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.

here's one of my EP's which maybe fits the psy world. genre: droney synth-soundtrack with a cosmic vibe (no beat, no structure). Free to download. https://dholl.bandcamp.com/album/va-have-souls-too

roughly my edm tastes have journeyed like this: child/young teen: old-school rave (on the radio, too young to actually rave!). mid/late-teen: mainstream edm like Prodigy, Underworld, Chem Bros and what they'd play in small-town clubs. 19: discovered actual raving! started with hard euphoric trance with acid elements (Brixton scene: Escape from Samsara, Pendragon, Return to the Source etc)...what a revelation...much more refined than old-school rave and far trippier 'n dancier than mainstream edm. 20-21: bought as a box set the first six Distance to Goa comps on a whim, was hooked. Normal trance seemed pretty simple in comparison. parties like Astral Phoenix on Tyssen Street and whatever the events at The Drome were called would play old-school goa. 22-23: hard-house domination. the music hasn't aged well, but it was a really fun time! not deep like trance, just sheer fun. 23-25: proper techno. that hypnotic relentless hard lock-groove stuff made a mockery of trance/hard-house's penchant for dramatic pauses and builds. 26: had an intense but short-lived full-on psy phase...like hard-house very fun at the time but not aged so well. 27+: discovered darkpsy! it (with forest and some hi-tech) remains an addiction. good darkpsy ages like fine wine. 28-29: enjoyed DnB techstep 'n neurofunk for a while. 30's: darkpsy, forest, hi-tech domination. 40: rediscovered old-school goa...there's so much beautiful timeless music here

yeah i think you're right. i'll move them to the Review threads (or in the case of the Voyage comp i think that doesn't have one so would create a new review thread in its corresponding year). currently enjoying Fragletrollet and Four Carry Nuts albums. oh i didn't lose CD2 myself, i bought it used on Ebay...when it arrived there was only CD1 in the case! luckily the seller was fair and repaid me half, i don't think he even noticed.

Will do an album next, still on that old-school tip for now. Which one of the below would yous wanna read about? I'll come back in a few days x Hallucinogen - Twisted Asia 2001 - Psykadelia Juno Reactor - Beyond the Infinite Pleiadians ‎– I.F.O. Total Eclipse - Violent Relaxation (CD1 only, CD2 is lost...)

