Dolmot

Many thanks for putting together this information, and of course for all the (mostly uncompensated) work on Suntrip. The physical/digital ratio is indeed a bit surprising. I thought I belonged to an old-fashioned minority with my CDs but apparently not. One explanation may be that Suntrip is notably popular among goa-heads pining for the 90s and tending to buy physical. Another is that many modern consumers skip the purchasing/collecting stage altogether and just stream on Spotify, YouTube or whatever. Limited pocket money is spent on the latest cell phone upgrade instead. Oh well, I confess buying hardware and mostly pirating bits until I got a properly paying job so nothing new there. (Also, I used to think that buying didn't really matter much as labels are doing just fine and artists are rock stars anyway, right? Then I learned about some of my favourites going under as they couldn't make 500 sales to justify a single minimum-batch pressing. That was an eye-opener. Does history repeat itself here too?) One reason is that most big digital stores were launched in the US and the content providers (that is, major labels/studios) were absolutely adamant on using country restrictions. Hardly surprising that the movement is stronger there with so much head start. Even today stuff like TV shows is released weeks or month later (or never) in other regions so people just routinely pirate it to get their goods fresh. People in Europe didn't buy for years because US rightholders simply refused to sell. How sad is that? Why didn't European companies respond with their own stores, then? Well, that's already getting off topic but it might be related to the immense fragmentation between countries, languages and smaller enterprises. Also, many of the major platforms were driven by aggressive bundling with specific hardware and content providers. Such efficient partnerships were easier to find and form in the US. Anyway, the whole matter becomes more interesting to discuss now when we have a bunch of hard figures to support (or debunk) various claims...

Very Relentless, through both discs in one listening, fairly loud. That was about 100 minutes of pure party in my head.

I was surprised by the style choices of BlackStarrFinale and PharaOm albums...

Yep, the whole industry is based on incompatibility, vendor lock-in, planned obsolescence, soldering and sealing. Major players absolutely abhor the idea of even their charger being compatible with any other device out there. Everyone prefers having exclusive "killer" components and services which sell the other bundled junk for 700e with nobody else getting a slice of that cake. Ideally at least one part becomes notably outdated in a year or two with no chance of individual replacement. Rinse, repeat. Currently the benefits of the proposed systems are exactly the reasons why no major manufacturer would like to support it. However, a miracle like that did happen once with PC components so I don't rule it out entirely. It just takes more than a single visionary and a bunch of consumers who'd like to spend less on their mobile hardware...

Losing the files isn't a problem at all. The internet is your backup. Everything is available somewhere anyway. Especially if you're buying bit-perfect lossless, the replacement audio should be identical to your bought copy. While downloading an unofficial file to replace a lost one may be technically illegal, who's going to know, notice or care? And that's the whole point. Currently there's absolutely no reliable way to differentiate bought, ripped or illegally downloaded files. Go ahead, enter your mp3 collection on Discogs and check its marketplace value. That's what the files are worth. Current digital shopping isn't buying in the sense of "paying money and getting ownership of something". It's a dreadful mess of licence agreements, terms and limitations which vary wildly between stores and countries. Meanwhile, real-world legislation lags severely behind. While physical buyer's rights are reasonably well defined, nobody knows what you're really allowed to do with your files. At the moment, for all intents and purposes, you can treat digital "purchasing" as one-off donation which only buys you a good feeling and possibly more convenient downloading compared to a warez site, nothing else. Don't believe me? Consider this: our braindead legislation requires DJs to buy a separate licence for playing digital files. (None is needed for original physical media.) However, it makes no difference whatsoever how you got the files. They can be bought, ripped or illegally downloaded. The agencies cannot check and they don't even try. Bought a file? That's nice but you aren't allowed to spin it yet. Downloaded a Russian mp3? Hey, that's completely legit as long as you pay the DJ licence fee. Paying to the artists is completely voluntary and actually a bad move business-wise if you only consider the bottom line of your own DJing business. That's how strong the legal status of download stores and their products is around here. Not even worth the bits the receipt e-mail is printed on. If I simply downloaded all my files from torrents and then donated money directly to labels and artists, would there be any difference to current "digital puchasing", other than skipping one middle man's cut? Strangely enough, this is currently a serious question.

