IronSun

Don't forget Seb Taylor! That being said, the derango guys blow pretty much everything out of the water when it comes to sound design, even though they confine themselves to one genre... Or do they?

So discussing something on a forum is not your thing? Then what's the point? Isn't discussing opinions & tastes what makes this place interesting? If you just want to dump your opinion and never get called on it, why bother in the first place?

It's still a fantastic EP! If you haven't heard it yet, I strongly recommend checking it out. Makes the long wait for the second album all the more painful though I think all original tracks stand out equally, really immersive and hypnotic stuff.

Where did the cool sample go in mindbug about the earth being hammered by meteors?

Make that 97 copies

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eOHNQdRZmhs One of their best!!!

Mind bug!!! Finally released damn i can't wait!

Vedama!! Lapsus I'm also een waiting for several years...

Placeholder for me as well... still need to hear some stuff... Edit: man this year is hard to choose a top ten... so many good releases also beyond strictly Goa Trance like the new Oforia, Nervasystem & Ticon albums... Uptempo: Chi-A.D. - Earth Crossing (Amakusa Records) Morphic Resonance - The City Of Moons (Suntrip Records) VA - Mind Rewind 3 (DAT Records) Crossing Mind - Beyond Duality (Suntrip Records) Mindsphere - Mental Triplex - Presence (Suntrip Records) Oforia - Read More...(Zion 604 Records) Ultimate Xperience - Lazarus Rising (Neogoa Records) Virtuart - Virtuart & Friends (DAT Records) Artha - Dream Telepathy (Cronomi Records) Ephedra - Flying Over The Universe (Goa Madness Records)

Secured mine with only 3 left, phew! Smart choice as far as the project goes, not surprised you hit your target in one week

I agree with a lot of releases in this thread but strongly argue that Ephedra's Flying over the Universe also deserves a mention in this conversation. Maybe not THE best, but definitely of the better albums this year.

Nnot too familiar with Virtuart yet bnut liked the ep on Dat and the tetragrammaton track on the last anjuna comp so pretty excited about this!

Thank you for your music!!

Listen to Anoebis, Draeke! Everything that was mentioned here of course... Especially chi a.d.,transwave but also sandman I would love to hear live again (heard him once) and battle of the future Buddha's as I have never heard them live before.

Antic: First of all let me say how amazed I am by your ability to clearly express what you look for in music. I guess this was not an easy process but hey, you're there and it sounds as if you've given it a lot of thought. I find myself drifting in your direction very strongly. All the releases you named at the bottom of your post have been absolute highlights for me as well (except 5 billion stars & vagabond because I haven't heard them yet) and a couple of these I got because you recommended them (transformational structures & brainradio). Even though I have been listening to more than 1 subgenre in the psychedelic trance umbrella for the past 8 years I must say that partly because of transformational structures & brainradio I have come to enjoy and appreciate other subgenre's much more and this has encouraged me to broaden my search samplesizes of new music. I want to thank you for this! It really has contributed to me enjoying psytrance and all it's related sub genre's even more and I feel more complete for it. I hope one day I will be able to express myself the way you do about my musical preference. That being said, as far as style goes I really look for music to be transcending or to be a tool to transport you to another world, a world of emotion and contrary to everyday experience. Whether this emotion is sad, angry, uplifting, euphoric, happy, mellow, nostalgic doesn't matter, but the fact that it is present or evokes emotion inside of me is what's important to me. I don't shy away from ethnical stuff if it is well made and I think that often comes down to avoiding cliches when making something that can be classified (as opposed to something that can not be classified, which would automatically mean that it can not be cliche because these have not been established yet). I guess that's where pioneers in certain genre's or subgenre's have it 'easier'. (good example of this would be Kolovrat) I also tend to prefer maximalistic music over minimalistic approaches although that preference has been waning over the last years. I've come to appreciate the balance between the two and these days more actively search for it. Somehow I'm also completely addicted to the 'electronic sound' and the 4/4 dance beat. Musical content is something where I find it much much harder to pinpoint what floats my boat. This is where I really struggle to express because I have been known to absolutely love the most complex of pieces while at the same time swooning over albums that a lot of my friends categorized as simple (although that probably indicates that other people do not always perceive music the way I do, which is perfectly normal). I like melody, with complex phrases and absolutely adore musicians that succeed in a musical catharsis in their tracks because that to me is the pinnacle of a musical journey. (This can also be achieved over the course of an album of course) Maybe that then is what I really look for as far as musical content is concerned: catharsis. But even this doesn't always hold true. Conforming to a certain genre is in my eyes not always a bad thing. Ticon's latest is a great example of that. While doing noting new, they still manage to push all the right buttons and in the end, that's what gets me going. I think this is the point where we differ the most in our views on music.

This convinced me not to listen to the samples and just be surprised when it finally arrives in my mailbox Getting kinda giddy about this release.

Just a superb collection!!! To me this is better than volume two and even a strong contender for 'best of the series' even considering volume one's legendary status and the absence of any etnica unreleaseds. There's so many highlights on these two discs... Questions from RA is a perfect opener, great track that has still a lot of D5 influence. Alkaloid is a fantastic track as well. And then the really crazy bit starts: Snuggles, Black Holes, Lord Of the Minds & Pleione one after another!!! My god that sequence just does me in each and every time!! Party Time!! It's crazy psychedelic dark & dense mindfuckery! Finally having Time Slices & Identify on cd is just icing on the cake, not to mention Howl which is just such a cool track, that atmosphere....