Got good old Goa Head 3 on to recover from that... This is already established as one of my favourite old-school comps, it's not quite all killer no filler (is there even such a thing?) but the filler isn't soul-destroying, and the killers are fine stuff indeed! Listening while compiling thoughts may bring a new perspective or two. Let's see. CD1: 1: Astral Projection - Ionized. Typical high-end quality with the urgent hypnotic drive which we all know from AP, tho' the main synth-line borders on being grating. GOOD. 2: UX - Dominion. This is what I would call truly progressive psychedelic goa trance. It has unusual structures, sci-fi industrial sounds and a heavy atmosphere, it also retains the urgent story-telling we love from goa, while remaining deeply psychedelic throughout. HIGHLIGHT. 3: Electric Universe - Astral Voyage. I often get this confused with Out of Time. They're very similar, and both excellent. Fantastically energetic, but misses out on a highlight as it's a short edit, ffs. GOOD. 4: Prana - Taiyo (Chakra remix). Very messy. Harsh resonance, lazy electric guitar sounds...bit of a turn off, really. SKIP. 5: The Secret - Pagan Dance. This famous tune straddles the cheese border, and depending on your mood is either too pungent after all, or it makes you smile and dance loads. I understand why some won't like it, and sometimes I even skip it myself. But when I'm in the mood it is a very positive anthem. Let's be positive and call it a HIGHLIGHT. 6: Multiplex - Audio Engine. Has an agreeable tone, but is a bit mild and inoffensive with it. OK. 7: Shakta - The Neuromancer. Good chunky synth sounds, the story itself takes a while to get going, then there's a nice break & resume before suddenly it fades out. Another short edit. Shame, felt like it was going somewhere. OK. 8: Beach Buddha - A Million Miles An Hour. This sounds like proto-forest psy, ala Ka-Sol. Deliciously-eccentric vibes hypnotically telling us a story about the time those elves came into the woods and blew giant mushrooms out of their mouths. HIGHLIGHT. 9: Miranda - Green Man. I enjoy a lot of Miranda's work, tho' this one I would rank in her bottom-half oeuvre. It's all very competent but nothing of note really grabs you. OK. 10: Talamasca - Jungle Storm. An all-time great here! Top 10 material. It skilfully skirts the cheese border and heads straight to euphoric-world. The energies building up to that epic key change are almost unbearable, the tension then gleefully released as we go a few notes higher. It's like a dormant E kicking in. Wonderful. HIGHLIGHT. CD2: 1: Sundog - Ancient Forest (Yantra Mix). Slow start, then we get a fine flute, worldly vocal cries and housey pianos. Sounds like something from the early-90's commercial sunny rave era. Not bad, but not very goa. OK. 2: Electric Universe - Sunset Skyline. ffs, another edit! What did Electric Universe do to the compiler of this CD? It only shaves a minute of the original. Again, fine work by EU here. Has that typical energetic drive, crisp snares and smooth synth lines. Only lacking somewhat in deepness, and the clumsy fade-out of this edit also doesn't help. Still, it's GOOD. 3: Astral Projection & Dedrah - Zero. I assume Deedrah is meant here. Sounds like a killer-combination, tho' as we know teaming up two favourite artists doesn't always land a bullseye. Zero isn't bad, just seems a little by-numbers...and a bit short. OK. 4: The Infinity Project - Overwind. Pick-up of pace from IP here. Metallic edges giving 3D-space to the sound, would appear quite mighty on a big PA-system I expect. GOOD. 5: Green Nuns Of The Revolution - Two Vindaloos & An Onion Bhagee. The best track from Green Nuns, with arguably the greatest use of ye olde 303/101 acid lines in all of goa, especially at the epic climax! Incidentally the ideal representation of this track is on Distance to Goa 4 which ups the bpm and adds a killer acid line right at the end (which this version has tamed down for some reason, as if someone forgot to turn up the low-pass filter). Also here, at this more sedate pace, it loses a little power, tho' you can easily sort this yourself if dj-ing. Nitpicking aside, this Green Nuns classic is hard-as-nails fist-clenching massive-party EVENT GOA. All-time Top 10 material. HIGHLIGHT. 6: Ominus - Tribalistic. According to Discogs this track is actually called Sunimo. Dreamy vocal-pad intro. Comfy synth lines over a mid-tempo chugging beat. Not much else going on, tho'. The dreamy pad returns later on in a welcome move. OK. 7: Dimension 5 - Deep Space 5D. The interesting thing about this version vs the modern remaster, is that the voice-sample is clearer here, especially when landing on the word "clarity". I also feel the synth-lines a little more, which elevates this evocative sci-fi goa to a proper HIGHLIGHT. 8: MFG - To Eternity. Chi A.D may want to exit eternity, but MFG are still looking for it. Which makes sense when you consider Exit Eternity the more emotionally-advanced work. MFG's effort is pretty good, tho'. Cosmic, almost spooky, goa vibrations. Fat beat, chunky synths, nice build. Then meanders a little and doesn't quite find the drama in the climax, but still overall GOOD. 9: N.D.M.A. - The Answer. Discogs add the word Gift to the title, somewhat mysteriously. The volume is a bit low on this compared to the other tracks, and sounds muffled. If DJ'ing, it will benefit from a little high-EQ. The track itself is fine work, building up to a goatastic climax. Not quite on the superlative level of the Vitan climax, but a GOOD entry. 10: Alphanaut - New Shoes. 303-party time! Fun hard use of the acid riff, will go down well at a party. Tho' it does seem a cheap imitation of the Green Nuns effort here. For home listening it's merely OK. Overall verdict: 9/10. Double-CD comps will always have some weak spots but we don't mind if there's enough highlights. And there is! Tho' here the shoddy compiling (edits??) and poor mastering of the NDMA track do cheapen the overall experience. Overall tho', this comp offers 6 highlights plus a handful of good entries and some decent filler with barely any skippable numbers. Put the best 9 tracks here on a single-CD comp and it will be lauded as one of the greatest goa compilations ever.

