abasio

V/A - Wabi FRR compilation np Solar Quest - Tristine

Check out my reviews of False Mirror - Chronostatic Senses & The Circular Ruins + Off The Sky - We All Fall Down both released on DataObscura

Robert Davies - Garden of Twighlight

don't tell me you waited? This album is an instant buy, no thought, no hesitation. Although it would be really really shitty if some bastard bought a load of copies to sell for $100+ on discogs :pissed:

I must admit I was looking forward to this but with all the delays I completely lost interest. The great reviews kind of reignite my intertest but it's still not that far up my wantlist anymore. Should it be?

Damn that is good news for my ears bad news for my bank account

Hol Baumann Human Ultimae Records February 2008 Tracklist 1. Hours 2. Breathe 3. Radio Bombay 4. Benares (Vârânaçî Edit) 5. Endless Park 6. [Human] 7. One Step Behind 8. We Are Analogue 9. A Forgotten Ritual 10. Tiny Hidden Track The long awaited album from Hol Baumann came with a quiet plop. I had no real build up for this album. I had a lot going on in my life while this was in the pre-order & promotion stage so all the hype passed me by. So I didn’t have my expectations super sky high, which is a good thing as they were already high enough just finding it in my mailbox one morning. The first time I heard this I found it absolutely mind blowing. Ultimae albums usually grow & grow on me so how did this one do. 1. Hours A nice start to the album, the beats are very intricate & at times delicately alluring. The melody chimes nicely in a non committal way and the bassline really drives the track giving it a lot of energy for a chill out track. In the background as well as some broken sounds that feel like scratches is a very subtle vocal. I missed it before I gave this a listen on headphones but there they are throughout most the latter part of the track. Pretty ethnic but very minimal, they go very well with the rough acoustic guitar at the end. 2. Breathe Starts with more on the guitar before a spoken sample comes in. I really like the way it seems to scratch off at the end of each sentence like it is coming through a transistor radio. The bassline & beat come in, the beat is a nice steady plod but the bassline moves up & down very nicely. The beat kicks in properly & is really damn cool. Very crisp, crunchy & well worked. I was put in mind of the beats in Secede vs Kettel – Lerraine. There is a melody but for most of the track it takes a back seat until really coming into it’s own later in the track. When it does makes itself known though it’s a really really beautiful one with a great melancholic edge. A shame it’s not a little longer as I could listen to that melody all day. 3. Radio Bombay A very familiar track, I loved this one as the final track of Ultimae’s Fahrenheit Part 6 compilation. It seemed the best way to finish that comp. It’s very much an end of the night track for me. The deep moody bassline, the sharp beats, the female vocal is all very melancholic & when it all breaks down just to have the ethnic voice comes in just before the beat kicks in is very atmospheric. Many a time have I loved that pseudo ending. It is like it’s going to stop but then you get treated to all the same ingredients but a little more intense. Not sure how to explain why they are more intense but somehow the atmosphere is stronger & deeper and drives me into my seat, slumped and happily relaxed. 4. Benares (Vârânaçî Edit) This was a brilliant track on the best in the Fahrenheit Project series (in my opinion) Fahrenheit Project 2, the vocals are very well used have an upbeat melancholy to them & seem heartfelt. The way they are used, the timing of them is exceptional & they fit very well round the acoustic instruments’ sounds and the delights of the atmospheric electronica. I think that this version sounds deeper than the one on FP2, maybe there has been re-mastering, maybe a slightly new take on the sounds or maybe it’s the positioning or the totally unmixed version but the beats seem clearer & the long synth sounds draw me in much more. 5. Endless Park This is where this album starts to get seriously good. The melody right from the start is a pants wetting melody. Beautifully played & as the beats come in and the bassline too you get the feeling of majesty. Very intense, important stuff going on somewhere that you are getting a chance to be privy to. It’s so deep, so beautiful & draws my mind in so much that I can hardly focus on anything else. It’s so sad that it is so god damn short. 6. Human As heard on the Albedo compilation, one of my favourites on that comp. It instantly kicks in with strong crisp beats & never really lets up. It’s Intense in a chillout kind of way. The machine like feel runs through the entire track. The workman like melody than lathes back and forth from beginning to end is joined in the second half of the track by more fancy melodies but the slow & steady ones win the race, sticking it out till the end whereas the more cosmetic ones filtered out quite quickly. 7. One Step Beyond Here is another well done melody that chimes along beautifully & draws the listener in. It evolves ever so subtly but you can really feel the progression. When the bassline comes in too you really feel like the music has taken over at last. Very nice use of slide on the guitar to compliment the bassline as if it’s part of it. The breakdown is followed by the same sounds mixed in a much more moody fashion. Everything just works to bring your mind down to it’s metaphorical knees & pray that it can last just that little bit longer. Fortunately this track is over 7 minutes so it really gives you the chance to enjoy it. 8. We Are Analogue A softer approach with this track. Amazingly manages to take an even deeper line. The melody is very intricate & melancholic in a nostalgic way. Imagine dreaming of old flames, reliving past triumphs yet still happy with the present. This is the sort of melancholy I like, the longing for the past is intense yet it’s accompanied by hope for the future. Only at the end do the beats really kick in & it manages to take the atmosphere down into a sad look back at old albums late at night on the sofa feel. 9. A Forgotten Ritual Spacey melodies & a hard dark bassline start us off here, the beat kicks in and takes the spacey feel away slightly but the re-emergence of the hard bassline & sci-fi melody come back in & fills the atmosphere with black skies & bright sparks. The whole atmosphere seems to me like a 60’s sci-fi show and when the beats kick in much harder it’s like that 60’s show has been dragged screaming into the 3rd millennium. I’m put in mind of Doctor Who! An old show ridiculously out of date brought & remade in the modern era. Old fashioned ideas with a modern touch. 4 minutes of silence and then 10. Hidden Track Sounds from the album put together in a more experimental way than any of the official tracks. Pretty much pointless to be honest, less than 2 minutes long with nothing really to say for itself. Well there are both very good and bad things about this album. The good things are most importantly the music, which is top notch. The ethnic element is not hammed up to painful degrees. The samples are not ones I’ve heard a million times before on someone else’s record, the beats are clear, crisp & very enjoyable & the structure of each track is fantastic. On the flip side though there are a lot of tracks (3/9) that have been on previous releases, this is something I’m not used to seeing on Ultimae where almost every release has completely new material. I feel also that the album is a little short. What would have been my favourite track, Endless Park, ends just as I’m getting lost in it. The hidden track is pointless. I don’t see the point in putting a tiny bit of music after a load of silence. Why not just put another track on the tracklist? At the end of the day though, for all it’s faults it is still quality music through & through and that more than makes up for everything. It’s not my favourite Ultimae release but it’s a very worthwhile addition to my collection.

