Luminon

It's a metaphor. Sci-fi film directors perhaps can't imagine alien, otherworldly or future music, but psychedelic composers do that commonly with ease. It has to do with many things, but most of all with musical keys, that convey specific feelings and states of consciousness. Although I'm interested in things like string theory, here I rather meant the relative otherworldliness or alienness that people of different cultures or personalities may feel to each other. As an embodiment of weirdness myself I live for the pleasant strangeness. The point is, that the new CBL album is less fascinating and complex, and more warm and fuzzy than some of us expected.

OK, the title pretty much says everything. I grew up on Come with us, hell, even my older brother grew up on it, and he otherwise listens to some crap. I think it's one of classy albums of electronic music. A few years ago I tried some other ChB album, but it sounded, well, totally out of my taste. I know, this album is supposed to be unusual for their normal sound. So instead of trying their dozen or two albums out of blind I'd rather ask local denizens. 'Come with us' is lovely album. It has both uptempo and downtempo tracks, timeless tunes, and so on. I don't like the track Pioneer skies, but that's a detail. I hope it's not the only good thing they ever recorded.

Yes, it seems they softened out. Can happen to anyone, even Solar Fields' Movements album suffers by the same problem. Soft albums are good, but there's already too much of them. We've got Enya and Yanni for that. CBL's time is too valuable to waste. The reason why I listen to the music I listen, is also because it sounds like not from this world. But this mellow music sounds very much like from this world. It could represent Earth on solar system convention.

This track haunts on my computer for years. I've searched all the net, fulltext Google, Discogs, Youtube, and so on. The link above is not posted by me, apparently there's one more person looking for the author of this track. It's kind of nice. In my opinion, it's from some already disappeared artist on Myspace. Or it's a rare mix of something by somebody.

Deep Dive Corporation is one of my album naming favorites. My favorites are Blackmail Recordings Some Funky Fish (their symbol is a funky anglerfish with a disco ball instead of lamp) Support Your Local Groover Freestyle Floating (is there any other style of floating??? ) There's a bit of cheesiness in there, but I'm glad to see they take it with humour. My favorite album of theirs is - musically - Beware of Fake Gurus. Of course, also Kuba - How the future sounded I don't like the music but the name is wonderful.

This is indeed very nice album. I'd compare it to... Aes Dana - Season 5 for natural foresty feeling, mixed with Abakus - That much closer to the sun for positive mood, with a little bit of Waterjuice and Tripswitch. Many melodies are actually beautifully haunting, specially the guitar Walking on the sky. I listened to this album while reading a cyberpunk novel "Fairyland", which is about a nation of fairies created through nanobiotechnology, that will turn the world into magical and bizarre kingdom of forests, nanorobots and feromones... The only track I don't like very much is Intro (I don't speak Russian) and Liquid emotions, which is too chaotic for me. And high-pitched tones might be less loud, perhaps. But otherwise, this is a great ambient album with ocassional moment 4/4 downtempo beat, that only enhances the peaceful atmosphere.

You know, they warned us on the last album. Nothing lasts, everything changes into something else, everything is on track, but nothing is lost Now they can say they warned us!

The original mix is not anymore available on Doktor J's website, but it remains in my memory. And here is my favorite piece, unfortunately unidentified. Sounds pretty cool, though.

I completely agree with Tennant's verdict. There isn't the depth and inspiration as before. A different artists would have this as a pretty good release, but Shpongle had set the bar too high, and held to it not just by pretty and merry music. I hope new fans will be just as good or better as the old fans were. Alternately, I'd appreciate if Martians would take their disguised agents back and return us the real Shpongle.

All right. I think I have purged myself off the Infected Mushroom nostalgia. Take things as they are, man. Infected Mushrooms sing, they play guitar, and overall, it's from now on an electronic rock. And honestly, if I'd ever have to trust someone with making a pretty good electronic rock, I'd trust the Mushroom. So I will consider this album as a piece which will be good to play when friends come over from the outer world. Outer world people are characteristic by not appreciating Aes Dana, Solar Fields or FSOL weirdness, so it's good to have something we can enjoy together.

I hate when people don't write there WTF THE GENRE OR STYLE IS! I'm not THAT clairvoyant yet. It's necessary for people like me who need to avoid the keywords like fullon, progressive, goa, or simply expressed, trance. Not that I wouldn't like Goa trance, but this is something I listen to when I'm cutting a tree to pieces, and I avoid woodcutting, so I don't need a regular fresh doses of trance. Most of it sounds all the same to me. This is, I guess, the trance music. The cover looks very trancey and Hedonix seems familiar. Edit: OK, Longloststar, thanks for confirming my guess. 'Progressive' and 'dark' are clear messages.

