Jikkenteki

Rarely post anymore but I still surf through every once in awhile.

Amen!!!

For psy related acts, it’s easy. Juno Reactor, Shango tour in Osaka. Uni opened and they really brought it as well.

I’ve got something brewing, although it’s a long ways out still…. :-P

MP3.com is more likely 20 years. I got my start on there as well, although Analog Pussy was already an established act at the point. Even Infected Mushroom were on pretty active on there (among others).

Old Dark Soho or even Xenomorph perhaps? As an aside, I was (am?) actually a metal musician first before I got into the electronic world and think it always permeated my own music, especially the last album. Jikkenteki 4 is actually turning into my first attempt to actually blend the two together, although it will be awhile before it’s ready. I might also suggest looking into drum n bass. I am still stuck in the old school stuff for the most part, but I can see metal heads with electronic interests liking artists like Gridlok.

Quick note that a collection of all my compilation released tracks has just been put up here. In addition, the majority of the unreleased remixes made for a planned, but eventually abandoned remix album has also been included as well, so there is some "new" music in there too. Check it out at https://jikkenteki.bandcamp.com/album/comp-iled

Part three of the "Jikkenteki Origins" series, the album "Ex-Para-Mental" is now up. This album shows the change from using live gear and sequencers, etc, to using an actual computer and software to make the majority of the music. Literally these are THE first tracks I made on a computer, warts and all. https://jikkenteki.bandcamp.com/album/ex-para-mental

Too old Matsuri Productions in a world of Classical Mushroom. Honestly at the time is was just making and recording tracks for fun in my college dorm room and didn’t really see much in “releasing” them beyond the small community of artists on mp3.com. I can listen to these now, 20 years later with some hindsight and appreciate them, but at the time they were far from the music I was envisioning in my head. If I had made these like 6 years earlier, who knows.

https://jikkenteki.bandcamp.com/album/organic-perfections Part 2 of the “Jikkenteki Origins” series, Organic Imperfections, has been put up. Again we are still dealing with live performances sequenced on the fly with minimal gear, but overall a step or three up from the O.R.E. material. Feel free to check it out if interested.

Actually there are two more between O.R.E. and Long Walk. I never really brought them up for a reason but someone managed to find O.R.E. and list it on Discogs so might as well complete the origin story, as it were.

https://jikkenteki.bandcamp.com/album/o-r-e Your wish is my command. Rather embarrassing really, but was literally making this stuff while really how to make electronic music. There were only two or three tracks I had made previous to these so its no joke to say I was maybe 1 or 2 months into making electronic music here when these were made. Anyways, here they are warts and all. (The next two "albums" will follow in the next few days).

Small update after digging through files today, the weird situation I find myself in is I have all the wav files but none of the art for the second and third albums worth of stuff (Organic Imperfections and Ex-Para-Mental) but none of the files for the artwork, while with the first one (O.R.E.) I have the artwork but none of the full quality audio files seem to have survived. I can remake a cover easily enough but O.R.E. might be destined to survive in less than full quality (not that the quality was super to begin with).

The first two “albums” were totally old school in that they were all hardware, no computer and were actual performances as it were. I think I saw cd-R’s with the wave files recently but I’d have to look again.

For the first three starting with O.R.E., putting them up is something I’ve been considering. They are very rough and old school compared to Long Walk and afterwards, but as a long view of the evolution of an artist they might be vaguely interesting. The real problem is I have no idea where the files for the artwork are anymore...

Well I suppose it’s about time to officially state that I’m back and making music again. While it will be awhile before I get anything new out there, I have started plugging away at some new tunes. In the meantime I have finally started a Bandcamp page at https://jikkenteki.bandcamp.com While all the material there is also at Ektoplazm, I am also in the process of consolidating some older stuff, compilation tracks and such to put up on Bandcamp as well until I’m ready to unleash some new stuff. As for the new stuff, well “jikkenteki” means “experimental” in Japanese and that name was chosen for a reason...

