Lemmiwinks

1. Sleepwalker 2. Emotions 3. Electroshock 4. Cat on Mushroom 2004 5. Daybreaks 6. Raver 7. Tranceformer 8. Mechanical Dream 9. Rising Force Space Cat has developed a pretty interesting style here... it's kindof in between progressive and full-on but still with a nice oldschool touch (ah those melodies!!!). And indeed, IMO the album title captures the feeling very well: the progressive side gives it a mechanical feeling while the melodies give it a dreamy feeling. I won't be going into each track as they all sound similar. But I will tell you that those beautifull melodies and atmospheres are well worth buying this! Very dreamy stuff, perfect for those early hours or even for home listening. But i suppose you want to hear a comment on the 04 version of Cat on Mushroom well, it has a lot of screaming 303s but personally I prefered the original version... Conclusion definatley one of the best albums released this year. Those nice melodies will bring a smile on the face of any oldschooler (and others as well ) 9/10 Lemmiwinks (aka moondancer from older psynews reviews)

1. Baston basket 2. Am 2 pm 3. Sharas jasi-k 4. Shapi Shapo 5. Coridoors 6. G.H.B. 7. Flying cargo 8. Monkey business 9. Ah oom ba ba 10. Impact Things weren't looking too bright on this album from the start: 1. it's full-on... 2. It's released by Phonokol who's miles away from releasing the quality stuff they used to... 3. The ONLY Nissimyani tracks I liked were Fresco and Peyote. So I was very skeptical when first listening to this. But I must say that although this is full-on, it is much more innovative than I thought it would be! The progressions are very dynamic, it's not the usual "nothing happens untill minute 5 where there's a climax" thing. AM 2 PM is a dancefloor stormer, it has a clown-likeatomshpere in it, I'm sure it would make you freak on the dancefloor. Sharas Jasi-k applies the usual full-on formula but the climax is EXCELLENT!! one of the best climaxes I've heard all year!! I also like the melody in Flying Cargo and Monkey Business has a nice oldschool feeling to it. conclusion so just when you thought there couldn't be any innovation into full-on, now this. I must say I'm impressed Definatley the best full-on album I've heard this year (but considering the overall-mediocreness of the genre, that wasn't really hard to achieve...) Of course this is very dancefloor-oriented so i guess DJs will have a good time with it. 8/10 Lemmiwinks (aka moondancer on older psynews reviews)

1 Intro - Whales In Space 2 Age Of Love - The Age Of Love (Jam & Spoon Remix) 3 Dance 2 Trance - Hello San Francisco 4 Trance Induction - Technolo 5 TZ 8 - Birdy 6 Microbots - Freedom 7 Trance Porter - Base 8 The Shamen - L.S.I. (Frank de Wulf Mix) 9 Car & Driver - Drive 10 E-Mojonal - Make E Move 11 Cosmic Baby - Magic Cubes 12 Re-Pitcher - Thing (Evolution Remix) 13 Outro - Whaletronics well before you start screaming bloody murder on what the hell is a Trancemaster comp doing on these pages, remember that in the early 90s there was no such thing as commercial/ uncommercial trance! AND this is basically the earliest comp where I've ever seen the word "Goa" and "Trance" on the cover so, yes it is a Trancemaster but a VERY early one!! And the general feeling is very hippyish: the intro and outro are made out of samples of whale sounds and on the CD booklet you can read in big letters: "DON'T BUY PRODUCTS FROM NORWAY OR JAPAN AS GOVERNMENTS STILL GIVE PERMISSION TO SLAUGHTER WHALES!". And then you have advertising for Guarana... So this is the earliest "modern-day hippie" oriented comp I've seen so far. Well if you're to believe the early reports on music played in Goa, then Dance 2 Trance were one of the hottest acts back then. And I must say that the Hello San Francisco track is VERY beautiful. It might sound aged today but the melody is so nice it brings tears to my eyes. I think you all know The Age of Love (originally released on a Belgian record label BTW ) It still is a beautiful track even today and even after it has been overplayed in every club in the world. I guess some of you might find it odd to realize that it was already made in 92 (I think commercial success wasn't due until 97 or 98 ). Yes, Bruno Sanchioni is a genius too bad that The Age of Love was a one-off project This is a track that will forever be remembered as THE trance anthem. You're probably wondering what the Jam & Spoon remix sounds like... well actually it's this mix that was later known to be the "original version" (the one with a raspy sunth sound going up in the beginning of the track) so it's probably the version you already know. Trance Induction - Technolo might seem a bit simplistic and has an outdated production but it makes me smile, it sounds nice, kindof like Kraftwerk making trance Same goes for TZ 8 - Birdy . Tranceporter - Base was a HUGE commercial succes in these parts and still gets played in retro DJ sets today in Belgium so it's kindof too overplayed for me. Still, it sounds nice. the LSI mix actually sounds more like acid house than trance, I don't really like that one. Car & Driver - Drive is the hardest one here, it has a BPM rate comparable to today's trance, but I don't find it good. Cosmic Baby - Magic Cubes deserves praise for the melody kicking in minute 5:40; I'd definatley like to hear a modern day remix containing that melody!! Conclusion well obviously this is dated by today's standards but it has the merit of being the very first comp (AFAIK) which has the term "Goa" on it and has abvious hippie orientations. So that makes it a precious gem for people who are interested into how it all started. Lemmiwinks (aka moondancer on older psynews reviews)