True. I keep hearing klezmer in half of their melodies. The rest is half-cartoony, half-epic, like they couldn't decide what to play. This one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocEXPGilmbs) started to be good at 8:30, but still with disharmonical dead-ends in the melodies. This unfortunate trend started with VD. There were some really good tracks (like the title track, which is one of the most twisted things I've ever heard) but generally they seem to drift away to another sub-culture of listeners. So far, I like the tracks Slowly and Herbert the pervert

I am somewhat suspicious about my hearing (and I have a reason for it), it's exactly about this hearing of speech in noise. Unfortunately, the test doesn't want to start, the space is blank. There seems to be an Adobe Flash Player application, but it doesn't do anything. I have the version 10,0,32,18 installed. Reputedly, not only the sound volume is dangerous, but also a long-termed listening on the in-ear headphones. Years of steady beats may wear out the hearing cells. This is why I invested into a normal loudspeakers. Right now I torture my rock&metal loving younger bro' with Aes Dana

I'm a big fan of Ultimae Records. This place is full of a top quality ambient music, including some danceable stuff. Carbon Based Lifeforms, Aes Dana, Solar Fields, Hol Baumann, and Asura are my very best favorites. This is where whole album is great and unforgettable. Other good stuff from Ultimae includes HUVA Network, Kliment, and Sync24. There is stuff like Vibrasphere, Kilowatts or James Murray, etc, which you have to decide for yourself if you like it. Vibrasphere has some GREAT tracks (like Mountain lake) but otherwise by genre it's morning trance, so not for every ocassion. Kilowatts (Ground State) are somewhat IDMish but also a lot ambient, so you should like it. As for non-Ultimae stuff, I somewhat like the IDM album by Mouse on Mars - Radical Connector. But it's IDM with lyrics, not a pure Autechre's noise.

Dark ambient? What you are searching for is: Geomatic - Blue Beam It's ambient but not amorphous, includes a sinister arabian music with some decently harsh electronic sounds. My favorite track is Alternate Universe. I think you will love it, although I don't recognize any other albums recommended here. http://www.discogs.com/Geomatic-Blue-Beam/release/1205903 Here is the first track, which is very good as well.

You can try CAI777, the German underground band. http://maschinenmusik.de/mp3/cai777_vindahemelation.mp3

Bassnectar is not bad. I have his Mesmerizing the Ultra double album and I certainly can listen to it. It is not the first class in that exact electronic sub-genre, that's occupied by Nagual Sound Experiment, Liquid Stranger and ZubZub, but Bassnectar is good enough to stay in my library for now. My favorite song of his is so far, I think, Leprechauns Arise.

The ability to see aura isn't love, it's the sense of sight, but the sight of astral or etheric body. And our consciousness is, what makes a bridge between these various bodies and our common, physical consciousness. That range of perception is called 'antahkarana'. And once the antahkarana is growing, it connects us to the true source of divine, unconditional love, which is called the soul. (or the Thinkeress, or Atma, etc.) The soul starts to infuse it's vehicle, which is the man or woman in incarnation. You are very lucky to see auras. It must be very interesting - and probably also useful. I have seen an aura well only once and without colors. What I have, is the sensitivity of etheric body. I perceive my own aura, chakras and the energy flowing around. It doesn't have any connection to the music, but the music is a powerful psychedelic helper for mental focus, and focused mind is powerful. The reason why people like us do listen to the psychedelic music is probably an intellectual interest. 40% of popular music is about love, dating, relationships, and mundane things, so I don't listen to it. We tend to be more contemplative, and thus we like a deep, thoughtful music which reflects our inner reality. The problem with drugs is, that firstly, they bring the psychedelic experiences by violating the integrity of our bodies, there is a temporary, though long-termed damage on meridians and blocade of some mental mechanisms. For example, a person on head pills is absolutely useless for regression therapy. Secondly, they kick you into the astral world, but only to the lower parts of it and never higher. Which is not good, because there is a long way to the real worthy destination - the soul. You won't get to the soul through drugs, but through a correct meditation. Firstly, drugs are very useful for breaking materialism. If someone is a hard-boiled materialist, a hallucinogen can shake his worldview and make him understand something. Secondly, drugs were useful in prehistory, when primitive people survived with astral clairvoyance. Later people gave up the astral sensitivity (it is today an anachronism) and now are mostly without any clairvoyance, or have a clairvoyance based on the contact with soul, which is reliable and powerful. The problem with astrality is, that without the light of the soul it's very emotional, glamouring, ever-changing world, which is based on illusion and distorting all information, mainly lower parts of it.

