Rotwang

You should stick on some of the stuff Orbital did with Alison Goldfrapp, e.g. . Or this, featuring the voice of Kirsty Hawkshaw.

I doubt the pound is weak enough to compensate for how much more expensive CDs are here than everywhere else.

I apologise. I was merely attempting to point out that psyshop's chart should be considered a self-fulfilling prophecy as much as a genuine indicator of popularity.

Huh? No, of course not.

Yes, and I suspect there's another factor at play here: psyshop doesn't stock enough of many decent CDs for them to chart, even if they're popular. I noticed, for example, that Midnight's Shared Blossom was out of stock within days of its release, but was nowhere to be seen in their top 20.

Wow, amazing

Yet more evidence that one can indeed judge an album by its cover.

Has anybody heard Overdream - Wonderwise?

+1 (that's how I discovered KDD, Talpa, Dark Nebula and Polyphonia for example). It's also a good idea to check out a label's back catalogue if you like something they've put out (that's how I discovered Braincell).

+1 What I do is look at the new releases on Saiko Sounds and listen to the samples of those whose covers look promising (I find that the covers actually give a surprisingly good indicator of whether the samples are worth listening to - boring, cheesy or trendy covers almost invariably cover boring, cheesy or trendy music), and if I like what I hear I'll listen to the samples repeatedly over a period of a few weeks before deciding whether I want to buy it. This method is not infallible; often I decide I'm not going to buy something and then a few months or even years later I decide for no reason to listen to the samples again and find it's grown on me, so I guess there are a lot of releases which I would love if I'd given them more of a chance. But I just don't have time to give everything the time it deserves, nobody does.

You're banning him for spamming over a year ago? Having already banned him for spamming more recently? Weak, Mars.

I don't know, but it reminds me of some of Faerie Dragon's covers, e.g. these:

In my case, I only actually bought four 2008 chill albums (three of them on purpose, too). I will undoubtedly discover several more good 2008 chill albums in 2009, hence this thread. That's not to say the albums I voted for didn't deserve it, I listen to samples of loads of stuff and only buy those I think will be really good.

I prefer this, which is the original I think.

Can anybody explain the difference between SilentPeyya and Isentropic?

If you're anything like me, chances are you'll spend much of 2009 buying CDs which you wish you had bought a year earlier so you could have voted for them in the Best of 2008 poll. In this thread I invite you to rectify this by listing those albums which would have made it into previous years' best of lists had you known how good they were at the time. Here are mine: 1) The Nommos - Digitaria (2004) 2) Naked Tourist - Mad Different Methods (2006) 3) VA - Kokopelli (2007) 4) Carbon Based Lifeforms - World of Sleepers (2006) 5) Solar Fields - Extended (2005)

Kindzadza & Technical Hitch - Midnight's Blossom Devic vs Bodhisattva 13:20 - Magnetic Monopole OOOD - Apollo, Son of Rifa Attoya vs Oil - Escaping the Bubble Claw vs Paranoize - Access Denied Phobosphere - Separate Reality Wi']['ch - Fractal Generator OOOD - Watchers in the Skies Orbit Constructions - Church of Emeralds Osom - Exorcisto Yeah, yeah, I realise that picking a Kindzadza track as no. 1 is predictable. But damnit, he's so darn good.

Autechre - Quaristice. Obviously.

How about apostophes? Also, what is the standard method of referring to one CD of a two CD set (as is the case with my number four chill release, the first disc of which is not chill)?

