Djuna

Dragon Twins - The Many Lives of the Observer Oldskool psytrance inspired, Dragon Twins flavoured.

Cool, nice to hear some new music again!

I don't see how you can separate taste and the 'facts' like the tools being used. There's music that is recorded and mixed way differently than others, but can still be in the same genre of music. If you like only crystal clear music, there's a high chance you will prefer Derango over the dirty Schlabbaduerst tracks for example, though it's music that is in the same niche and has overall the same kind of fans. There's a technical side that's not up for debate, unless it comes to how the music reacts to you personally. And that is exactly what taste is, in my opinion.

A matter of taste of course, but I'd say an album from Hallucinogen. The Lone Deranger maybe? It's exciting, original and detailed, without being too polished.

Nice setup man! I'm going to get myself an Erebus as well one day, and hopefully an Abyss.. I really dig the stuff that Dreadbox makes.

It's a bit of a cliché: people who are (just) producing and want to "fatten" their sound with a mastering plugin, oblivious that they distort their own mix. One of the key things in mixing is getting the balance straight from all your tracks in the mix. There's no need to push everything to 0dBFS or even above, in the clipping area. Your canvas to paint on is bigger than that.

I don't know that program, does it alter your headroom?

A bit too typical newschool sounding for me, but what I find most disturbing is that there's just no dynamic range. I guess an Izotope preset on the master channel? Everything is just LOUD, not a single part has a its own specific spot in the mix.

https://youtu.be/QgwFDChqX38?t=351 ? (weird link but it's a youtube video with timestamp)

I was never a big IM fan, but I did like The Gathering and some other tracks. BP Empire and Classical Mushroom etc. never got to me. But, this new album does really sounds like post 2000 Infected Mushroom, just in a modern EDM way. For the record, I think it's really annoying music, but at the same time it reminds me of a cheesy track I liked in the beginning of my discovery of goa and psytrance: Deeply Disturbed To me it's clear that IM was trying to find a commercial way to reach the masses for years, without claiming something else. But if you're still with your head in the period of The Gathering, you're bound to be disappointed. Things can change over 20 years you know.

So today is the release date of Sepultura's new album, Machine Messiah. I really liked the new direction they took with their previous one (The Mediator Between Head and Hands Must Be the Heart), it sounded consistent in its aggressiveness, the vocals and drums were really well put together, and it sounds like they continue that path.

Holy shit, 3 million? Is this normal? I don't want to undermine this funding campaign in any way, it's a noble thing, but to me that's a loooot of money... All the best to him, I hope he can recover.

The first melody reminded me of Union Jack - Cockroach, around the 3 minute mark. https://youtu.be/_dP-kLasn0o?t=181

Well, basically you've made a 3 minute track with only a 4 bar loop, with only drums and a pad. The rhythms of the drums are nice, but you should create more patterns to achieve some variety. But I think the biggest problem here is the lack of bass and leads, or other elements that give the track more detail and variety. A good thing to do is to compare your music with your influences and inspirational music. Analyse what's in that music, extract it to your productions, hear what is lacking in your mix and try to reach those goals. I even think that with copying a track you learn a lot, because you force yourself to deal with certain situations. Oh, and let go of the limiter on your master output. It's damaging your mix, and you're not learning to create a proper balance like that.

Thanks Paul! Where's that 'ignore' button again?