Procyon

I once again, have to agree. It's so clear when I read "a goa trance album" and "a neogoa trance album" - to me, they are distinct entities. They are relatives, living in different cities.

Thanks OOOD for this information. I stand corrected. Anyway, BR went out of business for monetary reasons, not for the quality of their releases - which, by the way, are gorgeous to this day.

I don't have an answer to that DJ MXF, for whatever name I would come up with would not be 100% loyal, faithful, to what happened at those beaches. But I have a suggestion for that: I love the sound of some words. And guess what, Goa and trance are two of my favorites. I have this idea of baptizing my future son or daughter as Goa. And 'trance' is such a surreal word. I agree with you that 'Goa trance' may not be the appropriate words for that style of music, but I don't think any other would be as perfect. BTW, what would call it?

I disagree OM. Via an specific label, you have the chance of being listened by that niche you talked about. But if you look at the number of hits you may get in Youtube (6199, right now), you have the chance of being listened by a larger number of people - also remember that in Youtube you will reach outside the limited boundaries of goa and psy. And as Elysium pointed - in either case you won't make money, but you will be not locked in a room with a formula, be it Etnica, be it AP.

Well, OM, great topic. I just hope that what we post here somehow works as inspiration for innovation for some young producer, not as a something to be remastered. I see this topic as a sort of a research, like an author does before he writes his romance. My two cents: Adrenalin Drum - The Hypnotizer (1995) I like this track a lot. Har-El, as always. At 1'17 he starts an 303 acid line which underline the whole track. As someone said above, we see no acid lines anymore. At 3'12 it modifies still hypnotic Also the combination of clap and hats is something that works magically. At 2'08 the melody, I can't describe it technically as I am not a writer, but it's so goaish. The whole track is in a 'crescendo' till around 4'30 to 5'30, but it does not explode in a hurricane of layers at that point.

I couldn't agree with you more, Elysium. I can't see how a track released on Ektoplasm, or any other site, won't fare better than if released via Suntrip, for instance. To be honest, with the technology we have now, sometimes I look for tracks on Youtube. I may be mistaken, but I remember that Ocelot build all his 'career' on Youtube before becoming a more mainstream name. If an artist have nice tracks, it does not matter where it can be listened and downloaded from.

I don't think you should portray yourself as a producer-victim of negativism. This topic was created with one intention: to brainstorm different points of view, thus allowing listeners, producers and labels to look to what is neogoa, what is happening to its sounds, and possibly find a brighter path. I remember I also wrote in the OP that Psynews is perhaps the only forum where this sort of conversation could take place. So you see, a small group - us - could somehow make a more exciting scene. And I hope it will happen soon: you've seen the likes of Mars (Suntrip), E-Mantra, Artifakt 303, Panda and many others who are crucial to the scene having their saying. I am also sure that a lot of what was said here was accepted by some of them. I am sure you yourself have a different idea of what you'll write from now on - proof is that another important topic you have just created. Take it easy. A little darkness is necessary every now and then. Edit - Soon, not son.

There should be a 'none' or 'other' option. I didn't vote, dark is too frenetic to me. I can't listen, can' dance to it. Morning trance is so boring that I can't bother to listen, to dance to it. But I concede that dark tracks - the slower ones, like Derango and Mubali tracks - are years light ahead of morning tracks, if danceability and talent are the parameters. Edit: 'ligth years ahead...', when I drink wine my brain mixes English order of words.

I can't agree with this. Matsuri and Blue Room went out of business not because of the 'weirdness' they released. Quite the contrary, their success - to the point of being remembered to this day - came from their very uniquiness. Take KURO and Prana, as two legends whose tracks have stood the passing of time. They went out of business because music industry - especially electronic - the 'now' lasts only a few years, or months. But, even after Matsuri and Blue Room closed down, names they released are still there. Tsuyoshi still is devoted in Japan. KURO has its own fan base - me included. He is still active, a little low-profile. Neogoa labels, such as Space Baby, Suntrip, Cronomi are so 'normal' that if they closed down tomorrow, I doubt we would miss them. As for the niche aspect, I think niches are created by what they listen. Not the contrary, as you point: labels have to release to a niche already there. Well, that's exactly the problem with Neogoa from a market point-of-view: their releases seem to try to please too much, too tamed. That's why it is so bland, colorless.

