Spindrift

Thanks. Glad you guys liked it and great to get some feedback Stayed tuned.... There will be a couple of other new and exciting artists being added very soon that I'm personally equally excited about.

Hi AmithabaBuddha, First of all it's quite hard to achieve the fullness of sound in the oldschool stuff. Most producers using a digital setup of course go for a clear and crisp sound since that is a lot easier nowadays. But no matter how good mixing you are, reason won't sound like a old-school trance track. I guess what I personally strive for is a good balance between crispness and warmness, and don't only want to sound old-school. But a few hints on how to warm up your sound. The obvious easy thing is to use various tube emulator/dist plugins. And on a lot of things. To save DSP you can group your sounds uin busses with the plugins on. PSP - Vintage Warmer is strongly reccommended. Disco DSP - Thrill Me is good as well but excites the treble quite a bit. Antares - Tube is also worth a try. If you still find that you can't get a warm enough sound consider getting a high quality channel strip with some coloured compression/eq/dist and good D/A converters. You could route your audio thru that to record it down and get the analogue sound of an expensive analog mixing console. I have a Focusrite tone master I was using a bit like that which is a nice budget unit for that purpose. Make sure you get a quality unit though because the cheap hardware don't sound at all as good as the plugins. I would think that there is a lot of other factors to work on before you need a hardware unit to emulate a specific type of sound. Using reason you won't get fatt full sound. Most people will agree that somehow the mixing does not sound good enough. I only can speak from my experience in fruity and orion that if you compare to mix down a bunch of tracks in logic or one reason/fruit/orion you can easily tell the difference. I reccomend Logic as the best sounding sequencer I have tried. I gave up on cubase many years ago now myself, but like always it's many people who will swear that it sounds great. Try the sequencers you are interested in using and mix down identical mixes to make a blind test if you want to know for yourself. Also I have never found host-based plugins that I find sound fat and deep enough for basses especially in my taste. I always do my basses on my Pulsar DSP card which works in a higher resolution when calculating the sound than VST plugins. Also the mixing on the Pulsar is audibly better than Logic even. My first step in hardware would for sure be to get a Pulsar or/and a UAD-1 card. About mixing techniques in general: Don't think it's so much about mixing. Best and fattest sound is from a good sounding source. The main thing when mixing the sounds should really be to make sure the gain structure is good, buy ensuring your levels is high enough but not clipping/limiting anywhere is the signal path. Using to much EQ and therefore making the sounds thinner is a common misstake. A fat sound can't sound fatter by EQ'ing it. If you know what you do you can make a thin sound sound fatter, and of course make a fat sound sound thin no matter if you know what you are doing or not. If you ask me to carefull adjustemt of levels, making everything sit perfectly in the mix with no masking going on with compressors and EQ makes music sound dead and flat. A rough mix is many times a good one. But hey...everyone loves shpongle and I think it sounds dead boring so call me wierd

www.resonantearth.com have the great pleasure to present three tracks from the great new artists Mubali. Delayed Aggression 40 acres and a mule Relentless All very interesting and imaginative style for the night which we hope you will enjoy. Check them out!

@lumpi You could try a download manger like getRight (it was years ago since i used it myself, maybe there is other better ones now). They can be quite ok and manage to get the files down ok and reconnect if connection is lost and close down when dl is complete.. Sometimes they might fail, but a lot of the time they work just as they should.

I love some of those old TIP 303 style basses. Cybertropic would definatly be one of my all time favourite basslines.

Sure lumpi, just drop me a mail or pm with your choices and I will instruct you on how we can go about to organize it.

@lumpi I have been considering that, but i do go travelling sometimes and it becomes difficult to provide a reliable CD ordering service on the site because of that. Also I live in the midlle of the forest, which of course make it extra awkward. But if you really want one I can arrange it for the normal price of a CD. Also, according to the licensing, if you can get a friend with a decent connection to buy a download it's allowed for him to make copies if he like for you. @lysergic If you go to the frontpage and scroll down there is a very basic html version of the site, but at least you can download the tracks from that page.