I find myself enjoying this quite a lot. Like a few have said before Ticon might not have managed to create something special as in genre-ascending/breaking borders or being innovative-special. I would however strongly argue that staying within a genre's borders, & comfortably residing there with a near-to perfect execution of the ruling tropes of said genre is an accomplishment not too many artists can claim to have achieved. To me this is the point where progressive really reaches full maturity. Kick-bass combo's are produced very well and the surrounding effects and atmosphere fit in perfectly and are never overdone. Acid lines like in Out Foxed complement everything to form an enticing whole.

And here we go again...

Prettiest cover ever <3 this will likely become release of the year for me. I take it the hypnotropic track is a rework? It was one of my favourite tracks on the holographic paradigm ^^

I also like this a lot and understand starkravers comparison to miktek's elsewhere although I would argue that is mostly due to elsewhere being much more homogeneous in mood (somber melancholic) . Moon pool is more of a journey that takes you through some different moods. Fantastic album! At times (3 moons) enormously uplifting, a real joy to listen to.

At average I would say 50 euro a month, and around 50 cd's a year although that number has been steadily rising over the last few years... Mostly Goa of course but the longer I am collecting, the more I find my tastes expanding in this umbrella genre we call psy so it is getting more & more expensive I am currently looking to implement a structure where I can easily incorporate physical & digital releases and be able to play my entire collection on any device or as many as possible... This is quite a challenge ...

He's one of my favorite midtacts too although I've never seen him but I'll be sure to catch him whe I get the chance... Glad to know there's a new album coming, any idea when it'll be released?

Review thread for Primal Contact is updated! Please excuse me for the delay, you can either attribute it to the fact that we were without internet for three weeks, or the fact that I'm horrible with deadlines That being said, go on and read and listen for yourself, it's an awesome awesome album!!

Every year around January for the last four or five years I have spent some money on other cd’s than Goa. This started out at first to be a lot of psychill and psychedelic downtempo, but over the years my appetite for electronic music also came to encompass different uptempo genre’s. So the last two years this meant I got some albums and VA’s from my favorite chill-out / prog, full-on & forest labels. The way I approach this, as just buying anything at all does not stroke with my attitude towards art, is to browse forums for list of ‘top 10 of genre x of the previous year’ (hence the prerequisite of January). Since my extremely positive experience with Hutti Heita last year, I decided to go for some forest again this year. I settled on VA - Umcherrel 2: The Backwoods Baize by Treetrolla Records (A label I love since their awesome comp Remember The Slime), Blue Hour Sounds’ VA - The Dark Side Of Dawn and last but not least Arjuna’s Primal Contact on Parvati Records. Turns out this was a damn good haul. (Thanks to Rotwang for recommending The Dark Side Of Dawn somewhere here btw!) I must admit this is the first Parvati release I own. I know I know shame on me. But let me make it up to you with a review: According to the Parvati site, Arjuna was born in the Himalayas in India in 1982 Ever since, he has had a unique and interesting journey through life. He grew up in Goa, the mecca of psy trance, where he saw the birth and evolution of this mystical genre. Arjuna started collecting psytrance DATs and mini disks at a very early age. At the age of 19, he got his first shot behind the decks and there was no looking back. This is his debut album, and MAN is the cover artwork sweet!! It looks like a scene out of an awesome psychedelic animated movie... The details in the cover relate really well to the music! Arjuna’s sound design is crystal clear: it is an absolute joy to listen to the intriciate details that get woven throughout each track. That being said, the album starts off pretty intense with heavy kick and bass and gets more and more muddy/confused towards the end, an approach I can definitely appreciate. The level of detail he puts into his production is remarkable although the overall style is a lot more straightforward and driving than for example Hutti Heita’s debut, yet not as intense and oppressive as Goch’s. This makes it a little easier to listen to and is also a bit more danceable in my opinion, mainly due to the grooviness of the basslines. Definite highlights of the first half for me are endless possibilities and cermenate sunrise with their awesome drive. The first half of the album may be categorised as a kind of forest that more closely resembles Dark Psytrance of around 2007-8 and less the swampy muddy modern forest. The sounds produced are really on the verge between organic and synthetic, which is a very nice accomplishment in my opinion. It sounds organic enough to feel warm (Forest has the tendency to feel like an aural warm blanket to me) yet retains enough synthetic elements to sound sharp and technologic. I find this relates very well to the title of the album, with ‘primal’ signifying organic nature and chaos while contact presumes something more alien, highly sophisticated and technological. The album has a lot of collaborations, and for the most part I like them, but the collab with Orestis, unintended consequnces is just too fast and hectic for me at some times and because of this loses a bit coherencey. The collab with Farebi Jalebi features, as expected, a very heavy kick and bass, but doesn’t really manage to catch my interest as well as the rest of the tracks. However, my absolute favorite track here is also a collab and that is with Atriohm, one of the grandmasters of the genre as far as I’m concerned. The track focuses more on a slower but atmospheric approach which is strengthened in the beginning by a myriad of organic bleeps, urghs, blargh and ooooorghs that seem to come from all sides. Through all this seems to be interwoven in the background the sound of instruments playing but heavily distorted, this must be the drunk orchestra!. It creates such a groovy sensation. Sound production here is absolutely godlike in my opinion. Conclusion: I simply adore this album. It has the right Kick/Bass intensity, it sounds a bit less swampy than for example Goch but is groovier for it and ultimately that benefits how danceable this is. I would love to hear Arjuna live one day and the follow-up album will be an insta-buy. 4/5!