Dolmot

On CD? Probably because even artist albums and exclusive compilations only sell a few hundred copies despite having all new, full length tracks. Meanwhile, there are boatloads of homemade mixes floating around on the "promotional licence", that is, free of charge or even guilt. With forums, soundcloud, mixcloud, youtube, net streams, podcasts etc. at our disposal, good luck selling any more than a nominal amount of mix CDs. Warming Freeze was a free extra. Sakura is 100 freebies and 100 low-price CDr copies. Demand like that hardly encourages proper pressing and licensing. It may be a different story if you're on Djmag top 100, but goa DJs rarely are. Besides, music consumption today tends to rely on single tracks, custom playlists and heavy use of the skip button. Mixes may get streamed but purchases must be in a shufflable/selectable format. Buy a mix and you're stuck with that track order forever or it sounds like crap. There's no shortage of mixes, though. In the 90s it was a small luxury to own discs, decks and good recording equipment. Download speed was 28 kbps, not Mbps. Your average mix copy was a big name CD or a cassette recorded from radio. Today anyone can cobble together a mix on a $200 laptop using an endless supply of torrented mp3s. (You don't have to but you can.) There are so many mixes that you must actively push your stuff to get a few dozen plays. It went from "oh boy, a psy mix!" to "sigh, yet another psy mix". Another thing that largely vanished are compilations of already released stuff. I guess YSE still does them, but otherwise the expectation for compilations is all exclusive content. You don't need samplers because everything can be sampled online. Labels won't bother with singles collections either, because today a "single" is an mp3 everyone has already, not a 12" owned by a handful of DJs. But hey, at least you won't feel silly any more for buying the same track five times on different albums, compilations and mix CDs...

A bumpy ride. AYS: Largely defined the whole act. Sounds like SP and RR rocking it in an opium den with aliens and everything that is cool in this world and beyond. TotI: Never liked this one that much. Some cool tracks but too bouncy in its flow. Also the world music elements didn't feel fitting back then, compared to the first album. NLbNIL: The first half is legendary. The second half loses the momentum and I usually skip the rest at some point. Nevertheless, it was probably the first album of any kind I bought on both CD and vinyl so it cannot be entirely bad. IMfS: Liner notes of I Am You: "The chorus was originally sang by the computer, but it sounded a little soulless, so Serena and I re-sang it, but we are both appalling vocalists and eventually called Hari Om to complete the job properly." There are just so many things wrong in this picture. Anyway, several good tracks. It's just heavy on world, vocals, instrument solos and romance instead of rocking in an opium den. MoC: Liked it a lot. However, I got a very unusual first impression as I was doing some heavy work and listened to this about five times in a row at night until sunrise, and then a few more times that week. It got the job done. Then I had memorised it completely and didn't listen again in a long time. I find it has more weirdness and less romance again. So my curve would be roughly an up-down-up-down-up sawtooth, although not exactly regular. Yeah, the latest ones have been very carefully produced but a bit live/hit oriented. Unique sounds are cool, some dude banging a drum kit is not so cool. But I still think the sound has evolved, instead of nose-dived like some other artists' output around the fifth album. Bought the latest in both formats again...

But...but...but...I spent a few years trying to id this track from a set, and them some medium cash to get it.

I call it nothing-on, as in "99 channels but there's nothing on".

Alright, that's the best single track this year...maybe decade.

Local news are reporting that several popular pages have been removed yesterday in a wider operation against breaches of terms. Typical cases seem to concern advertisement. (Well duh, they make their revenue selling ads so any perceived attempts of circumventing the system definitely are a major PITA to them.) I assume FB's terms of service are so convoluted that they can find a justification for removing anything they want if needed. Still, a shitty way to handle it if no prior notification was given nor any questions asked. Sod them and their law.

Possibly the best release this year...so far. But any challengers really must deliver to match it.

