Jikkenteki

The majority of their releases are just tracks licensed from othr labels although they have some of their own artists as well. In my experience depending on what you are doing they can be a bit of a pain to work with at times and I've been trying to get the rights cleared for a remix I did of one of their artists for nearly two years now. That said the artists I know who are on the label do get their money and such (although I've heard complaints that the process for artists getting money for comp releases is sometimes confusing to a few... I don't have any first hand experience on that front though).

I have purchased more digital music files than I can remember anymore and I know a few others personally who do as well. That said we are definitely a minority.

Most early Etnica. Yes there is some excellent stuff, but on the whole I prefered their later more techy stuff that everyone else seems to hate. Ditto with The Gathering. Again some nice stuff on it, but on the whole it is probably my least listened to IM release.

Woo-Hoo! Thanks, We've finally broke the 20 copies sold barrier! (BTW, buying directly from me will be cheaper for most countries and get me more $ in the process than the shop listed on Ektoplazm)

If there was anything right in the world these days it would be rather low, but considering how things are with cd sales 1000 copies will usually last most labels several years. Anyways, if it did take off and sell out, reprinting much easier than getting everything together the first time around.

For me it was the opposite actually. The first two albums had a much higher immediate "wow" factor, but as the years pass, B.P.Empire is the only one I ever really go out of my way to listen to anymore. Over time I found that, for me at least, it just had more depth somehow. The first three were all excellent though each different in their own way, as they should be.

Jikkenteki - Self Destructing Mechanism (the 85% that is finished) Hell... after it has been completely abandoned.... in the frozen Dante's version (everyone get really for a cheery album )

Slum - Sunflowers Of Today

Shuji and Shin used to call what they did "new-school hard goa". After they split up and Shuji started working as Slum he started calling what he does "hard gore" (this is a poor pun in Japanese as the pronunciation for "goa" and "gore" is the same, and Shuji, coming from punk roots, always wants to take the hard angle and all). I haven't talked with him much since he released the new album so I'm not sure what he's calling his stuff these days, but I'm sure it is something as corny as his track titles. I don't think the newest album has gotten out of Japan much, but he's been working a lot with the "dark psy" crew and his sound is slowly moving further and further away from that "goa" type sound of Phi. The guy's got talent though and I find his stuff much better than the majority of of psy out there.

Yup. Really my only point was that in Dancing With Kadafi they seemed to really be wearing their influences on their sleeve. As long as the track is good (which it is) there is nothing wrong with that. For the record my favorite IM track is still and probably will always be Domestic Mushroom - Scotch, (Tasty Mushroom and Psycho Live Mix are way up there too) but there are so many good ones that it doesn't really matter.

Great track off of what I think is their best album. That said, my first impression, which I still stand by today, was "Infected Mushroom is trying to make a Dream Theater track". But it's a good track regardless so who cares.

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(English teacher mode on) Judging from the grammar in that sentence, no. (English teacher mode off) In my experience, the scene has a lot of open minded and well meaning people, but also a lot of rather naive people and even a good chunk of snobbish elitist people hiding behind the mask of "open mindedness". These are by no means mutually exclusive either. In my opinion none of them have much to do with "intelligence" and more to do with life experience.

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Chi-A.D. - Purity was a regular closer of mine for a long time.

For various reasons I somehow ended up being almost completely removed from "the scene" this year and can only think of 3 CDs I even bought, those being Juno Reactor, The Delta and Slum's latest offerings. Need to catch up here...

Hopefully but I know better now than to make promises on release dates anymore. It all depends on finding someone to do the art and such. Let's just say I'm aiming at winter.

It's all tempo (sometimes even within the same track). Unfortunately a lot of my music in the last few years seems to be "therapy" music and never more so this time. I pretty much threw out the rule book on this one genre wise and wrote whatever I "needed" to write at the time. There's some Long Walk disc one-ish stuff, some trance stuff, some break beat-ish type stuff, some more odd time stuff, some other stuff some people tell me sounds kind of down beat industrial. I dunno, I just write it, it's someone else's job to label it.

New album is mostly finished actually. Would have been done ages ago, but I ended up taking about a half a year break due to my personal life blowing up. The MacBook Pro is more so I have something stable to actually do live shows with again. Not that I ever get any gigs since no one wants to pay for transportation costs in this country, but I digress....

MacBook Pro

One of my favorite synths for bass actually. Have used it a lot of my current album nearing completion.

I've played at the same event as Asteca twice so far. While I recall him being decent, unfortunately I don't really recall what he sounds like much anymore. Of the unknown Japanese artists I find 01-N to probably be the pick of the litter at the moment.

Another Minnesotan, my condolences. Last time I was through the area (about 4 and a half years ago) it wasn't much difference. Drum n Bass and techno have much stronger and, unfortunately, narrow minded holier than though following and all forms of trance are generally strongly looked down upon because... well, because everyone else looks down on them. There is in fact a number of people who are into and dig psy-trance in MN, but that entire scene, for the most part, is completely unrelated to the electronic music scene in MN and those people tend to be a bit older and are active in the art circles in Minneapolis and St Paul. I'll actually be back in MN for about ten days next month, but I won't be active in anything musically during that time as I'm just visiting family and such.

Excellent, I've reached that important milestone as an artist were I have a "typical" sound. Which means the next step is the arguments that will start sometime next year about how I'm either being lazy and cashing in on my "sound" or that I'm selling out and abandoning my "sound" for standard stuff that "sells".