Otto Matta

Ha! Finally! Someone else. I agree.

I see. That would make sense then - because it's a pretty powerful processor.

LOTS of cigarettes, and some beer. And it usually has to be night.

I have a Korg 01/Wfd, which uses similar waveshaping if I'm not mistaken. What do you need to know?

Mike - I have that same processor. How is your CPU so strained?

Oh, I know. I didn't get an "I hate it" impression from your post. Just wanted to say I liked the "dated guitar" you mentioned. I think he did a good job of making it so over-the-top that when one hears it one doesn't get the feeling it was supposed to sound like a real guitar. Same with Total Eclipse. It's probably my favorite track on the album.

I know this one Russian label run entirely by single, beautiful, talented, and desperately horny women, but I forget what it's called.

I actually like that old guitar sound. Total Eclipse use it, too, on Violent Relaxation.

An average musical release at best. Dorset Perception is a very fun track, and Around the World in a Tea Daze is very good for about the first half, but the rest is mediocre (although maybe good relative to many other psy-ambient efforts). Posford and Ram clearly have technical skills, but they were somehow unable with all their semi-mastery to instill enough life and heart into this music to make it listenable for me. I think hearing a lot of better and more genuine world music completely destroyed this album for me. Or perhaps I haven't done the appropriate drugs. 5.5/10 (9.5/10 for the cheese factor)

Goddammit, I can't wait for my copy of Fairytale to arrive. There was a mix-up with Saikosounds with my PayPal order, so it was delayed a few days. (I won't use PayPal with Saikosounds again.) Anyway, I'm listening to an album by Rrine called Eaciv. It's really nice, emotive and complex microsound/glitch stuff very similar to Arovane, and better in some ways. I managed to get one of the 100 copies he sold of the album.

[off topic] "One man's trash may be another man's treasure, but that's no reason why you should wear that dead kitten as a crown." (Onion horoscope) [/off topic]

One of my favorites, too, but I doubt it's rare. Could be wrong.

It was a toss-up for me between The Delta and Battle of the Future Buddhas. I really like a few of the latter's tracks, but I think the former is more consistent in its quality, more original, and darker, so that's how I voted.

Because of the forests.

Brian Eno has some good ones, disks with one long track. One I own is called Neroli, about an hour long, very minimalistic, but in the Modern musical sense, and definitely something to space out to.

From my experience it seems that 3/4 is the second most popular time signature in electronic music. Probably because it's the second easiest and is still danceable. 5/4 is rare, because it's more of a march signature. Holst's Mars, the Bringer of War is a really good example.

4/4 and 3/4 are called time signatures. The first number means how many beats in a measure. The second number means which note gets the beat. In 4/4's case, there are four beats to a measure (or "bar"), and quarter notes get the beat. Each beat can be either lengthened or divided, but each measure must always add up to 1. For instance, in each measure you can have one whole note, or two half notes, or 4 quarter notes, or 8 eighth notes, etc. Or you can have one half note and 4 eighth notes. Triplets are just a way of dividing up quarter notes (in a 4/4 time signature). To call trance music 4/4 is accurate, but is usually used for the wrong reason. Almost all Western pop and electronic music uses a 4/4 time signature, even with breakbeats or even no beat at all. That's why I like to use "4x4" instead to denote "four-on-the-floor" music like trance, techno and house, as a quick way of saying that each of the four quarter notes in a measure gets a bass drum beat. EDIT: There is such a thing as a 6/8 time signature, and it is different from 3/4. Again, in 6/8, there are 6 beats to a measure, and eighth-notes get the beat. In 3/4, there are 3 beats to a measure, and quarter-notes get the beat.

I agree. Great album. Def by Delta Part 2 is one of my all-time faves. Listened to it over the weekend.

Hehe. His food is always undercooked.

Charlie, I guess, I think, it's just...I want to see other people.

Olive branch my ass. Being called silly is not peacemaking.

Whatever, Charlie. I'm not dissing all the music from England, just the majority of the trance I've heard, compared to the stuff from Scandinavia. I like a lot of British music. You clearly took offense to one or two of my statements and disregarded the nature of the meaning in general. Understandable, but also "silly". Clearly some people hear the forest thing and some don't. To say it doesn't exist is erroneous. For some reason it's a phenomenon, and I tried to give my own possible explanation. If it doesn't exist for you doesn't mean it logically follows that it doesn't exist for anybody. Judging from your comments, I highly doubt I'd be able to "explain" it to you, even with the album in my possession. It's a feeling. I wouldn't, for instance, necessarily be able to recreate it myself, but perhaps if I grew up in Sweden it might possibly have found its way into my music. I really don't know how else to describe it. But I will say that I firmly believe that music sounds different from culture to culture.

Charlie, how could it be nonsense when I loaded my post with disclaimers like "I feel" and "I believe" and "this is a biased generalization"? I knew it wouldn't go over well with some, and therefore I prepared it that way. To say what you did is unexpectedly unkind. I'm telling you the truth when I say that when I listen to music - which I obviously do a lot - I find it uncanny that I tend to enjoy the Scandinavian sound - and this is important - even before I know it's made by a Scandinavian. I've wondered a lot why that is. And I've also wondered a lot about why I tend not to like trance from England. I don't know the right answer, but it has been my suspicion that somehow the culture and environment of a songwriter slips into his or her music. I don't find this idea vastly difficult to believe, but it is still somewhat ambiguous and abstract, hence the disclaimers. And yes Great Britian and Scandinavia are relatively close to each other and share a lot of similarities. But there are differences, too, not only in the past but also in the present. Some vast differences. All I'm saying is that these differences might just be making an appearance in the music. I hear the forest sound. I know it when I hear it. And it is - for some reason - some of my favorite music of all time. Other people absolutely hate it. That baffles me, but it probably baffles some people that I don't like Hallucinogen's music as well, and tend to hear a sound resembling overly analytical, heartless, evil clown music, so I really can't judge people for their taste (although I'll kid them about it). I'm sorry if you found my post offensive. I tried very hard not to make it seem that way, but to make it clear that it was an idea/opinion I've been formulating over time based on my personal experiences. Now feck off, you bloody twat.

I hear ya. I guess there are exceptions to both rules. There's some pretty unlayered old stuff, as well as some hyperlayered new stuff. It hasn't gone away.

I'm not sure I agree with you on the layer thing. Atmosphere, maybe. Less "clean" production, maybe. Layering? I can't see it. Are you sure you're just not so accustomed to the music that you're not hearing everything like you used to? Your liking the Psyfactor album, for instance, is dubious to me. That's some pretty unlayered stuff.