1. A Kind Of Prayer 17.23 2. Revelation 0.15 3. Sheap? 9.34 4. Revelation 0.30 5. Truth 9.25 6. True 4.46 7. Revelation 1.18 8. Kraak 12.18 9. Revelation 0.29 10. Thru 9.22 Ah another one of those oldies I actually bought this for 1 euro on eBay! A little history lesson for those interested: PWOG is a belgian trance act from the time that EBM ruled the scene and Ghent and Antwerp (2 Belgian cities from where a lot of EBM artists and record lables came from) were the capitals of everything "hip". Since trance evolved from EBM, a LOT of very early trance and psytrance was released by belgian EBM lables and there were quite a few Belgian acts involved, like PWOG. So on to how this sounds: this is another one of those trance acts that would be considered by today's standards mostly ambient. But the music is sooo damn good!! The general feeling is very relaxed and aparently monotonous. However once you pay attention to the tracks you realize that they're not just never-ending copy-pastes of loops, but on the contrary, with each loop there a little progression. The music constantly changes but almost impreceptibly. Ah those were the days A Kind of Prayer lasts for almost 20 minutes and has that very slow progression I've been talking about. It also has some djembé sounds so it seems tribal-like. Very nice Sheap and Thru are more in the "spooky experimental beatless ambient" territory, if you like Klaus Schulze stuff, you'll probably love them, personally it's not my cup of tea. Truth and True would be pure chill-out by today's standards and IMO they could still be played in a chill-out set our days. They both sound more like 2 different parts of a big track than like 2 actual different tracks. Truth has a very "hip-hopish" beat, while True has a more mystical feeling to it. I like these a lot! I know that Kraak was seen as a masterpiece back then, now it sounds more like some chilled-down techtrance. First techtrance track ever? oh yeah and the very short tracks (less than one minute) are basically some bits with some VERY wierd experimental synth sounds. Conclusion like with TranceEurope express, don't expect this to rock dancefloors ourdays but it's nice to see how trance was made back then + some tracks still have value in a chill-out set. Lemmiwinks (aka moondancer on older psynews reviews)

