johnb820

Those 3 tracks on Trust in Trance 2 are definitely closer to the Astral sound than some of the other SFX tracks on say, The Unreleased Tracks album or Trust In Trance 1.

Enthymesis –Thymos = frame of mind/ vitality, meaning: – ‘emphasizing with one’s own mood’ ‘consideration’ or also ‘reflection’ Aeon, gave to her enthymesis substance alone, without form. Enthymesis is the 8th Entheogenic studio album, released June 23, 2014 once again on bandcamp. This nearly 78 minute collection of 8 tracks is quite a lot of music to digest all at once. And when I realize that this album could not fit on a CD alone I marvel at both the amount of work put into this release and the fact that the CD feels so obsolete. Not a second of this incredible album could have been cut off. I have been really excited about the direction this project has been going the last two albums and Enthymesis in fact advances the Entheogenic sound in yet a new direction. Straight from the beginning the cover looks different. It's space, no lush green forests or psychedelic alien Gaia figures. It's a triangle with a rainbow passing through it. It reminds me of Dark Side of the Moon, a very interesting observation in light of the way this album sounds so different. Enthymesis starts off with a mostly ambient piece titled Autopsia. The sounds of nature are still there but are hidden behind spacey alien effects. It sounds to me this track makes use of a sample from Pink Floyd's, On The Run which I also believe was used on Shpongle's Tickling The Amygdala on their recent album. Regardless the middle of the track features some interesting broken beat percussion. Infrasensory is really the first track to give us a better indication of what is to come throughout the album. It starts off with some otherwordly synths before acoustic guitar fades in. A slow downtempo almost blues like groove starts and it's joined by harmonized vocals singing some kind of made up language. I have never heard something like this from Entheogenic before and I can see how some might not enjoy the vocals if you hadn't enjoyed them on the last several albums but give it a chance and the song will enter your soul and heal you from within. The final part of the song has a trancey arpeggio synth and some more weird sound effects. Planetary Medicine is the next track and it follows similarly to the previous one. I can't help but feel how soft and warm this style is, slow burning, trancey, and yet down to earth. The fourth track, Silent Knowing takes a slightly more serious turn, making use of darker melodies and vocals. The song shifts between several time signatures, the middle part making great use of 5/4. It closes with a harmonizing of the opening segment wandering into a guitar solo before finally fading out on the same guitar line as the very beginning. Enthymesis is a slightly faster paced song with less emphasis on the drums and more on a repeating progression between guitars and vocals. This song also contains some cool electric guitar parts scattered throughout. Eluesis is even faster paced with a tight groove underlying it with lots of cosmic synth lines and the usual effects work from Entheogenic. Spinning Elementary Matter is a little over 16 minutes long with a lot going on. It begins with a great quote from Terrence Mckenna (who did you expect?). As seems to be the theme with this album there is lots of pure beatless ambience at the start of the track and towards the end of the track. Lots of really great melodies are thrown in here, a little bit of everything from flutes to electric guitar, to acoustic guitar, etc. Finally the album ends, just like Anthropomorphic, on an uptemo dance track. Terma is a fine trance track itself moving along at a swift pace with lots of swirling melodies and percussion elements. It sounds like a mix between morning fullon and recent goa, not so far from Solar Field's occasional journeys into trance. Overall Enthymesis is yet again another masterpiece from this project that does not seem to show signs of letting up. There is 78 minutes here of quality music from beginning to end and while I can see how some might not enjoy this new direction I find it a really refreshing blend of cosmic shpongle-like ambient and earthly acoustic elements. The guitars and vocals are aesthetically fascinating when put together with weird alien sounds. This is healing music for the body mind and soul. Check it out at http://entheogenic-usr.bandcamp.com/album/enthymesis.

The things I have heard about Imba I can't even talk about they are so bad!

I'm sure there was plenty of stuff made similar to SFX but it just never got as popular as goa trance so lots of releases have been lost over time. I might suggest checking out the old school acid station at DI.fm, also some of the early goa trance compilations from 94' or 95'. I think I totally understand the style of music you like Radi, because I too have a strong interest in that style.

Komondor's Pangea has melodic phrases that work in 7/4 followed by 9/4, kind of sort of. Or maybe more like 15/4 followed by an extra beat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtQb8oIQyN0 The underlying time signature is 4/4 but the melodic phrases are broken up. It kind of plays tricks with your head when you hear the natural end of the melody and it sounds like there is an extra beat especially given the kick fill.

Yea, thanks for the responses! That's the sort of stuff I am interested in. When you open up the possibility to do something unique with your live performance I really think amazing things can happen, assuming you know what you are doing. And I deeply respect that!

So I'm looking for artists who instrumentally play or otherwise significantly alter their music when they perform it. When I mean play I imagine for instance actually playing some of the lead synths with a keyboard, etc. And in turn, I wonder if they prepare different mixes or make changes to the effects either in real time or thought out in advance. I guess I am broadly just interested in what artists do when they perform their stuff for an audience. What can they control? To what extent is a live performance different from what they produce in the studio? I am just curious.