I been using Logic for many years, and before that Notator. Now I just had a first try of Abelton Live 4 yeaterday. MIDI implementation still leaves a bit to wish for, but it's usable and controller implementation is very good. The arrangement possiblilities really impressed me when i tried version 3 already, and when it now has MIDI i find it an amazing product. And of course if you produce in Live to start with it's very easy to quickly put a liveset together where you actually control the arrangement live, which is something i really looked forward to. And the speed of arranging when producing is very important to me as well, so i don't get bored with the track before it's done. Anyone who haven't given Live a proper look should do so really. Takes a little effort to grasp how to work it, but when you do the rewards is great. I will start using it for DJ'ing as well i think. It always annoyed me that you can only play two things at the time in Traktor, and although the experience is much less hands on and more complicated with Live it gives great possibilties of incorporating FX and loops in the mix. And as a bonus people can stop accusing me of playing Mp3 because i use traktor, since Live can't play Mp3 Anyway, thats it..... goodbye to Logic for me now.

Agreed that the TI seems great. Thats the first time a hardware spec make me drool in a long time

I personally dislike working woth a mixer without recall and flexible EQ. Digital mixers though, which you have to go for if you want a mixer with those capabilities, are not so great i think. The whole setup becomes a bit akward to me with a digitail mixer involved. Using a DSP solution you reacall it all from the computer. With a digital mixer you have to store your presets there, and sysex them over if you want to store them with the song. The converters is not so high class in budget digital consoles, and if you like many record your hardware to hard disk, then you really don't need so many converters. The compressors and EQ is of a very low standard in the digital desks i tried as well. If you want top notch production, but is willing to work a bit different, then a DSP solution is for sure the best. Look a bit at the UAD-1, Pulsar and Powercore and see wich one fit's you best. The UAD-1 have very high quality compressors, eq and reverb. The pulsar great synths, flexible routing and some great compressor, eq and reverb if you get the sonic timeworks stuff for it. Synths for pulsar that is worth looking in to spending cash on as well is Zarg stuff and Flexor for the modular. Powercore give you the TC effects of course and there is a virus for it. A small but good submixer to input hardware for recording and maybe a channel strip. I have a focusrite tonemaster which i was very happy with when i still was using it. Nowadays i can't really be asked to integrate hardware in the setup at all myself, so it's been in the cupboard for years On top of what the cards offer you might need to get some decent converters if you want to record hardware. I would probably go for a really quality stereo unit like Apogee make instead of having many I/O. But for only recording the virus i would not bother. The converters on that is not much better than the converters that comes with the DSP cards, and it's wont sound better because you have a good converter to record it. Maybe if you get a real analog synth though. In the end DSP solutions is the best bang for the buck. Some people can't get on with the idea of having everything inside the computer, but for my way of working it's just great. No moving about here and there to reach stuff, no little fiddly displays and most of all totall recall of a whole song without the hassle of trying to get sounddiver to actually work. With a decent controller unit you shopuld be able to make a setup which is quite hands on to work with as well. Monitorbrands that i can recommend for trance is tannoy, dynaudio and genelec.

Two new tracks on the site in the site last couple of days that you want to check out Hooga Booga - Psychedelix Kicking track and a bit new style from him. Very psychedelic and wild sounding night track. Spindrift - Mission From God Well...my latest track finished just now...what can i say. Make up your minds about what you think. Crazy and intense. Download now and enjoy folks The idea is of course that you download and print and burn one if you like that. But, all collectors i've been speaking to though do not like CDR. Ok...I never been a dedicated CD collector, and just grab them and store away the CD somewhere, so obviously i lack understanding from the feelings the CD's them self bring to some It would be interesting to know though what is the actual reason people think it's a problem with CDR. I had some quality CDR that lasted many years, and if it's ruined you can always burn a new one. Some apogee gold CD's i burned more than 5yrs ago is still fine anyway, which is not the case with most factory prints i have a few years old. There is of course lousy print CD's and lousy CDR's, but if i burn it myself i have the choice to use good quality. If you buy "ready-made" on the other hand you don't really know really.

Just go to www.resonantearth.com and find out It's possible to listen to the whole release there. Thats not being planned. If I would release on CD it would take up a lot more of my time, and I would need to invest money in printing, dealing with tax stuff etc. In the end i would just be able to get in what it cost if all goes well. People would have two pay about double for the compilation, to get it on a wasteful CD wich get corrupted with time and wear, so they have to back it up to their computer anyway. I would be able to give about 10% to the artists per sold copy compared to what i can give now.

In my experience TIP made some of the greatest tracks that ever hit a dancefloor. Especially in the beginnings of the 90's they where very influential in making goa trance what it became. They where also among the first to make it into a commercial story and a clearly defined genre. I agree that feeling wierd is not so together as an album, but like someone said it's a collection of tracks, some 3-4yrs old when the CD came out. Anyway, because of the influence they had on the scene they can't be said to be overrated. I don't understand how one can compare sphongle and TIP. One is in my ears boring pretentious ambient music, and the other is fun and psychedelic music for blasting the socks of a dance floor. Nevertheless they are two completly different genres of music and cannot be comapred in my mind anyway.