cd1-01 Orbital - Semi-Detached cd1-02 Bandulu - Gravity Pull cd1-03 Readymade - Face The Day cd1-04 System 7 - Desir cd1-05 Spooky & Billie Ray Martin - Persuasion cd1-06 Material - Praying Mantra cd1-07 The Black Dog - Xeper cd1-08 Scubadevils - Celestial Symphony cd1-09 030 - Midnight In Europe cd1-10 Cosmic Baby - Space Track cd1-11 Total Eclipse - Black Hole cd1-12 CJ Bolland - Random cd2-01 MLO - Colour Of The Sun cd2-02 Source - It's A Kind Of Magic cd2-03 Aphex Twin - Analogue Bubblebath 3 cd2-04 The Orb - Majestic (Millwall Mix) cd2-05 The Moody Boys - Glitch cd2-06 Moby- Move cd2-07 DiY - Washed Over By Mastemah cd2-08 Drum Club - Follow The Sun cd2-09 Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia - Dust cd2-10 Barbarella - The Mission cd2-11 The Sabres Of Paradise - Inter-Lergen-Ten-Ko cd2-12 Trance Induction - N ah now how bout some reviews of older stuff for a change? I bought this on eBay a while ago and wanted to share my views on it. It's a comp that dates way way back to those days where there wasn't any distinction between goatrance and eurotrance and progressive trance... trance was just trance period. People were more focused on the music than on what to label it. And variety was welcomed, NOT having a comp full of the same style was actually considered a GOOD thing! Although with the ever-increasing BPMs of "modern" trance, most of the stuff here would probably fall into the chill-out category by today's standards (funny how things change). You can probably realize that by seeing the tracklist: ambient artists like Orbital , The Orb and Aphex Twin are on the same comp as psytrance veterans Total Eclipse and more commercial trance veterans Cosmic Baby and Sven Vath (Barbarella) . So all in all this sounds very relaxed and laid-back for chilling in the sun. I don't think much people would find this "danceable" by today's standards but you can always try if you want However there is one track that has stood perfectly to time: Material - Praying Mantra I've heard this in the chill-out tent at a festival last summer and thought it was a new release. I couldn't believe that a few days later when I got this comp and popped it in I recognized the exact same song which makes it... 11 years old!! Incredible production skills!!! 030 - Mignidht in Europe stands up to time pretty well too IMO one could still play this in a chill-out set ourdays. Of course, I suppose you expect a little comment on the Total Eclipse track... well, let's just say they considerably improved their style a few years later... this track sounds so fluffy it's like some kiddies made it... anyway, let's not forget that this was released in 93! Psytrance was nonexistent back then. Source - It's a Kind of Magic sounds most like a psytrance track (screaming 303s) although much less dynamic progression. But considering the time, this must've been one of THE later psytrance inspirerers. Conclusion : I certainly wouldn't recomend this for some dancefloor DJ but it certainly is nice to take a trip down memory lane to see how it all started. And as a bonus some tracks could still fit into a chill-out set favorite tracks: CD1: 1, 6 (!!), 9; CD2: 14 (!!), 16, 22 (!) Lemmiwinks (aka moondancer on older psynews reviews)

you're from Portugal and you haven't been???

yeah and after all, I said that there were 2 good + 2 very good tracks so it's not THAT bad