If I did comeback, I’d likely be doing a sort of hybrid of electronic, ambient and progressive metal and all the purists would be up in arms (not that such things have ever stopped me in the past).

I still float through on occasion.

For my stuff it depends what you mean by "no voice". If you mean "no cheesy one shot here's a random guy saying something taken from a movie or lecture" then, outside of the complication released track "I.S.B." I am clean. If you mean "no human voice in any way shape or form" then I wouldn't qualify as I make pretty hefty use of sung voices, either programed in some of the earlier versions of Vocalic software (the main theme in the second half of "Running Start" on Flights of Infinity recommended above is a perfect example of that), or in some cases sung by myself. I'm also a major user of choirs and there are some chants or sung parts borrowed and modified from sample CDs here and there as well.

Upon first listen it was clear that Dancing with Kadafi was a downtempo psy-attempt to make a track like Dream Theater would have made if they worked in this genre. Anyone familiar with Dream Theater's music would recognize the influence right off the bat.In that context the sudden changes in direction, etc all "make sense".

Outside of Filteria, I did remixes of tracks from the above mentioned artist who will remain unnamed, Sound Field (released), Optokoppler, Noise Anomalie, and one other artist who said I could use the remix for live performances, but preferred not to have it released at that time (instead of saving it for live use, I stripped that track of all the other artist's work and rewrote it into what became "Recon-Figure" on the last album). There was also a remix the late Symphonics of Phi did of my track "I.S.B." shortly before his death. Regarding retirement, as I have said in the past, I will likely get back into it in the future, but at the moment I have no usable studio space and two tracks which need finishing before I can start anything else (I've always had a strict policy of finishing EVERY track I've ever started, so having two sitting undone is a major thorn in my mental side). We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion of old style Filteria action....

To stir the proverbial pot a bit more, I've been sitting on a remix I did of Filteria's "Mind Expansion" since 2007. It was going to be on a remix cd I was working on that got trashed when a certain artist (not Filteria or anyone else I will ever publicly name) suddenly decided they wanted to be paid far more money than was initially agreed upon. Also the label for one of the other artists would never get back to me one way or the other regarding the use of my remix of a track by one of their artists (the artists were fully for it) and the overall b.s. factor made the release impractical. My remix of Sound Field's "Technological Terror" that Ektoplazm put out a couple years back comes from that same project.

Regarding the Hallucinogen shifts from triplet to straight time, years ago I read an interview with Simon Posford where this was addressed. If memory serves me correctly I seem to recall comments about some sort of morph function in Logic (I didn't own logic at the time and never bothered to look into it) that shifted the triplets into straight 4 count notes or vis-versa. Also I know Principles of Flight did much the same thing on their first album, which I seem to recall was made in Cubase, so I know it is possible there too. Not much help, but I can say from personally experimenting with it years ago that "swing" likely isn't much involved in the process. But I could be completely wrong...

The term "progressive" mixed with trance has redefined itself a number of times. Back in the late 90's early 2000's "progressive trance" wasn't really used by itself in the psy-circles I was involved in and almost always referred to the more popular flavor of trance with artists like Paul Van Dyk, Tiesto, etc. Around that period there was a trend in psy that many people called "minimal" which peaked, died out for a bit in the full on backlash against it, and then basically (at least in my view) came back with a few new influences as progressive psy-trance, which eventually worked itself into what you have today. For the younger generations it is probably different, but for me the term "progressive trance" will always bring to mind artists like Tiesto, Salt Tank, etc and not anything in the psychedelic realm.

I will make music again eventually, but at the moment I have no studio and a one year old running around to take care of, so between work, that and spending time swinging swords about, there isn't much time for making music. I do have two tracks nearly completely floating around, but when I will be able to get those finished is a mystery (As a rule I never start a new track without finishing the previous so having two unfinished is a huge breaking of my own rule and a bottle neck in regards to starting anything else)