IMO the cassette and later DAT trading was not only elitistic. In Goa there was always about free parties, the DJ's don't get paid and the music was not being sold. If someone made a track they though would be appreciated they where very happy if a DJ wanted it to play. No-one was getting pissed off with any DJ's because he never bought CD's. It was of course ego involved and people who held the latest killer tracks for themself, but it was a lot more feeling of sharing in those day's for sure. Around 94-95 i5t started to go commercial, and there seemed to be money to be made in trance. Since then the spirit in the scene has changed a lot IMO. That it should be a problem for the scene that it's easy to get hold of the music and easy to get a setup to produce with is a strange idea for me. The most important for being a good producer or DJ surely must be to have talent and taste. That it's better if only the ones with connections and money get a chance, well yeah, thats how most things work....can be a nice element in our conservative trance scene. Paypal is not global really, but quite ok (most likely owned by a creditcard company though). It's a bit like 'internet money' but of course you have to get the funds in there from some kind of transfer from the real money system. There is options if you don't have a card to do that though. CD's seem to be of lower quality in general nowadays to me. I don't buy much CD's, but i bought a few last spring which was unplayable after a year, and i haven't kept them lying around open. I also have a few that is quite old, and they still play ok though. At least with a data file as original you don't have to worry about that and know that your music has never passed though any possibly degrading error correction.

Sure, in most cases nowadays when it comes to downloading CD's it's either illegal copies via P2P, or from a site offering to sell downloads for the labels. In both those cases you would expect music to be grabbed from CD and covers being scans. I guess what we are talking about is the future on a larger scale, but it's of course allready possible and happening, Without sounding like a salesman at resonantearth the flac files is done directly from the wav that never been subceptible to CD audio error correction. The artists eiither send their masters via ftp or as wav on a data CD. Artwork is made in RGB colour and saved as 600dpi images for the customer. When doing covers for offset printing it can be really dissapointing when you convert the image to CMYK and get it back from the offset print. The RGB version made with a cheap printer on good paper will look a lot better, at leat if you tried to use any kind of radiant colours in the print. Many new printers can print on two sides, which would make it a bit more convenient for a booklet. I have one that i bought for $10 as a bargain in a second hand shop. It's quite new still though and should costed a lot more of course The best looking paper i tried, and nicely stiff as well, is photopaper. It's not cheap really though. I think also there is paper specially for CD covers which is pre-stanced and everything. Personally I'm not really so bothered with covers and is really only after the music, but I don't think it's so much effort to print one out and cut it out...i rather do that than have to go to a shop or order and wait for days.

Go on..kill mother nature then as you wish... Jk CD's is a bad format and has the shortest storage time of any media i know of, and i hope it get phased out quickly. For me the original should be the file that you can trust is 100% intact. A CD will give you loss of data with a tiny amount of dust or grease. A CD with FLAC or wav is at least reliable, but audio CD's you can't really trust IMO. And to me it seems more logical if i can get hold of the format i actually use from the start, and it's fast to backup the audio data compared to grabbing a CD, at least if you want to do it properly. And about the artwork..stuff printed from a printer is much more radiant since printers use RGB colour instead of CMYK...so you get better looking covers if you have a good printer and paper than on a CD in the shop. If the artwork would not be made for offset print in the first place of course. So...if the flac files is made directly from wav by the label and the artwork is RGB you get a better looking cover and you can be sure the sound is 100%

The differences is minute for sure, and I was intially thinkning to have ape format on resonantearth, but got convinced to go with FLAC. The difference in compression is about 2.5% in favour for ape. FLAC also have support in a few hardware players and is streamable. According to FLAC their encoding is marginally faster, according to ape their is faster, but decoding should be more than twice as fast with FLAC. With a compression format like this it really makes sense with open source. You remember the old jpg discussion? Apparently all products using jpg code should have to pay a fee to use the codec. I don't know what happened to that. It was a lot of talk about png taking over instead, but that didn't happen. The lossless audio is in it's infancy though, and ape is already less established. Partly due to the faster decompression and streaming, but also the risk of monkeysaudio going ape and charge for using their codec, hardware manufacturers seem to prefer FLAC, and i can't find one single shop selling ape still, but like i said there is a few selling flac already. But in the end from a business angle, mp3 is just fine. The main majority of people is not bothered if they have wav or well encoded 320k mp3. And reality is that very very few audio professionals can hear the difference in a blindtest between wav and lame encoded 320k mp3. FLAC take three times more bandwidth and space, which is not so much a problem for a small site like resonantearth, but for the bigger ones it still can be. I hope people will get used slowly to the advantages of buying their music for digital delivery online. Personally i think CD's is crap. I try to keep them carefull, but they are still fucked after about a year a lot of the time. Sound quality becomes bad due to error correction from scratched and fingerprints, and even worse they get stuck. I always grab any CD i have to keep it intact and be able to play it from the computer. Think about the nature at least and stop that plastic obsession