THIS ALBUM HAS RESTORED MY FAITH IN PSYTRANCE!!!!!!!!! To tell you the truth, I was so fed up with the full-on clones that I kindof stayed off psytrance all together for a few months. Now I wanted to get my hands on something new and read all the positive reviews on this album. First of all, the album cover and the term "epic" which is often mentioned when describing the album left me thinking it would be some black metal- trance mix which wouldn't (couldn't?) sound good IMO after hearing Dark Soho's attempts to do the same thing. Well I got the album anyway and yes, it DOES have the epic parts just like some black metal. But it stops there, no guitar riffs or anything. Instead, and contrary to what many psy artists today claim to do, this album REALLY is a modern reinterpretation of oldschool! Allow me to explain with examples from other artists that supposedly "revive the oldschool feeling": Battle of the Future Buddhas (yeah, I know that they've always had a style of their own but I personally read in interviews with D-Dave in which he said that his "objective" was to revive that 96 feeling) put in those mystical synth lines that do wonders when you're on acid (Hippy Crack Panic is a good example). Tikal had the good idea of mixing oriental/ arabic music and chants samples in his full-on style. Phi made music with VERY dynamic progression with screaming acid lines all over. Ypsilon 5 put some nice melodies in their tracks. All this is good but oldschool is a mix of ALL these ingredients and since all the forementioned artists only used ONE ingredient, they fell short of truly reviving THEEE oldschool feeling IMO (which doesn't mean that they don't make very good music!). However this album has it all: the dynamic progression, the airy synth lines, the memorable melodies, the screaming 303s... IT'S ALL IN THERE!! Well, maybe not the oriental samples but you can't have them all . Those were replaced by the "epic" parts which is a nice addition to it all, although sometimes it really sounds too much like music taken out of some movie. Anyway, I guess that's more a matter of personal taste. I won't comment on each track in detail cause personally I find it isn't that informative. But I will tell you my highlights: in The Mist, around minute 3 there's a breakdown with a nice piano melody which ressembles very much (too much?) to Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, on top of that a nice airy voice + another distorted voice that sounds like some gnome singing or something. Then it's back to full-on madness. And starting from minute 5 a very original reinterpretation of "the up and down sound" (you know the synth pitch that goes up and down and then up again and so on). This has been done in almost every oldschool and full-on song so to me it's a surprise that someone can still find an original idea on how to do it. The melody kicking in around 2:40 and then again around 6:00 in Towards the Castle sound very "Astral Projection-like", but it evolves nicely from there, it's not some clone or something. Makes me wish Misted Mupped made some remix of AP on their album Ten at least he would've made something original... Finally I must say that the last down-tempo track (or is it an outro?) sounds WAY too melodramatic to me. It gives me mental images of a camera panning out of a scene showing the main carachter lying on the ground with a pool of blood next to him with the film credits rolling on (yeah I told you the epic parts sounded too much like they were taken from a movie). However that only lasts for 2 minutes and a half so no point in making a big deal here, you can just skip it. Well these are just the the moments that got the most of my attention but it's all good! you have 9 tracks of pure joy, dynamic progressions, nice melodies, crazy 303 lines, it's all soo damn good!!! Fave tracks: 1 (!!!), 3, 4 (!!), 6 (!!)... but like I said, they're ALL good!! 10/10!! BEST 2004 album so far (and since we're nearing the end of the year I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that this will be the best 04 album period!). Lemmiwinks (aka moondancer from psynews)

1. Purkkaleiri (Original) 2. Oikeesti 3. Blue Light Special 4. We Will Not Return 5. Gero Gero 6. Paramoncler 7. My Little Runaway 8. Trancelya 9. Early Cry 10. Sunkarma 11. Who Needs Koneisto (We R Homeisto) 12. Lazerlove 13. Agentis Entrepos (Bätre Folcke Earth Rmx) 14. Lone Star First of all, you gotta love Timo Thick's humour... he just takes all the Illuminati hippie mumbo-jumbo and makes a big joke of it in the form of the title of this album (look for the more or less disguised pyramids on the front cover... it would make any RA Wilson fan go nuts! =D> ) Now on to how this sounds... well if you don't already know finnish trance, it's VERY wierd and IMO a hit-or miss genre. You either love this stuff or you hate it. Plus, finnish trance is wierd, but each group is wierd in it's own way. On the more conventional side there's stuff like Flying Scorpions and Squaremeat. On the more wierd side there's Haltya and Mandalavandalz. Well, I'd say Texas Fagott is somewhere in between there... not a very accurate description I know So then, listeing to this with an open mind (it would probably help if you don't think of it as being psytrance in the first place...) this is pretty damn good! It somehow preserves some oldschool elements (of course, don't expect it to actually BE oldschool, far from it), but some synth melodies in the background sound very oldschoolish to me. And most of the tracks would actually work pretty well in a DJ set, the kind of thing to play in the late hours of the morning to make the acidheads go INSANE!! My personal fave is We Will Not Return with THE best flute melody I've heard this year!! Eat your heart out Raja Ram!! It's so beautifull thatit brings tears to my eyes Also in Blue Light Special you can hear in the intro what is IMO THE most innovative synth sound I've heard so far! It's like the synth is tickling my brain somehow Too bad the rest of the track doesn't work so well... highlights: 1, 2, 4 (!!!) Conclusion: personally I like this when I'm "in the mood"... 8/10 however this is VERY wierd trance, a lot of people might not like it, so don't say I didn't warn you... Still if you're a DJ playing monring sets, I'd recomend you have this in your stash Lemmiwinks (aka moondancer)

