Lemmiwinks

hmm pretty dissapointing IMO. Not a bad album but not a great one either. IMO there are MANY better dark psy albums out there. 6/10

he's the artist that did the rapping parts I think

I'd just like to add that the whole trance phenomena didn't just come in the early 90s like many online "guides" tracing the origins of trance say, it was a continuously morphing phenomena that is as old as electronic instruments existed (and even older than that if you'd consider tribal druming and chanting as "trance music"). Obviously I'll be limiting myself to "electronic trance" since this is the main issue. Basically the origins of "electronic trance" started with the "arpeggio" technique. Arpeggio itself isn't new, it basically means a rapid succession of notes (anyone with a basic training in classical music will recognize the word). But in the electronic music world it started having a new meaning: some musicians realized that by creating a rapid succession of a synth sound it can corespond more or less to the frequency of theta waves which is a wave that our brain naturally produces when sleeping and meditating. They've realized that by playing a sound at the theta frequency it produces a wierd state on the listener, a state half between sleeping and being awake... a TRANCE! This is usually coupled with atmospheric pads (a kind of long synth sound that "fills up the space" and gives the track a certain colour. These 2 elements are IMO THEEE most important and easily recognizable elements in a trance song. And this might come to you as a surprise but they have already existed in the 1970s, trance didn't create anything new!! Then there is a long list of 1980s EBM that was played in parties in Goa and which eventually morphed into what we call trance today (well for me this WAS trance before it was actually called trance;)). The main addition that the 80s has given is putting all those syth ideas on a 4/4 (or 4 on the floor) kick, borrowed from disco music and which became the trademark of dance music ever since. BTW it's called 4/4 because electronic music is generally made out of loops. Each loop is made of bars which are divided into notes. 4/4 means that you have 4 beats per bar, each beat being 1/4th note. With this kick the music became danceable, you could listen to it on the dancefloor rather than by chilling in your room and smoking a joint. Anne Clark - Sleeper in Metropolis (1985) -- ps this song was blatantly ripped off by Visions of Shiva (Paul Van Dyk and Cosmic Baby) 8 years later and was presented as one of the first trance ttracks ever The Neon Judgement - TV Treated (1985) A Splic Second - Flesh (1986) Acts of Madmen - The Dream (1987) The Caravan - Somewhere in Arabia (1987) KLF - What Time Is Love (Pure Trance Version) 1989 Acts of Madmen - What's The Matter (1988) Basic Two - Face to Mecca (1988) Amnesia - Ibiza (1988) Konzept - Hypnautic Beats (1990) and here are the very first tracks to be oficially called "trance". Dance 2 Trance - We Came In Peace (1990) Jam and Spoon - Stella (1992) Dance 2 Trance - Hello San Francisco (1992) there I hope this helps

ROFL yes and what is your point exactly? Just about EVERY promo thread and psyshop description is like that... and if I remember correctly that was initially the main point of having a review section on this site: letting psytrancers know what other psytrancers think about a certain album after actually LISTENING to it. Now it's MUCH more preverted when reviews are made specifically to lick a certain artists' ass regardless on the quality of the album IMO...

hehe that might be true for Es and mary janes, maybe even mushies but once you're talking lsd it's much harder to find if you don't go in special places. Also everything in a psy party is made to enhance your psychedellic experience (the music, the artwrok, the people, the fact that it lasts until 9-10AM which is more or less the time you come down...), you just can't get the same experience at home or anywhere else IMO. Anyway I just wrote my initial post to express my personal views on the scene in Belgium, I'm not here to argue, you are free to believe whatever you want to believe

yes there still are a handfull of organizers who bust their asses to give us quality stuff for little euros, thank God for that... but you have to agree that they are a minority in today's scene and BTW even if Heron is relatively cheap by today's standards it still is 50% more expensive than a festival from 2000... ok we had inflation since then but not 50% LOOOOL and just why do you think they like goa @ a party but don't like listening at it @ home...?

hmm yeah I think I should mention that the main question is just what do you consider "a good scene". Psytrance sure has a LOT more following now then it did 10 years ago but it's the QUALITY of the scene that's going down the drain. Personally I prefer the days when you only saw a handfull of freaks (the same at EVERY party lol) but the party itself was great rather than today when you get overcrowded parties but 80% of the people there don't know what psytrance is, they're just there because of the abundency of drugs...

guess I'm the only one with Yamaha monitors...? PS gear list: monitors: Yamaha HS 50M headphones: Senheiser HD205 keyboard: M-Audio Axiom49 sound card: Behringer F-Control Audio FCA202 software: Reason 4 ... kindof basic I know but for the moment I'm just fooling around in my bedroom so it's enough... will probably invest in some more gear when/if I decide to produce music professionaly