Ruby, C, Fortran... oh wait.

I should have never started the RA appreciation thread, they are now multiplying out of control.

Thank you, thank you. I couldn't find the words to review this album. This picture had to suffice. Too bad the site I used chopped off the cover but that was of course, not the point.

BIG release! Already downloaded and sitting on my music player.

I do wonder if Uth is up to anything recently. He dropped 4 gorgeous tracks and then disappeared! Edit: I guess I have to take that back after checking discogs. Looks like he's still actively producing.

Yea I mean sure production style, bassline etc, help them fit more closely into mainstream festivals. I do hold out hope that most of these artists do find the full-on bassline to be effective and rewarding for listeners. Full-on basslines, when done right, are really energetic and sound great on a big open sound system. They have enough top end, along with a strong click, to still reach distant ears without the kind of delay you hear from big lower end stuff. And so it can sound great from any distance.

Sometimes I listen to MWNN and I hear euro trance with slightly more interesting production styles and sometimes I listen to MWNNN, especially certain tracks and I am inspired by the way he builds his songs and it is goa trance at its best. If I had to suggest Martin's biggest contribution to Goa Trance it's probably his production style that still sounds amazing today. The heavier kicks, the melodic riffs, the kinds of bass lines. AP can sound old at times, but MWNN sounds as good now as I'm sure it did back then. It's too bad I think he never really put together a solid cohesive album. All his albums kind of sound like collections of individual songs, varying in quality. And he never really went crazy psychedelic with his approach, but I always hear the passion and careful thought put into all of his songs.

Yea it's definitely a personal preference with the ambient style for me. I generally like stronger beats and percussion in ambience/downtempo stuff although I can at least appreciate the style of this compilation. Mindsphere's track has some really nice development going on! It's funny you mentioned those three tracks specifically Anoebis because those three have easily gotten the most listens from me, next to Thysellian! Cosmic Dimension's remix of Gateway Eight really is just mindblowing, what they were able to do with that track. I mean the melodies and basic ideas are there from the original track, but they just added so much more to it. The track is so effective in its structure. Now if only Cosmic Dimension could always be as musically rich as this track, I'd be more excited than I already am for what they do next!

Purchased.

Why is it I feel like I am being insulted and attacked by this Happy song? BE HAPPY! OR ELSE!

I recently realized just how prolific RA has been the last few years when I started adding up all the various tracks that have been released on different compilations, leaving aside the two full length albums released. Since I am getting excited about a possible new RA album coming soon, I decided to put together the tracks and make my own new album out of them. So here is my new RA album... RA - Forgotten Secrets 1. Gates of Tiphareth 2. Gateway Eight 3. Time Current (Silver Remix) 4. Lifethread 5. Static Distress 6. March of the Lunar Priests 7. Creation of Tefnet 8. Road to Shiraz Tracks that did not make this include Cloudwalker, Tears of Fire, and Icon (this last one because of the bad mastering). And going back to some of these lesser known tracks, especially the downtempo ones, I was surprised by just how good they are! Does anyone else feel the same way I do about the sheer musical quality of this project? The melodies, the harmonies, the song writing is just so well thought out and exciting. I can safely listen to RA and know that the track is going to go somewhere, it's going to pay off. Every second of every track is worth listening to because something captivating is always going on.

I finally got around to listening to the whole ambient CD and well I guess it just didn't engage me very much. Mindsphere's track was ok as was Crossing Mind but the rest did not do anything for me. The ambient CD on Opus Iridium had a bit more variety which I do come back to from time to time. I just thought I would comment on the ambient one here since it has not really been talked about much.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes What an amazing movie!

I don't know, they play fine for me. It's possible you got a defective copy.

Not bad work! As for a project name, I am afraid I can't really help you decide something like that. That's really something that should have personal meaning for you!

Sorry I don't know who Astral Projection is, but maybe you are looking for Astra Lrpjectio, a goa trance project by Avi and Lior.

I would have to put Astrancer up there. Trinodia also has some very nice old school melodic synths with old school bass lines. Skarma is pretty clearly influenced by old school production too. Funny you mention Filteria because I feel Jannis is light years different from the older sound. It has always seemed to me, and don't get me wrong I really appreciate Filteria, that he just combined full on rhythm/percussion with bright arpeggiated melodic synth runs and threw in some neat tricks along the way. Filteria is in a genre of his own imo.

I guess I am guilty of using the Hindu motifs but only because I genuinely connect with a lot of the ideas. My track Tantric Tarantism has a very important meaning to me. Tantric is the adjective form of tantra which in a global context can be broadly defined as a "spiritual practice". Tarantism is defined as "a psychological illness characterized by an extreme impulse to dance." Wikipedia describes tarantism as "a phenomenon that is consistent with mass psychogenic illness." I felt this so accurately described the feeling of trance dance to one caught up in the physical act of dancing to the rhythm of this fast paced intense crazy music and the hysteria that others seem to only be able to see from the outside.