1. Chaos (Bizzare contact rmx) 2. Nilaya (Melicia rmx) 3. Dancing galaxy (Dynamic rmx) 4. Powergen (Space cat rmx) 5. Let there be light (Atomic pulse vs Perplex rmx) 6. People can fly (Delirious rmx) 7. Visions of Nasca (BLT rmx) 8. Auorora borealis (Deedra rmx) 9. Liquid sun (Star X rmx) 10. Mahadeva (John 00 Flaming rmx) hehe for once I get to review something before DP :blah: So let me start this review with an analogy. Imagine you wake up one day, it's sunny outside, you feel good and all, then you pick up the local newspaper and see that your favorite painting will be on public display in your hometown art museum. You feel all enthusiastic about it so you rush to be among the first to see it. And when you get there, you realize that some idiot teen sprayed a graffiti on top of you beloved painting!!! You can see that underneath there used to be a perfect painting but you can't stop feeling angry at just why the hell would some youngster spray some paint on such a beautifull work of art. Did he somehow think that it would look better that way? WTF??? Well that's more or less the feeling you have when listening to this album! OK, I guess you can see it coming when you see the track list (including a mix by eurotrance popstar-DJ John 00 Fleming?!? but more on that later). Then, you might also have had the same experience back in 2000 when buying their In the Mix album. Or when listening to the Alien Project remix of People Can Fly. Or if you've listened at some recent party one of the hoards of unreleased remixes of some classic AP track. Well, all in all, you can't say that you haven't been warned... But enough with the generalisations, how does it sound? Well, you know the basic "full-on formula": rolling bassline with random swooshes and squelches untill minute 5:00. Then silence, a killer meoldy starts, then rolling bassline pics up again, melody lasts for about 2 minutes, then track fades away and it's the end. The variation of this being that you also add a smaller climax around minute 3:00. Well that formula was applied to the classic AP songs, basically everything was stripped away and replaced by random swooshes and a rolling bassline and the "classic" AP melody that reminds you of the original track is used as the climax melody at minute 5:00 (or 3:00). Need I say I don't like this one bit? OK, there are a few exceptions (well duh, out of 10 tracks there had to be a few that were slightly better than "as-average-as-you-can-get"). The Space Cat remix of Powergen is very nice, very dreamy melody drifts all through the track. Of course, Space Cat is one of the few here that has actually MADE oldschool back in the days, so he still knows how to make em The remix of Let there be light is also quite enjoyable, although not as good as the original. Still, I think this one will work well on the dancefloors, the climax is very well made. BLT's mix of Visions of Nasca is the one that impressed me the most. They basically made a progressive version of AP's oldschool track. At first it sounds surprising but it all sounds so good that you end up enjoying it. To make yet another parallel, if you see the Porsche Cayenne it first strikes you as odd (or even blasphemous) that a sports car manufacturer makes a big sloppy 4x4 but then when you notice that it's a damn good 4x4 you think "well, why not?". That's more or less the feeling I had with this track which ended up being my prefered one on the album AND this one will surprise you but the track that I expected to be the worst of them all, Flemming's mix of Mahadeva (basically I thought this was going to be a cheezy remix of an already-cheezy track...), but no! It's pretty damn good!! The synthlines and funky progression are very hypnotic. Almot nothing is left of the original Mahadeva tune, instead you have another very nice melody. Then around 4:30 you have to put up with the progressive eurotrance ultra-melodramatic wind down and pick-up again that lasts for about 2 minutes (which is actually little by progressive eurotrance standards). Then a little reintrpretation of the original Mahadeva melody. It all works out very nice!! And to my ears this sounds MUCH less commercial than the other full-on remixes here (although my ears are more used to listening full-on than eurotrance so I don't know, maybe for someone used to eurotrance it's the other way around?). Now for the dissapointments: I expected MUCH more from Dynamic and Melicia which impressed me a year ago with their debut albums. I thought they'd have a bit more tricks up their sleeve than just blindly applying the full-on formula. I also expected MUCH more from Deedrah after hearing his remix of Shakta's Lepton Head which was better than the original and is one of THE top goatrance tracks ever IMO. However none of this here. It seems like the dude's getting a kick out of ruining good tracks with stupid cheezy remixes lately... just look at what he's done with his older Transwave songs!! And the BIGGEST disspointment of them all: the People can Fly remix!! I should probably warn you that this is THE track that got me into psytrance in the first place years ago so for me it's something very special. And I just can't stand to see it butchered like that!! Alien Project have already done this a few years ago. So my message to all artists: STOP BUTCHERING THIS TRACK!!! So my conclusion: well, like I said, I was expecting this (and I think most of you did too), this is a bunch of mediocre full-on versions of prefect oldschool tracks. Who'd want that? Well, apparently the fans and modern day psytrancers... maybe I'm getting too old for this stuff? Exceptions from the rule: 4, 5, 7 (!!), 10 (!!) so I guess 4 good remixes still is better than I anticipated (I thought they would ALL suck when hearing about projects of having an album full of AP remixes by full-on artists). So I give this a 7/10. HOWEVER if you're new to psytrance and don't have the original AP albums, PLEASE PLEASE buy their older stuff instead!! (especially Trust in Trance and Dancing Galaxy) Believe me, it will be money better spent. Lemmiwinks (aka moondancer from psynews)