1 Inca Steppa (7:45) 2 Tokyo Dub (7:08) 3 Las Vegas Future Past (5:59) 4 Mind Of The Free (6:13) 5 Immaculate Cruxifiction (7:38) 6 City Of The Sinful (4:43) 7 Tanta Pena (5:51) 8 Perfect Crime (6:24) 9 Pretty Girl (5:28) So Juno Reactor is at it again. As one would expect, this album is yet another step away from "convetional" psytrance, actually I wouldn't call this psytrance at all, rather "music released by a former psytrance artist" It is also a clear sequel to Labyrinth so if you didn't like the turn in Juno's career since the Matrix sountrack you probably won't like this one either... I should also mention that this album (like most "out of the norm" stuff) really sounds good only after a LOT of listens. At first you'll pop this album and think "WTF???", only after about a dozen listens does it all start making sense. Inca Steppa makes you realize that this will be a sequel to the Labyrinth album, only more commerical (you have a woman voice saying "Mexico Arise!"). At first I was like "ok, Ben Watkins really screwed up this time!" but after a few more listens the singing didn't bother me as much and I realized it wasn't that bad a track, actually pretty good. Tokyo Dub in case you were wondering, it doesn't have anything to do with dub, don't know why he called it that but anyway... Again the track starts with some pretty annoying singing "Tokyo Out of My Head You Flow". Interestingly enough the singing is almost a copy of the main synth hook from Sash! - Primavera... WTF??? But once again, listen to the track a certain number of times and it will all start falling into place. For example, Juno manages to take the "Kbbb Kbbb" bassline formula that has been used and abused by the psytrance genre for years now and makes it original by using it in a DOWNTEMPO track! Now how come noone has thought of this before? Also that little japanese melody mixes in nicely with the rest. This has actually become one of my favorite tracks on the album. Las Vegas Future Past is kindof a fusion between jazz and "juno reactor psytrance". Personally I think this is one of the weakest tracks from the album (probably because I HATE jazz...) Mind of the Free souds very much like a downtempo Sci-Fi movie soundtrack. Simple and unsurprising but I like this one a lot... proof that you don't need complexity to make something sound good Immaculate Cruxifiction this is THEEEE best track on the album!!! There is a guitar riff (well actually I'm not sure if it's an actual guitar or a synth sounding like a guitar). Anyway, it starts out as a whisper, then some trademark Juno Reactor arabic violins and then again a VERY creative use of the psytrance Kbbb Kbbb bassline formula, starts slowly, then the tension builds up and then WHAM at 3:45 the track just explodes in your face! The guitar riff that was there from the start is acompanied by other riffs, the Kbbb bassline is there but there is also a REAL drum percussion on top! The way Ben Watkins manages to fuse the synths with real instruments is just AMAZING!!! It really feels like listening to a psytrance track AND a 60s psychedellic rock track rolled into one and it sounds GOOD!!! Also the "Matrix soundtrack" feeling is present inside, the first time I've listened to this track in my car, it made me want to jump on the roof with a sword in my hands ready to fight the bad guys lol Anyway, this is a true masterpiece, I've listened to it HUNDREDS of times since I bought the album and it just gets better and better City Of The Sinful is a downtempo track and kindof a mix between EBM, electro and reggae... again, it might sound a bit wierd at first but after a few listens it all starts falling into place. This one actually has rapping inside (yes, you've heard me right, I said RAPPING). But again, Juno is clearly trying out new stuff here like putting a ragga voice on top of a "Kraftwerk-style" vocoder voice, I like it Tanta Pena (which translates as "Aunt Punishment"... ) starts with a woman screaming on the top of her lungs "TANTA PENAAAAA". The first reaction will be to turn down the volume lol But again once you pay closer attention to the track you notice that Juno is trying out new things and mastering with grace the fusion between acoustic elements and electronic synths. Like for example between 0:40 and 0:50 there is some arabic singing and a synthline... nothing new here. But at a moment the voice "drops" to a lower key and the synthline and bassline "drop" in exactly the same way as the voice does. It is little "details" like this that make Juno's work on this album amazing. Now come the last 2 track Perfect Crime and Pretty Girl which kindof sound like filler material. You can hear Ben Watkins singing on top of a pretty conventional acoustic country-like arrangement (made me think of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds...). The synths are kept to a strict minimum, just a few atmorpheric pads. I don't quite understand why these tracks were put here, except that Ben Watkins wanted the world to hear him sing, they are clearly out of context... Conclusion Some Juno fans will be put off by the singing which is present in almost all tracks and most will probably say that he's obviously catering for a larger audience to sell more albums (after all this one is sold on amazon.com for Pete's sake!). Yet other people will argue that Juno is just too creative to limit his art to the narrow boundaries of psytrance. Personally I believe that both arguments are valid That said the man clearly does someting that very few artists do: he isn't afraid to try out new things! Granted, sometimes it sounds pretty corny but other times it is GREAT! And for this I give him 9/10 favortie tracks: 2, 4, 5(!!!), 6