I have to agree that not one of them are even close to the warmth AP had. Comparing them to Astral Projection is unfair for two reasons: old AP is on a league of its own. New AP, namely 'Amen' can not compared to them, for it sounds as neogoa as it can be. You are comparing oranges to oranges.

+1000000000 Your analysis couldn't be more efficient than that. Keep doing your work, the scene needs more people who think like you. By the way, do you have any tracks to show us? It would be great to hear something that is trying to sound different.

Just to make my point clearer: I did not like IM, not because they seemed to copy somebody else's formula, but I really thought their tracks were bad written. Copy or not, they sounded really cheap.

You didn't say that Copenhagen was the melting-pot, it was me. But the way you are carrying your arguments, it's clear that you are not satisfied that Copenhagen (and please, let's not be so ink-in-the-paper, when I talk about a city I am talking of the scene as whole, and not as this-or-that 3 or 4 artists born in the city. If so, I would have to cite almost every capital in the world) is leveled up to London, as a place where Goa boomed. Finally, I didn't live in London by the time, I was living in another exciting capital: Tokyo, which by way is perhaps the only place in the world where the Goa ambience is still the same, if you look for the right parties. And I don't think it really matters. I may have not lived physically there, but I was as involved in the Goa scene as one could be. And I haven't written a word out of context of what is accepted as the 'official' goa saga. As for you, even though I do believe you were there, these last sequence of posts you wrote are at least, very, very personal, thus unique, (UK + Goa Gil, who usually think they have the right to take all the credit from the many who contributed to what this scene was in the 90's. I'll never accept the way the history of this scene is being written by this elite.) and never heard of. I dare challenge someone here to corroborate your version that Copenhangen was equally crucial to the popularization of Goa as London was.

Well, Elysium, this your side of the history is very funny. This is the first time I read something like that. Again, I don't say that Copenhagen scene was not important (I retreat that comment of mine), but I can't see, hear, read or research that Copenhagen was the melting pot of European goa scene in the 1990s. The same way I never read that any other cities were so crucial to techno and house as Detroit and Chicago.

I am another veteran who disliked Infected Mushroom from track one. I always had this insight that they were big s**t, and they could stink badly.

I know how all of them, and some more, and I know how they were important to psy/goa. What I meant is that at that time, even with big names like you mentioned, Denmark (and other cultural centers) paled in comparison to what was going on in London - for some unique reasons. First, most expats living in Goa were British or Americans. Second, charter flights from Goa had London as their prime European destination. Third, even before Goa arrived in London, there was a pulsating club scene that no other place could match. So all this make London a natural place where Goa found its comfortable nest. Sure, Copenhagen should have its scene, but it was peripheral to London. I bet that KoxBox and Overlords were to London somepoint before their most known releases.

Nice to have an opinion from an insider. But again I have to disagree that this new sound is Goa trance. It is so new to me, that in my Iphone I have 'Goa' and 'NeoGoa' in separate folders. I just can't see how to mix, say, MFG tracks with Alienapia's (another neogoa artist that I appreciate, along with E-Mantra). The sounds are so distinct, and the energy they carry is so different, that I can't think of them as 'Goatrance'. Goa was not a series of album releases, it was an ambience some of us experienced. To me, it officially died with the crap albums that Chi-ad and MFG released in 2009. My only hope that Goa is still breathing is the expected new Astral Projection album. All other Goa albums and tracks released, to me, are neogoa. Suntrip is essential in the life of this new style of goa, but I can't deny I feel most releases just kept me away from buying more recently releases albums. The only track that I really liked, and remember by heart, is Aes Dana's in the first compilation. Simply gorgeous downtempo trance. I hope your expectations, and ours, are met in the future, Mars. Great job at Suntrip.

Two things: with all due respect to Copenhagen, the epicenter of electronic music in the golden days were London, Detroit and Chicago, each in different levels. Never heard that Scandinavia was important to electronic music, until PsyForest came around. And if I have to bet my house on who said what, I would bet in what Mike Maguire and Paul Oakenfold said to iD. Of course, it was a personal point of view, but then the names involved in the article (Juno Reactor, Herbal Tea Party, Return To The Source, Green Nuns of The Revolution, Dragonfly, Prana) all then making part of an exciting new music, decoration, lifestyle that was the talk of the efervescent London club scene, makes that article a piece of music history. You have to remember that at the time, internet was not something you would know what it was. All sort of info, good info, came from magazines. iD was what the likes of Psynews, Saikosounds, Isratrance and Psychedelicgarden are today: it was the 'place' where you would learn where to buy CDs, read reviews on albums and parties, what to wear, where to go. It was in iD where I first learned about glow decoration, and after reading a preview of a party to be held in Osaka I decided to go, my first party ever - so, iD was the bible of electronic music in the 1990s. Not only to Goa, but to house, techno, balearic (do you guys remember that?), ambient, and to a diminishing degree then , also to punk and gothic. So, in the end, I believe in what the likes of Juno Reactor and gang said: Goa came first, psychedelic after.