actually it was I who deleted the posts... but you're welcome anyway SMI²LE

does any one know what happened to 3DV style? I haven't heard anything new for like the last year... SMI²LE

hey I've heard a track that seemed like ambient with a George Bush sample as well in a chill-out set last week-end!!! Really trippy when on acid... if anyone knows the track please tell me SMI²LE

well I say it out loud when i thing something sucks I usually put my words in trance.net (nick Darc Angelo)... but I guess that the main problem is that we're still waiting for a decent reviewing site where releases are separated into different years (like the review section on this site before it froze...). I agree that ass-licking in reviews just to get free CDs is really distorting the picture of new releases out there... SMI²LE

While you were dancing with your asian boyfriend, you asked 6 people if they'd heard of psytrance... 6 people does not = 293,863,341 people you silly bitch. Any moron can figure that out. My advice to you, try not to fuck yourself stupid with those glow sticks next time. I'll let you off the hook for now because your idiocy amuses me. B*TCH

ah yes so I see that Bruce and Jacob are inventing ever more intricate annoying techniques... I tidied up the forums (all sections) of this crap, let me know if I missed some thread somewhere. SMI²LE

Any fag that would rather walk around a club asking people if they've heard of psytrance instead of picking up bitches is a fucking pussy. Are you a fucking pussy DT? This is your last warning pussy. You will be banned from my forums if you keep on acting like a bitch.

eat up B*TCH

Real men shoot their sperm into their asses. B*TCH

I say shut the fuck up before i ban your ass.

yeah i guess that after all it would still be under the 35 euros I payed for my yearly subscription... SMI²LE

yeah but I wanted something on paper, something that I could collect and dig up 10 years later and think "damn, those were the days"... what scares me more is that Mushroom is considered to be THE best... how the hell to the others look like? are they printed on stamps? SMI²LE

So in the end I decide to subscribe to a year of Mushroom + Intershroom... I was expecting some nice A4- format magazines with big pics and all... I end up getting a tiny little "magazine" which is no bigger than a postcard (15 cm x 12 cm)!! The print is so tiny I almost need a magnifying glass to read it and can't in any case read more than one page without feeling dizzy... And to think I've paid 35 euros for this shit And the Intershroom entitled "Trancer's guide to the Galaxy" doesn't have a single fucking page on Belgium!! Surely there are more psy gatherings in Belgium than in Costa Rica?!? Usually when I meet people from France at parties in Belgium they tell me that parties here are the bomb and that in France you can barely find decent parties... yet France gets 2 full pages in the guide?? man I'm really pissed SMI²LE

well I was VERY dissapointed by his releases on various comps lately... with every new release he seemed to get closer and closer to the typical GMS style... I hope he won't do this with his album but IMO chances are pretty high it will be yet another GMS clone... SMI²LE