Subradial - Bioloophorm : 1

If I compare Radi's musical tastes to most other teenagers I know then it's actually one of the best Oldschool psytrance is pretty cool you know! Sure his taste is a little limited but I think it's light years ahead of most teeny bopper boyband loving teenagers that plague this planet!

Do it Np Robert Davies - Shadow Dreams ~ Aura Sublime

I'm also lucky that I got most of the rarities when they were released so obviously at a reasonable price. Of course there are some huge gaping holes in my collection that I have a desire to fill but although in the past I've paid up to 10 grand for an album (That's yen BTW ) I discovered that I would rather buy 10 new albums for that price. They key is patience, people say life is short but it's the longest thing you'll ever do & these old rare albums one day just show up in a record shop for an unbelievably cheap price because the owner doesn't know what it is. Just wait, I'm still waiting for a few things

If you can handle ambient then you should definitely try some. Often the drone soundscapes sound like they come right out of a dark movie. Lammergeyer - Birds of Prey This was an album made for a possible movie. Maybe you'd also like Juno Reactor's matrix soundtracks?

Lammergeyer - Birds of Prey

Subradial - Bioloophorm : 1 Lammergeyer - Birds of Prey Nunc Stans - The Cerulean Suite The Circular Ruins - Degrees of Speparation Lammergeyer - Borders & Barrens

That's funny! How do you pirate something that is released for free? I don't mind that people download music. A lot of artists say they prefer it as most money comes from shows & the more people who steal their music the more people they are likely to pay to come to their shows. Or something along those lines. I myself cannot download either music or movies for one simple reason, I never listen or watch what I've downloaded. When I buy something I feel an obligation to myself to make the most of my experience. If I don't instantly love something I'll take the time to get to know it. If I downloaded something I didn't instantly love, I'd probably just delete it. I downloaded the movie "The Big Labowski" a couple of years ago. I've been told many times how great it is but I have not yet watched it. If I rented the DVD I would have. A crap personality flaw the sucks up a lot of my money.