Yep. While in practice I rip and play flacs, the automatic hard backup is nice to have. Definitely this. This year I finally de-thumbed my arse and entered my CD collection on Discogs. What I found out was that using the mean prices (you know, what actually gets paid) and listing absolutely everything (including the Scooter singles I got for a penny and they've lost value since) the average value of my CDs is about 10e. It's entirely possible that the whole collection is now worth more than I've paid for it. Had I bought the same stuff as files, its value would be an empathic "you're screwed, sorry". How come is it even possible that in the digital world where physical production and shipping costs are eliminated, the price of albums still remains pretty much the same while labels, artists and buyers are getting a worse deal? There's something deeply wrong in this picture. Regarding the new business models for artists, I'm a bit cynical about it all. On one major forum I repeatedly read how releases "should" be for promotion only and thus free, while the artists "should" play gigs to earn their money. It may sound plausible in genres where an integral part of the act is to bounce around with electric guitars. However, I'm specifically enjoying music which is outlandish and often outright impossible to perform live. What options remain? Basically, DJing your own stuff, which often stands for just pushing the play button. I'm not blaming the artists for being boring like that. In my opininon it's still perfectly fine to be a good producer while not particularly flashy or skilled as a DJ. Why do we want to see the producer anyway? Couldn't people, you know, dance instead of watching the guy behind a laptop? Or close their eyes and chill out while who-ever pushes play. I don't need an ambient artist there to pretend that he's playing the same chord for five minutes. To me the argument about "earning from gigs" sounds like a cheap justification for downloading wares for free. Downloading is damn easy and saves you money, simple as that. However, some feel bad about it first so an excuse is needed. After making up one, everything is neat again. Music is downloaded for free while artists are expected to do "something incredibly innovative, no hints given" instead of getting compensated for...making music. If there only was a way to magically turn invisible and frequent gigs without paying (or anyone noticing), the same people would probably claim that gigs are "for promotion only" and artists should earn from selling t-shirts. I prefer paying to producers for their music, not for standing behind a laptop in a tent - especially when 99.9% of world's gigs take place in locations I'm never going to visit. And I bet a vast majority of people who claim that music should be "free / for promotion only" hardly ever see a live gig either. Meanwhile, recorded music is playing every day. Finally, returning to formats, maybe CD isn't forever but surely the digital side could at least try to offer a better deal. I prefer "pay 10e, get a 10e item" over "pay 10e, get nothing persistent" any day. Heck, it took the industry about ten years to start offering lossless and non-DRMd audio, something we had with CDs in 1982. By the time major stores cease asking extra rip-off prices for lossless (bandwidth costs about 2c per lossless album, BTW) , we've finally reached the technological level of 30 years ago, only without the physical stability or value. Yay. Sometimes I just have to vent. Thank-you and good night.

Upside down in the case? Looks good but as always, I'd happily trade five promo images to one sound sample.

Nostalgia...it's not like it used to be.

The video of PSB's "Vocal", surely... Although Thursday from the same album sounds more oldschool. It's uncannily close to their 80s work. Shame that its lyrics make it effectively a prequel to Rebecca Black's "Friday".

"If there is anyone who is responsible for the complete and thorough pussification of Trance, making it offensively lame to the point where not only newbie ravers but also their soccer moms could enjoy it, it's Robert Miles. "Children" has the exclusive accolade as being the #1 rave recruitment song of all time. It's also probably responsible for the embarrassing onslought of banal, melody-driven trance that dominated the last half of the 90s. Hell, I remember Anne Savage playing this fucking song at my very first rave. This isn't trance; this is like that crappy background music on the TV listings channel that tells you what's playing on other channel." -Ishkur When it was used as filler music to announce events in some olympic games (1996? 2000?), I was truly convinced that it just cannot be trance by any measure. But hey, I believe plenty of people who publicly claim hating it do actually dig out the dusty mp3s (CDs, YouTube) every now and then for memories and comfort...

See also: http://www.psynews.org/forums/index.php/topic/53166-tracks-that-copy-other-tracks/

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/pop_star

Wild guessing is all I can do so: Adrenalin Drum - E-Dsopkia?

Err... Perfecto Allstarz ‎- Reach Up (Indian Summer Remix)? Is it just a '81 sample or a proper remix? Where's the line? The whole concept is hard to pull off successfully. A psychedelic track should be composed so from the beginning. Replacing the instruments of a top40 song with stock squeaks just doesn't work beyond comedy and disbelief values.