I have to give my 2 cents, for I still have all the CDs: 1978: Disco faded away, and a Chicago guy spinning his vinyl faster (accidentally) started House 1982: House arrives in Detroit mixed with black music, then Techno was born 1984: House arrives in England, and mixed with the then eurosynth pop. Progressive House was what the likes of The Drum Club were doing. The word Trance yet to be used. 1986: The Summer of Love sends House skyrocketing. The vocal tracks were still called House. 1992: In this six years, Techno, Trance and House were still 'single' parents, no subgenres yet. 1993: A melodic electronic music from India sweeps UK Clubs, as it came from Goa expats, it was dubbed Goa Trance - for it had more elements in common with the then pop-trance. 1994: In an interview for i-D Magazine, July, one of the members of Juno Reactor says that the music they were doing was 'pyschedelic'. The rest you guys know. So, according to what I know, psychedelic came years after Goa. IMO, Chicago House is the mother of all 'hypnotic' music we know now. Goa is the father.

I understand what DJ MXF feels. He was there, in the very place and beginning. Naturally he is a purist. But, goa and psy are so entwined that if you try to separate them, then you will have to create a lot of other subgenres, what to do with the in-between acts like D-5, AP, Chi-ad?. Nice idea, but it's unpractical. IMO, DJ MXF is that you start labelling acts like Green Nuns as, say, "pure Goa". Than we can start separating what you lived back in Goa, the Goa made in Europe, and psychedelic trance. My crazy idea

You are right to some degree, Tatsu. I think these neogoa artists should have experienced some other musical styles before - or during - their neogoa 'career'. Unfortunately, they didn't experience punk, gothic, heavy metal, hair metal, the 1980s, etc etc etc...It is sad that the 1990s, when most of them were born, was a tasteless decade, musically speaking. But on the other hand I don't think this is an excuse. We have access to archived musical info that we never had 15 years ago, it is all there. It should be like a good writer writing a book about a time he didn't live. I take Humberto Eco's 'The Name of The Rose' as a good example.

I don't think there are not that many releases, as you point. It may be little, if you compare it to full-on or dark-psy releases. But even after that you see a considerable amount of releases every week - take a look at Psynews releases info. Only recently I remember Ajna, Psychowave and Artifakt 303. Afgin also released a track I didn't listen to. And there are also the 'youtube' releases, tracks that don't make it to forums like Psynews, but their music is available to the public. Contrary to what Richpa said, 'only 5 labels and 15 albums a year', I believe it's much more than that.

I understand some of you. But I don't think that we're comparisons between goa and this new stuff. Point is, if neogoa were really good, it would have been subject of praise and we would have a more popular neogoa scene now. I hope, but I don't think, it will mature as time goes by. I also agree that technology plays an important role, but it doesn't matter what high-end gadgets you have if your writing is poor. I guess it is the Achille's heel of neogoa: poor writing. That's why all the track seem to be one. Sorry to disagree. Of course, they have one or two good tracks, but I can't listen to them more than once. Too bland. I know one thing, using Artha and Ra as examples: their albums may be better than the rest, but their works solely are not outstanding and when you see the whole picture - they included - their works diminish in creativity. I am not talking specifically about this or that corner of neogoa, I am talking about it as a whole. And as a whole these 'characteristics' do not matter much. Also, I disagree that it is 'about me and not the music', you see there are people who already agreed with my opinion to some degree. And, finally, as a goa fan, I am open to criticism whatever it comes from, for I know a lot of them are true. I am the first to say that neogoa is not that good. If I am open to contrary opinions, my musical 'perception' must not be that wrong.

Are you kidding, Richpa? I infer you have been in the scene for a long time, enough to know that Neogoa, or newschool goa, is. IMO - a Goa subgenre: it IS Goa, but it's not similar to what we heard in 1995-2003. I think of Neogoa as tracks with no internal divisions, no breaks, lots of melodies, and that's all. I may be wrong but I think Suntrip was the first label to record them.