Much like Orwell's 1984. i bet it has been dropped in a set

oh yeah, maybe it's more useful to put these there as they're reviews more than anything. Well, for what it's worth I struggled through CD2 after all: It's clear now why I haven't heard of these names before. CD2 is mostly this cool-styled prog-psytek which bored us out of our minds around the turn of the millennium, and when it's not the likes of The Delta etc a lot of those 'artists' are long forgotten. Here a bunch of samey producers invent different aliases to fill out this comp. 1 - dark chugging minimal style, good chunky relentless beat, would work well in a club set but doesn't do much else for the head listener. OK. 2 - big crisp-impact kick drum, the rhythm has an urgency, tho' like with so much prog-minimal that sense of urgency doesn't go anywhere, in the end it just feels like a stressed person who can't get no relief. Fine as a short appearance in a proggy techtrance mix. OK. 3 - starts of interesting: dark droney minimal with some atmosphere. Unfortunately descends into samey tame über-minimal barely-there tech-trance. Simply boring. SKIP. 4 - starts off with that samey minimal-tech we all know and dislike. But then an agreeable moist LFO-driven synth-lead comes in. I've deffo heard this before, but it's not appeared on any other comps so maybe long ago at parties. It would fit nicely in a techtrance set, but again it's not particularly good overall, just not bad. OK. 5 - christ, this is getting tiring to listen to. Just the same boring crap, let's be honest. But not even any drive about it to cautiously consider in a set. SKIP. 6 - after a couple of minutes of lifeless soul-destroying minimalism, this at least comes somewhat alive with some brighter sounds and a bouncy bass. Predictably, it doesn't do much with it. SKIP. 7 - another one i've heard before somewhere. Has a decent drive about it, another one to file under 'mix set filler'...but with so many fillers that would make for a dull set. If I had to choose just one track from this CD it would probably be this one. OK. 8 - some life in the form of jazzy interplays among the optimistic proggy rhythm. Gets a little deep too. Would fit The End (now-defunct London club) style of tech-house set. OK, tho' arguably the best track on the CD if deep housey vibes are called for. 9 - that overused croaky frog voice gets a run-out here. Not to any great effect. The rest is deathly dull. SKIP. Overall CD2 verdict: well, that was a chore. 3/10. Because techno-aimed trance is relatively simple to make, it means there's less rank bad tracks which we wanna skip. It also means there's less highlights we treasure. In the end, it's just mostly boring. Not enough ambition, musically or conceptually. If you are a fan of this sound, then you'll find some OK filler here, but honestly there's tons of better-made tech-trance out there. CD2's content sounds home-made (i.e. you and yer mates mucking about on electribes). Overall comp rating: 6/10. If you find it cheap and don't have much of a collection yet then CD1 does offer enough gems to make it worth your while. But if you already have the good stuff, then there's nothing much else going on here.

haha yeah, opinion are like bodily orifices...we've all got 'em did you also notice a slight timing-fart in Exit Eternity? It's present in pretty much all the second-half.