I only wait for Kung Fury. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72RqpItxd8M

Something like seven years ago my ISP had a guideline of 100 GB monthly, but I don't think it was strictly enforced even back then. Nowadays they really don't care at all unless you run a worldwide high-traffic warez server in the network... I definitely get already more than 7 GB of album downloads (counting just legit purchases and free releases) monthly. Any modern video content would gulp it in a few days. Is that a mistake or a joke?

Strange Things is on Global Psychedelic Trance 3. Hopscotch is on a 10". Both are quite cheap...maybe not very convenient if you're looking for those tracks only, but I've ended up buying both at some point so my collection is strangely complete concerning these tracks. That leaves a few exclusives - Woodski, Sub Currents, Outro? Can't remember what's in the intro. But hey, isn't $37 for a CD just normal in Japan?

Seriously, none. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. http://www.psynews.org/forums/index.php/topic/66428-unexpected-goapsytrance-remix/ http://www.psynews.org/forums/index.php/topic/67184-best-psy-remix-of-a-non-edm-song/

So...blame Iboga?

Etnica - Tribute and TIP - Stimuli are a bit special too, although probably not the absolute #1, especially for "wider" audiences...

I like Belgian trippels.

Space would probably sound like 4'33" so the rest is largely subjective and open to interpretation. Nevertheless, my foremost thought would be that D5 really takes the cake here. They have space-related album/track names, OK, but that alone doesn't make the music spacey. However, they keep it quite heavily synthetic, mechanical, ethereal and cold. Can you recall any Indian melodies or instruments, chants or even drug samples in their work? I'd say they largely skip all that. Cosmosis - Cosmology is the most cosmic one based on the title. But that and Eat Static tend to follow the "visitors on Earth" theme so it's somewhere inbetween. What else...some Underhead, Moonweed, AP's tracks which are not about Tibet, MFG's tracks which are not about religion...dunno. I'll go with D5.

Today... Previous three direct orders took over eight weeks each so it's improving.

Trinodia - Astral Clouds Miktek - Elsewhere ...and the pre-download of Deep Fried Dub - Slow Cooked

"Too old" for anime junkies.

So awesome that I don't care a bit if it's staged... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZGNk8pUj4Y

In space, no one can hear your ambient. Latest Jaja albums are long, deep, nice and free on Ektoplazm. There was a lot of weird and...quiet stuff on Umbra. Consider getting some if you can still find them. What a shame we first lost the label and then Oöphoi himself. It was always a pleasure to trade or just to chat with him. Or get the recent reissues of Robert Rich's early albums...although it's said that those cassette or CD-length albums are fairly hectic compared to the nine hour sleep concerts he was performing back then. There's the Somnium DVD album for trying something similar. Now I realise I really should arrange more time for these myself...

Well, not today but most recently the new Nervasystem album. Looks like the Anjuna guys aren't crooks after all, even though someone quite harshly suggested so on Discogs... Before that, a few more goodies from Robert Rich. Buying from him simply rules. I placed an order at Christmas and got a kind, personal reply (as usual) from R.R. the same night. They were shipped promptly on 26th and arrived on 31st. I even got an extra CD from his holiday sales, and you can have them autographed for free. Top bloke. The music is fine too. (Unfortunately, USPS shipping rates are getting outright ridiculous but that's hardly Robert's fault.) Definitely recommended if deep ambient and/or organic chillout are your thing.

Finally got mine yesterday. (#10, how does that correlate with penis size?) Sounded good on the first listen.

And looks like I got 24-bit files too...

I returned two copies so now it's three.

Finishing a house move. Took pretty much all of my so-called holidays. It's amazing how much utter junk one can (and will) accumulate over time - outdated electronics, old clothes, endless piles of papers and so on. In a sense it was relieving to go through that all and to figure out what's really worth keeping. On the other hand, it's always a huge PITA. In fact, toward the end I was so knackered that I didn't bother sorting it properly any more. Bits of useless junk will keep on haunting me. Anyway, right now I think that just returning to work and having the evenings free will feel like a holiday more than these weeks ever did. Let's see if I manage to do some updating with music and such...