That song is nice, too bad the whole album becomes a copy of Coldplay after that. Therefore, people who like Coldplay will also like Apparat.

It might seem that because of my youth, my collection is almost all psychill, psydub and psybient, but nonetheless, deeply in my heart there is a bit obscure stuff, but magnificent and rich on sound. I picked some: Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells, Amarok (classics) Anthony Phillips - Slow Dance (New Age) Kitaro - Kojiki (New Age) Wingmakers - First Source (New Age) Richard Marchand - Insular World, Get Off My Planet, Myopic Wandering (very avantgarde electronic music by a Canadian digital painter, currently offline) CAI777 - I dreamed of dying, Life/Death (German underground hardcore deathmetal, dark avantgarde ambient, or something like that)

Our reality is just an opinion, nothing more. The reality itself is like a great dark space, enlightened by a tiny spotlight of consciousness. The spotlights of the majority of people are focused on the same place and have about the same size. This is, what we call "objective reality". Some spotlights are smaller. (idiots) Some are greater - these are the visionaries or clairvoyants. And some are a bit off, focused elsewhere than where they should - these are the madmen. The size of the spotlight, the consciousness, decides how much of the reality do we perceive. It is good to have it focused here and now, and at the same time, to extend it, while anchored solidly in the range of local reality. It is good to have control over that process. For example, there is a normal vision, and spiritual vision, which allows the clairvoyants to see people's aura and thus their possible physical and emotional problems. There is also tactile "clairvoyance", which allows us to touch and feel more than just empty space around. For these people, the space around their body is not empty and their sensitivity reaches beyond and below the skin. (in terms of soft-material objects) There are also exercises, courses and communities helpful in achieving that goal. However, I must say specially for Americans, the best services you can ever get are either for free or for a reasonable, affordable price. Anything expensive is either a scam or not worth it. It may also take years. There is one song by Banco de Gaia I listen to right now - it is called "How much reality can you take?" Well, ask yourself. I'd like some day to have such a people studied neurologically. It must be very interesting to see, what is their good old brain doing, when they perceive more than other people. Otherwise they just keep to themselves and work with others on private, personal basis.

All right. I'm not much into drugs as well. The rational view of reality does not contradict. I do not believe either, I experienced most of these things by myself, so it would be irrational from me to ignore my experiences How do you enjoy the psychedelic music, then? Do you frown or laugh every time Terrence McKenna starts speaking?

You know... the psy music of various genres is often about drugs, but besides that, there are themes like: 1) Extraterrestrials, UFO and life on other planets 2) Hindu gods, spirits, demons, gnomes, sprites, elves 3) Astral travelling (and projection), subtle realms in general 4) White Lodge (aka GWB) 5) Terrence McKenna's quotes (stuff like on the Synthesis of reality album, etc) 6) Ancient superior technology of Atlantean civilization 7) The soul, and the universe as God (panentheism, I think) 8) Life after death 9) Chakras 10) Extra sensoric perception 11) Gaia, the living planet Earth 12) Yetti 13) The universe existing as a frequency, vibration, or sound 14) Astrology 15) Conspiracies 16) Certain inability of science to recognize or admit the existence of the above mentioned things 17) And also some general themes, like absolute love, bliss, enlightenment freely for all people... So, my question is, how it is with the listeners and with the creators of this music, as far as these themes go. It is a fact that most of us DO like these themes, otherwise we wouldn't make and listen to that kind of music. But do we seriously BELIEVE or KNOW them? I'm just curious, I don't want to convince anyone or ruin anyone's reputation. I just want to get some idea about paranormal beliefs of the hipsters. I am a listener and my score is about 13 of 17. I indeed have an interesting life So I'd like to know, how it is with you, listeners and musicians? Can you tell me if such a people like Simon Posford, Raja Ram, and all these other musicians believe in what they compose? Perhaps you've read more interviews with them, so you know better. Or are out there some devout skeptics who's score is nearing zero? If yes, then why are you into the psychedelic music? Are there other such a notoriously known psychedelic or paranormal themes I missed out?

I had this album but somehow it didn't catch me. To me, it sounded boring and cheesy, you know, the garden sounds. Perhaps it was in a wrong musical octave which my brain doesn't like, as probably most of the stuff by Youth, Ishq, The Orb, etc. I do like the ambient music, but not all of it. I can certainly recommend Loscil - Plume. That's a masterpiece. As Cray3 described it; pure ambient, pure bliss.