well it was as goaish as a track made in 1990 could be Also don't forget that there were parties in Goa long before goatrance existed mate that one is a KILLER!!! I can't believe that an oldschooler like myself missed out on that one completly. Kindof sounds like Green Nuns of the Revolution Yeah but have you noticed that almost all of the "pre-1980s" generation seem to be extinct? It's like this in Belgium as well: Belgium was THEEE capital of newbeat which later morphed into trance, EVERYONE here was into newbeat back then. And since we know that most very early trance tracks were released as B-sides of Belgian new beat records I'd like to have some input from newbeat DJs... but it is impossible to find a Belgian who was involved in the newbeat scene!! Yet these are supposed to be people who were in their 20s in the late 1980s which would make them about 40 today. It's not THAT old yet you'd think they're all dead by now... maybe it's the drugs lol sorry mate but it's arguments like these that throw music history research off track!!! This is how most people think about old tracks: an early track was made by an influential artist so that artist MUST be one of the main elements in the creation of the genre. Fact of the matter is that even a big-name artist started small and was influenced by other artists who were there before him. There is also the commercial factor: if an artist is well-known today it doesn't necessarily mean that he made revolutionary music, just that he made music that sold well at the time... It's like that for every art genre: you have true underground pioneers who spend their time trying out new things and die poor and misunderstood cause their stuff was too ahead of their time to be apreciated, and you have artists surfing on the wave of popularity, taking already existing elements and making "sellable" art. And the problem is that with your argument you'll give all the credit to the people surfing on the wave rather than the true creators. And let's face it, Ian Ion might have made some great early psytrance but he has also done some of the crappiest eurodance around (Wow Mr Yogi)... people tend to forget that

mate you are LUCKY!!! Having no scene at all means that you can start over from scrap, your scene isn't contaminated by the profit-making virus. You can still have parties for fun and hire little-known acts. That's what the whole psytrance scene was all about before it got taken over by profit-making organizers who don't give a fuck about the quality of parties as long as they make money off it. In Belgium (I'm from Belgium BTW...) I remember a time when you could go to a 3-day festival with top acts and pay less than 15€. Ah those times are far-gone oh I FINALLY understand why so many Swedes make music now LOL that's how it is all over the World!!!

thanks for all the replies

Just wondering... how do you guys motivate yourselves? I mean, getting your ass on that chair in front of the keyboard and trying things until eventually you get a half-decent result without thinking "bah what's the use? the world doesn't need another mediocre psy producer"...

Sorry but I do not agree one bit!!! ALL electronic music genres have a HUGE crap %, IMO it's because since nowadays you need very little investment in music producing gear (all you need is a computer, a good soundcard and montiors and there you go) so everyone wants a piece of the action. Name me ONE decent hardstyle track and I rest my case also, when's the last time you've seen REAL hippies at psy parties? Last time I went I was about the only one still to wear tie dye clothes, made me look VERY out of context lol

it means that I don't have a clue lol

let's face it, CPU never was classic material... it was/is just like 99% releases today: stuff made to be played on the dancefloor for a few weeks/ months and discarded afterwards.

maybe

thanks great link. IMO the computer animations actually DO come from 1993 (check out Svean Väth - The Beauty And The Beast from the same period, same quality graphics IMO and I KNOW that one dates from 1994 cause I saw it on TV at the time ). Such a shame that X-Dream doesn't make such great tunes today Anyway, I've said this before, but according to my personal researches the first psytrance track ever (I mean one that had the distinct psytrance feeling, contrary to normal trance which IMO came even earlier) is this from 1990: Konzept - Hypnautic Beats

hehe just recieved mine in the mailbox today. It looks cool

lol jazz is jazz and shpongle is shpongle... I suppose that next you'll be telling us that you prefer spaceships to swimming goggles? lol

hehe maybe that's why they called the track On Purpose I admit that it's never happened to me on CDs but it happened a LOT on vinyl EPs (I guess the quality control is lower for vinyls or something): missing tracks, tracks not mentioned on the sleeve, different trackname on the sleeve and on the record itself, and most of all WRONG RPMs!!! That's the one that pisses me off the most

hehe yeah it happened to me once... it feels great

so get yourself a paypal account then

but is the print UV-reflective???

hmm if only those tracks existed in an instrumental version...