there.

Here's a one-minute showcase of pieces i've done, ten short clips of soundtracky 'n technotrance vibes. A full album should be ready sometime in 2020. https://dholl.bandcamp.com/track/1-minute-showcase

Na Ve Ka is probably his most accessible album after Debut. That album is almost all killer. But if you're not into it then you're not into it I'll have to write reviews of his works for posterity, either here or on Discogs. Regarding the speed: when I first heard Tanetsveta (the beginning of the hyperspeed era, let's day) I also didn't connect at first as I just found it too fast. I even slowed some tracks down but that of course sounded wrong. At some point it clicked, at first with Aura Leta, then with the rest. Aura Leta is a good break-in example of this unique psykovsky-style of hyperspeed bpm's with ambient layers. Youtube doesn't do it justice as the 3D-space is compressed, on WAV it sounds huge! Here's the youtube for reference anyway, maybe it can serve as a break-in for you too:

Fantastic work, Lightforce! Yes, this psy-trance thing is endlessly fascinating. So many branches, so many worlds. I would say the Psykovsky - Ksolntsu album comes under experimental or hi-tech. It's not very darkpsy. Interesting how Juno Reactor come in under 3 or 4 different styles. I wish more artists would experiment with their sound for different albums.

I also enjoy Kashyyk. I disagree that in 2019 everything has been done. I linked a few examples where psy-trance could radically go. One of the links was the 16-minute avant-garde Stockhausen-esque psy of Glosolalia: this piece is from a comp which also houses a couple of Kashyyks...I think also with Sectio Aurea and of course Psykovsky there is some ambition there to create new types of psy-trance. I do agree with you that most folk want the familiarity of tried-n-tested formula. But that didn't stop 90's producers constantly innovating. I would disagree that tech is the total driving force. It definitely was at the beginning, but electronic dance musik has had a few decades to settle so now the imagination is the limit. Like how late-60's/70's prog-rock musicians showed us that there's no limit to what you can produce with guitars and drums (whereas in the 50's & 60's guitars-with-drums music was tightly defined within particular genres like jazz, rock-n-roll, blues etc). The same is true of synths/sequencer, whether hard or soft. They're instruments waiting to be used. Maybe we're waiting for the EDM-equivalent of late-era Beatles or Pink Floyd to show the rest of the world electronic dance musik has no limits to what can be done, and this ambition can infiltrate the relative mainstream, creating many radical new subgenres of edm, including the psychedelic kind. ...there's maybe an element of old man shouting at the moon here, but as a musik-lover i would like to see some radical genre-bending developments in the psy-trance world these next few years. There's definitely enough room, just maybe there's not enough will.

I think most people would agree old-school goa has aged like fine wine. Its comeback in terms of re-releases is well-deserved. I remember going to The Drome in London and at some point around 2000 they relegated old-school goa to the smaller second room. It was the trend at the time to think it sounded old, and what was true is that it didn't sound great on bigger newer PA's, whereas the Psytek/Prog sound which was fresh at the time sounded nice and crisp. And cool...people at the time were seduced by the cool-sound of prog/psytek, in contrast old-school sounded hectic and cheesy. Not to me, I might add...I got bored after a while dancing to minimal stuff so spent most of my time in that second room but then again, I was also jumping about to hard-house around that time ...there's no accounting for taste haha

Good post. I agree from your examples those artists have evolved within themselves, tho' their newer sound doesn't feel distinct or radical like psytek did when compared to old-school, or darkpsy did when compared to full-on. For example in 6:40 of the newer Astrix track he's employing the same VST-sounds we know from full-on and darkpsy. The newer U-Recken piece could be any new-school from 2008 onwards. The fresh Outsiders piece is the best example to support your argument: it is the sound which dominates the big festival night-time, featuring finely-tuned 3D-sound for the big PA's. Tho' on closer inspection it's a tech-freshened AP-meets-full-on style. It doesn't feel like a new fresh subgenre of psy-trance. True that the 2010's have had some evolvement, yes...but not as radikal or distinct as the decades before.