Distant System Spiral Empire Celestial Dragon Records 2008 Tracklist 1. Astropolis 2. Equidistant 3. Light Echoes 4. Gravitational Vortices 5. Time Circles (Distant System Remix) 6. Outer Rim 7. Cloud Nebula 8. Astromech Starport Tyler Smith better known maybe as Androcell has changed the moniker & is out with a new album. I was expecting as the artist name had changed that style would have changed. For some reason I was expecting a completely beatless album which this is not. Instead it's a Ketamine laced trance album. Slow steady kicks, lot's of spacey atmospheres & beautiful beautiful melodies. I was not disappointed that I got the wrong idea about this album at all, I was in fact pleasantly surprised at the strength of Tyler's ideas, production & execution. 1. Astropolis Instantly we are treated to a long intro filled with spacey sounds, atmospheric drones & wet rushes. I can't tell if I'm by the sea or in the ocean of interplanetary space. When the melodious jabs come in it definitely feels like the latter. I feel like I'm taking off into the cosmos & the deep rushing I can hear is like the roar of the rocket engines in the distance behind me. The more bassy sounds take the journey deeper & further into the cold outer reaches. The beat kicks in & it's quite a strong kick drum but nicely layered in the track to give it a steady but relaxed push. The melody really adds a nice warm feel & the little wet acidic sounds scattered top off the spacey alien feel to it. A great start to the album, it's over 10 minutes long but it's over before you know it. the progression is great with the sounds & atmosphere being built up throughout & by the end it's almost rapturous. 2. Equidistant Deep drones in the background like solar wind & cascading little melodic noises falling all around really sets this track, for me, in hyperspace. Not the quick Star Wars jump to light speed kind of hyperspace but the Immaterium kind of hyperspace. A different dimension, a dimension of pure energy, where your mind drips off the walls of reality as your heart races into a slow pulse. The melody, the spacey ambience, the steady but relaxed beats all send my mind out into this warp where distance has no meaning. The atmospheric synth, long & deep adds an incredible atmosphere here & when the oldschool synth line comes in towards the end I'm agape with amazement. Truly amazing track. Fresh & Nostalgic at the same time. 3. Light Echoes A long intro builds up an atmosphere filled with suspense, & I am left feeling that the music is just going to kick of at any moment. The long spacey drones build and build the tension until suddenly you realise the beat has been in for some time. There was no kicking off as I felt but still the energy has managed to have been injected into it. The kick is pretty heavy again but layered nicely as to not dominate proceedings even on headphones. Different parts appear as if by magic & leave you wondering when they were introduced. The melody is one of these, suddenly it's just there inside my head, filling the music & breathing life into the spaces in between the sounds. 4. Gravitational Vortices First up you'll notice that this is much colder sounding. The wind has picked up in the drone work & it sounds like a very cold deep space wind, filled with nothing but space dust. The tiny melodies that permeate slightly before & just after the beat kicks in as well as the beat itself which is the heaviest so far add to the cold feeling of this track. The beat, the structure & even the sounds really remind me of Aes Dana on his last album Memory Shell but with enough of Tyler's touch to make it individual. Although the melody becomes the focal point and twisting & turning along it's journey, the whole atmosphere remains cold & distant. Very nice. 5. Time Circles (Distant System Remix) The original H.U .V.A Network track was on the album Distances & I will admit that I didn't really get it on that album. It wasn't bad but I feel like I missed the point. It was a bit to weird, and I like weird music believe me. This remix though makes much more sense for me. A rare case where the remix is better than the original & seeing as the original was by Solar Fields & Aes Dana you can take that as a good thing. This remix has more structure to it. More rhythm & more feeling. To be honest I can barely hear the original in it, if at all. It has more in common with the opening track of that album (Distances) in terms of the soft floaty dreaminess of it. 6. Outer Rim This is great. Way to mix it up while staying with the same feel. Although it's still definitely got that sci fi feel that present through the rest of the album, the music seems to have a more orchestral & a more glitchy feel to it. The beats are gravely as they crunch on the soundscape & the big string rushes sound like a space odyssey in their grandness. The lighter melody is one that just seems to ping out of the darkness. Really nice stuff,both different & very fitting. 7. Cloud Nebula As we enter the final part of this trip through space we finally get to what I was expecting. The real ambient parts where the kick is gone & we are left just with the atmospheric ambience of the spacial drones, the solar wind and very light, high pitch acidity in minor places. A very nice if too short track that expands the space we've been travelling to into a wider, emptier void! 8. Astromech Starport The space is empty of all objects. No stars, no planets, no cosmic dust. All that is here is the radio waves, sent from spaceports millenia ago but travelling ceaselessly carrying their message. The message of not requiring disk space or CPU power comes across in my mind as one of peace. Like trying to communicate that this message will not take over your system but in fact requires no space at all, if you'll take a look. This is a deceitful track though, as even though every time I feel like it's going to be a beatless finish, as soon as the message has been received, the crunchy beats kick in like a virus spreading the beautiful melody through the whole system bringing peace & harmony to my addled mind. If I was an alien computer system I might feel a little saddened that I had been duped but overall overjoyed by the joy that this had brought me. Fantastic track to end a great album. This album I think could easily have been released on Ultimae. The sounds is there (maybe due to the mastering by ultimae guys but probably due to Tyler's skill) it's soft, it's got some light/heavy kicks & a hell of a lot of atmosphere. It puts me in mind of Asura's last album Life² but this has more of a journey to it. A Journey through space & a lush one at that. One of the best releases of 2008 so far & I'll stick my neck out & say it will be at the end of the year. Definitely one to get believe me. Tyler (Quasga/Androcell) also did the artwork for this album which in my opinion fits the music very well www.quasga.info Discogs says this was released in 2007, the record label says February 2008. I couldn't get my hands on it until then so I'm going to believe that. Maybe the promos were released late 2007?

Everything on this page must be 1337

But it's one of the few goa mixes that really flows well IMO

Good choices Of the ishq, did you get the interchill or dakini version. Dakini is 2 disks & is fantastic

Hell yeah it was! I loved the old parties so much. How music could keep me in rapture for days still amazes me. Didn't spend much time in Goa but I prefer some of the Thai beach parties anyway

Well, Matt Hillier is in a league of his own. Evan has made some great stuff but even he can't compare to Matt

Well, you found it on your own & when someone else is asking for old school recommendations I expect you to recommend this track np Distance to Goa 5 Electric Universe - Stardiver