Nice thread idea from @thanosp81 and @Ormion - even if the forum's not so active posting-wise these days, I guess people still like to read about random old goa albums. Plus listening with the intent to report may just extend life, expand consciousness and enable space travel. I'll give this a go then. No real concept to it other than randomly pick a psy-related cd I feel like hearing, and writing some words on it while listening. Maybe inspiring some of yous to check it out. First one...CD1 of A Voyage Into Trance vol. 6: Transient. Reason for picking: not played this CD yet. Looking at the tracklist I fancy hearing known favourites: Life on Mars & Exit Eternity, probably my favourite tracks from AP & Chi AD, plus the CD also features the title track from Dancing Galaxy. So am curious what the rest of it sounds like. I don't think I know the others from just looking at the song names. Will probably have heard one or two before...let's see. 1: Cosmosis - Gift Of The Gods. Cosmosis might be the most regular name we see on comp CD's...he appears on this one three times! This isn't a good start: forgettable piercing-acid lines fare, doesn't hold much interest. Verdict: SKIP. 2: Astral Projection - Life on Mars. This is the stuff! Top 10 all-time goa tracks. My first acid trip was at an AP-gig around 2000-ish at the Brixton Academy. This dissolved my brain. Then bagged it on a 4-CD collection which housed another all-time great with Psychaos - Chaos to Order, also contained a fun Gargano track with acid lines and a repeating Hellraiser sample, but otherwise was a mediocre comp with lots of average trance-filler. Recently (finally) got Dancing Galaxy on CD, and Life on Mars just gets better with age. Listening to it again on this comp is as pleasurable as ever. Proper goa. Verdict: HIGHLIGHT. 3: Disco Volante - Contact. The artist name rings a bell, and I feel I've heard this before somewhere. It's pleasant enough: nice agreeable soft sound. Would fit fine as a decent filler track in a mix set. Inoffensive, tho'...nothing amazing. Verdict: OK. 4: Slide - The Search. More harsh resonance frequencies which just make this a little headache-inducing to endure. I do love some good 303-action, but sometimes producers don't smooth out or mix the sound in properly. Verdict: SKIP. 5: Cosmosis - San Yacid. This is better from the Cosmosis. The acid lines are smoother, and the rhythm has more drive. There's an urgency which focusses the listener, as if he's steering a spaceship through a complicated asteroid belt and wondering which trajectory best to take. The musik will surely tell him! Verdict: GOOD. 6: Christof and DJ Mael - KLM. Oh I know this, heard it lots of times on other comps. Musically pretty fun but the voice-sample is super-cringe, ruins the whole thing. Quoting Pulp Fiction is not very psychedelic for a start, and it was the go-to film for voice-samples for many unimaginative EDM-producers in the years following its release, so hearing it even back then just resulted in rolling one's eyes. Incidentally, Mystica also mystifyingly put a really long Pulp Fiction sample in the otherwise-promising Ashes to Ashes from their Age Of Innocence album. Verdict: SKIP. 7: Chi A.D - Exit Eternity. Oh so many feels! Tho' oddly I also sense the 4/4 beat feeling a little out-of-time in places towards the euphoric end, a little jerky. Not just in this CD's copy, all appearances of Exit Eternity has this. Sometimes my hardware sequencer does this if I put too much stuff in. The entire sequenced-Song is ruined as the master clock will always have this barely-perceptible jerky feel to the 4/4-timing. Weird hardware behaviour. I wonder if something similar happened here and Dave/Hannah just wasn't arsed. We can be thankful he wasn't arsed, as this is a beautiful piece of work from a synth/melody/emotion-perspective which might not have seen the light of day. Verdict: HIGHLIGHT. 8: Astral Projection - Dancing Galaxy. The one with the Spice sample from Dune, and a lesson for Christof & Mael in how to use voice samples. Any track from arguably AP's best album will be a strong entry on any comp. Verdict: HIGHLIGHT. 9: Lumen - Toffee in my Teeth. Hang on, wasn't there supposed to be three Cosmosis tracks on this CD? According to the Discogs entry, track 9 isn't an oddly-titled Lumen, it's Moonshine by Cosmosis. The track length does indeed more support our resident Discogs expert, as do quick youtube checks. These goofs do happen, track 5 of this comp is an infamous (for me, anyway) example. What about Cosmosis and his Moonshine? Well, I think I'd have preferred the Lumen track here, to be honest. It's meh-Cosmosis rather than exciting-Cosmosis. Verdict: SKIP. Overall Verdict: three Highlights on one CD is a pretty decent return, tho' I expect many goa fans will already have these tracks elsewhere. There's that one good Cosmosis and an ok Volante, with four skippable numbers. The track-order didn't flow all that great, and unlike some comps there was no nice fade between the tracks either. It feels like not much thought was put into the compiling. Rating: 7/10. Worth a listen, deffo. Some folk may even enjoy the skip entries. Worth buying if you don't already have those highlights. There is a CD2, tho' the tracklisting doesn't look very exciting (not heard of any of those names before).

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