There's many differences between psychedelic/goa trance of the 90's and of the 2010's. One that really stands out after reading some user reviews here is our perception of time, and how quickly sound evolved in the 90's compared with how static it seems to be during the 2010's. Not just within our scenes, but with electronic dance musik in general: in the 90's rave evolved to all the other edm-genres, which had their own subgenres which also evolved during the same decade. In the 00's we could introduce new subgenres like darkpsy, forest, hi-tech, new-school etc. In the 10's it seems there's nowhere left to go. Check out these quotes for example, all of these are user-review quotes from the year 2000 about releases from 1997, a mere 3 years earlier: VA - 3D This was released in summer 1997 and that really seems like a long time ago now...... V/A - The Future Sound of America - Psychedelic Trance Get this comp if you're looking for a 1997 exhibit in the psy-trance museum, but I wouldn't play much of this stuff today. Asia 2001 - Psykadelia This was considered as very psychedelic trance 3 years ago..now it sounds too melodic and oldschool. In 1997 it would have deserved 6.5/10...now... V/A - Air-Born This compil is very good to my mind. One of the best AFR compils...tho its old now. Dimension 5 - Transdimensional It's getting old. 6/10 because it's no longer in fashion. Dimension 5 - Transdimensional Yeah, it's a bit dated, but it was made in '97. Now imagine us saying similar things about 2016 releases sure, there's an element of the older we get the faster time flies, but we're not all old ravers here, the main observation is surely that psy-trance hasn't evolved much in the last decade. A 2009 production will sound like a 2019 production pretty much. Ok, not headline news...but still, here's hoping the 2020's surprise us with totally fresh sounding psychedelic subgenres! They are out there waiting to be mined. Lots of things you can do: pulse-phase psychedelia without kickdrums, classical-inspired epics, cyberpop, psyjazzy-breaks/DnB etc. What yous reckon? Has the concept of psychedelic trance-dance musik reached its potential already and we are just left to perfect it, or are there countless other directions it could go in, and be successful in? What other directions would you have in mind? Will the next decade continue with the tried-tested formula or will we see some evolution?

Best post on the whole is new-school any good debate. I came very late to the party, bagged a bunch of CD's without really doing much online study and was expecting old-school goa with cleaner production. What I got was a different branch of goa trance (just like how forest & hi-tech splintered off from darkpsy). I've made my peace with this, and thankfully have since found quite a bit that I enjoy. As with old-school (or any genre) there's lots of filler and sometimes the overall sound (loudness-mastering) isn't appealing for home listening due to too many elements fighting for limited dynamic space, but now and then I'll discover a killer track, or an entire enjoyable CD. Still got lots to discover, some of my Suntrip CD's are still sealed so hopefully I've saved the best for last. So far I'd say as its own subgenre I'd rank new-school as superior to mainstream psy, and that should surely be the goal of any subgenre: to offer a more enjoyable alternative to the mainstream branch. Plus I gather the new-school scene is healthy with regular releases and well-visited parties. Any scene is better than no scene at all.

masterpiece review! you really understand the musik, nice one. Juno are one of my favourites. For me 2, 3, 4 are the big standouts here. I'd rate Bible, Shango and East as overall better albums but Beyond is still excellent story-telling world-building stuff...many psy albums are just a collection of dancefloor fillers, you have to search far and wide to find the ones with tales to tell.

Good review. Vasily is a top man! Haven't got round to listening to this yet as I'm still full-on in back-to-the-future mode with old-school goa. I happen to rate the Psykovsky trilogy of Tanetsveta, Na Ve Ka and Ksolntsu as among the finest music ever made...of any genre. Also rated that way are other works like the final track of Na Budet (which astonishingly has over 2m hits on the youtubes), first 3 of Poslantsu, the soft-psy classic Only Love under the DeJa Vu name and many more dotted around his prolific discography. In the edm-world, only Juno Reactor can boast a similar quantity of high-quality output. That said, auto-tuned pop vocals aren't my thing, this album may not be for me. But I respect any artist willing to go in different directions, to take musical risks and experiment, to delve into his passions and produce something unique from it. Definitely will have an audience, maybe even more of an audience than the avant-garde psychedelic trance of previous albums.