Well, you could argue that "goa" used to mean a huge range of hippie and electronic genres until the scene redefined it only to mean a certain branch of fast, acidic trance with deities and fractal art on covers...

I think Beat Bizarre ‎- Pop The Question / Swallow was among the best things TIP World ever released, and it was one of the most promising directions that could have been taken in the transition period. Unfortunately there hasn't been anything truly comparable since. Meanwhile, pretty much everyone else has called it stupid, uninteresting and/or generic full-on. I liked Amen too. Sorry for spoiling that one.

I got the instant download copy of Woob's Ultrascope. If you want one of the endless variants of the physical CD, it might be a good idea to order it on Bandcamp. (Yes, those are all different bundlings of the same release.) They're all limited and silly prices are already asked for last year's album...although it's also been repressed so you can get one cheaply anyway. Oh well...this new one is interesting music with bits of classic synth, movie, ambient and whatnot. Maybe worth checking.

FWIW, Wikipedia lists the two tracks as separate singles and articles "not to be confused". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_Slippy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_Slippy_.NUXX Then again, NUXX was a b-side of the original until getting its own single release. I really don't know what was Underworld's original intent. They're surely different enough to miss the connection altogether.

Once I loaded Distance to Goa 3 mix CD which starts with X-Dream's "The Second Room". I had some other, more melodic CD in my mind and I thought the player was totally borked...

Is it? See various '95 versions of the single here http://www.discogs.com/Underworld-Born-Slippy/master/47693 such as http://www.discogs.com/Underworld-Born-Slippy/release/79870 . I believe it was Trainspotting which made the .NUXX version so popular that most single versions since 1996 only featured that one or its remixes, rather than the original ~8:30 breakbeat mix.

Vote and find out.

I see a pattern here and I concur. Those tracks are neat. Beyond them, I can't even recall which of the 00s albums was which. Already going through shop samples is an experience I prefer forgetting. However, I have two strange anecdotes from that period. 1: Once in the late 00s, I loaded over 500 samples from Juno's psy catalogue to a playlist. It was depressing. Craploads of copy-paste full-on without a single memorable feature, until I spotted one track with at least a bit of groove. It was a compilation track picked from Seven Sisters. Could have been Starbase 11. So even though the album is considered weak on the Pleiadians scale, it had its moments on the general full-on/tech scale. 2: Roughly the same thing on a festival. The schedule was somehow totally screwed up, artist being swapped between nights without proper announcements. Among uncountable hours of pointless full-on, I suddenly noticed that something passable was playing. After getting closer to the stage I found out it was actually Etnica playing their new stuff. Nothing particularly recognisable in the melody department, but it was groovy compared to the rest. All tonal content left the building for good after (or during) Equator, but something remained. Unfortunately it hasn't been enough to make me buy any of those later releases for home listening.

Do we even rate stuff? I can't recall ever posting a top 10 list of artists anywhere. Meanwhile, take a look at https://www.google.com/search?q=underrated+site%3Apsynews.org I'm puzzled by these topics. There are thousands of artists in this scene. Many of the legends moved on to other styles or completely out of music production over a decade ago. What can we do? Repeat the same "yeah, that was good in 1997" discussions every month or the artist becomes "underrated"? We only have a small handful of such discussions in the first place. If "rating" means repeated appearance in ongoing topics, pretty much everyone apart from Etnica and Boris Blenn is underrated. (Or maybe just Etnica?) I think Toï Doï is actually among, let's say, top 20 of most discussed old school artists here. Releasing a new album and a bunch of free stuff definitely helps. Certain tracks from Technologic still appear regularly in mixes, even though it's not strictly from the most celebrated golden era or classic style. Ubar Tmar's 3CD is among the most actively traded and sought after recent releases here. Seriously, I have no idea where this rating officially happens. Please point it out to me first. Then we can discuss what's missing. Or if you want to bring attention to someone, post something insightful. Find new curious details. Make a mix. Anything. I find it pointless just to name-drop stuff every month without actual content only to keep artists from being "underrated". It's even worse to expect others to do that for you. A huge bunch of old releases were good and they still are, but absolutely nothing has changed in their status. Is there anything to discuss? Also, there are only so many slots in a top 10. No matter what you do, >99% of artists will remain underrated in those... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMOCr9x_R58

But probably cheap as they could shoot it on location without any CGI or set-building.

Well, maybe they like exactly the same things?