The shop at resonantearth and a few other ones sell FLAC format (http://flac.sourceforge.net/) allready. It seems to be the one that will be the future rather than ape. Monkeyaudio is not stricktly open-source, so if the company goes bankrupt or get some crazy ideas your music collection might not be possible to listen to one day.

No no no...downloading is good Check the stuff on my site at the URL below

I can't wait for the Ghreg On Earth album myself. I just heard thet early 2005 it will be out. Definatly one of the most inspired artists making both dark and intelligent night music at the moment. And the album will even be one level above the tracks that is already around from him it seems. And since you like datakult as well, you should of course check the "Mythical Vortex" compilation on resonantearth A great GOE track and three amazing datakult tracks is featured. http://www.psynews.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=21415

Yeah...Front242 I also saw them sometime in the end of the 80's, just when official version came out. That was for sure the best electronic live act i have seen.

NO...please don't feel sorry or ashamed In your time....there is no deadlines the way i work But yes...maybe i was hinting a bit

Some really nice morning tunes you have there. Very nice melodics, and pretty much manages to be euforic and still not really cheezy. I have to listen more carefully to them before a really can make comments on the individual tracks. I will check them again later. And I hope to hear more and newer stuff soon. As far as a quick impression goes...good work.

I posted this top10 before elsewhere, it's definaly really old stuff...not really goa trance all of it, but rather the roots. 1981 Liaisons Dangereuses - Los Niños del Parque (roadrunner) Unbelivable stuff from the guys behind DAF..goa trance allready 1981...true pioneers 1986 Skinny Puppy - Dig It (PIAS) At this time Skinny Puppy was definatly my favourite act. Really heavy production, still rocks. Front 242 - Agressiva Due (Red Rhino) This from the official version album, I think many people can agree is one of the most influential tracks in helping form the goa sound. 1988 Stakker - Stakker Humanoid (ZYX) What a year...acid, new beat, techno...they all sprang out into flowering...and one of the most amazing tracks of this year...the guys behind FSOL with their Stakker Humanoid, super classic, super hit. Miss Nicky Trax - Acid in the house (BCM) Miss Nicky Trax was the first acid tune I heard, fat and psychedelic. Representing the belgian new-beat movement, woth checking out if you are not allready familiar with it. 1989 Man Machine - Man Machine (Outer Rythm) This classic track seem not very well known or widespread...lost my copy years ago, and would love to be able to blast it again. One of my all time favourite tracks for sure. 1990 Mental Cube - Q (rumour records) Again the guys from FSOL. Great, maybe slightly cheezy morning tune. Tribal Ghost - Message (new zone) This is the stuff that cassette tapes was made of beginning of 90's. Real original goa from 1990. Check the new zone technoclub vol2 for more stuff like this. 1991 The Overlords - Sundown (ZYX) The most classic goa sunrise track ever. If you havent heard it you have to check it out. Eat Static - Eat Static (cassette, rel.2001 Mesmobeat) From the Eat Static cassette that hit goa like a bomb in the season 91-92. You could almost called it the bible of goa trance. The tape was luckily re-released 2001 on the CD "prepare the spirit". And a bonus that I forgot when making the top: A Split Second - Flesh Very very influential track. Started the new beat wave which was very popular in goa in the end of the 80's, and this one sounded more goa than most the new beat that came after.

New on the ResonantEarth website: We have added the possiblity for you to purchase compilations at a reduced price including artwork. First out is "Mythical Vortex" that brings together the finest night tracks from the artists on ResonantEarth. You will find it by clicking the new "releases" button on the site. Tracklisting: 01 - the maximizers - no parking 02 - spindrift - dithered 03 - ghreg on earth - tellurian halo 04 - spindrift - neurotronic 05 - datakult - hoax box 06 - spindrift - dig it 07 - datakult - punisher 08 - spindrift - flex 09 - datakult - demon sect 10 - hooga booga - rec23 Enjoy!