Good year. I have real difficulty choosing which among my top four trance CDs should go at number 1, so the deciding factor has been my desire to give high scores to albums that nobody else will vote for. Same goes for my top two downtempo. Trance 1) VA - Multiple Personalities 3 - Manic Dragon (read my review here) 2) VA - Acid Transmission - Trishula (read my review here) 3) VA - Midnight's Shared Blossom - Osom Music (read my review here) 4) OOOD - Fourthought - Phar Psyde 5) Talpa - When the Somberness Becomes a Game - SunDance Chill 1) VA - Raindrops in the Forest - Psyber Tribe (read my review here) 2) Orbit Constructions - Androneda - Demon Tea 3) Distant System - Spiral Empire - Celestial Dragon 4) VA - Healing Ananda (Disc 2) - Gaian Mind e: in case you're wondering what the colours are about, every year I write each entry in the colour which most closely matches that of the album's cover. It appears that this year I have gone for albums whose covers are dominated by very boring colours. e3: forget all that shit. Here's my last-minute choice: Psytrance: 1;OOOD;Fourthought;Phar Psyde 2;Overdream;Wonderwise;Avatar 3;VA;Multiple Personalities 3;Manic Dragon 4;VA;Acid Transmission;Trishula 5;VA;Midnight's Shared Blossom;Osom Music Chill: 1;VA;Raindrops in the Forest;Psyber Tribe 2;Orbit Constructions;Androneda;Demon Tea 3;Distant System;Spiral Empire;Celestial Dragon 4;VA;Healing Ananda (Disc 2);Gaian Mind

I really like Universal Language and Transformation of Reality but when I saw Braincell live last year I was quite unimpressed, none of what he played seemed to have the melodic climaxes that made tracks like Visible Sound and Emdiemey so great. How would people say this compares to his previous two albums?

V/A - Acid Transmission (Trishula) Press Release: Tracks (click titles for Saiko Sounds sample): 1) wi']['ch - Fractal Generator 7:06 Trishula records evidently know how to start an album with style. Listening to Fratal Generator is a bit like being dragged backwards through a hedge made of clicks, buzzes and awesome. Pure sonic destruction. 2) Zoolog - Contradictionary 6:40 I don't think there's anything I can say about this track which would do a better job of describing it than its title. To be honest I'm not entirely sure what "contradictionary" actually means, but I nonetheless believe that this track is one. 3) Purosurpo - Multi Range 8:50 Purosurpo's Multi Range strikes me as being not so much a piece of music as a sort of psychedelic fractal tree, which continually grows into unexpected shapes and directions, and produces strange new fruit. If I didn't know that the artist was half of Derango I would think that he had crammed every idea he's ever had into this one track. And if that were true he'd still have had more ideas than most artists have in a lifetime. 4) Arabali - Mars is Amazing7:31 Arabali consists of Mubali and Arahat, apparently. After opening with a sample of somebody repeatedly reading out the track title in a manner which I find a bit unnerving, their track soon begins to bombard the listener with the kind of fat, sweeping crunches which Mubali has become incredibly good at of late. It ends with some out-of-tune horns which would kill a piece of melodic music, but which work pretty well in this context. 5) Attoya vs. Oil - Escaping The Bubble 6:39 This is just great. The first half is a rather confused mass of strange noises, bizarre melody and disconcerting samples. Then shortly after the four minute mark it suddenly turns into a proper tune, which rapidly builds up to a climax which is one of the few genuinely dancefloor-friendly moments on this CD. I think it's a shame that they decided to stick some horror-sample screaming at the end, because the track really doesn't need it. 6) Karash - Likadelic 7:35 In contrast to the previous track, this has very little in the way of attention-grabbing buildup. Instead, its appeal lies in the subtle array of nice sounds which bubble under its surface, challenging the listener to pay close enough attention. This needs to be heard through a good sound system or it's wasted. 7) Oil - Behemot 10:00 I don't much care for this. It starts nicely enough but soon descends into a load of unpleasant high-pitched screeching, which just goes on and on and on. If you know Matutero's Pure Evil you'll know what I mean - this is pretty much the same. 8) Olien - Dynaversum 7:47 This, on the other hand, is rather splendid. It sounds a bit like somebody sitting in the middle of a motorway shaking a cup full of plastic teaspoons, while a child practices playing the recorder in a nearby building. With everybody involved on drugs, obviously. 9) Mind Distortion System - Looking At The Sky 7:52 This is good too. It mainly revolves around some whirring sounds which mess with one's ears quite nicely, with a few key changes thrown in for good measure. 10) Psyfactor - Mythical 7:51 Psyfactor's closing track quite ambitiously attempts to fuse ethereal melodies of the sort featured on Endless Universe with click-and-hiss darkpsy. It's a brave effort but doesn't really work, not least because both the melodic bits and the darkpsy bits are actually fairly substandard compared to the rest of what I've heard by this artist, at least to my ears. Overall: Acid Transmission came out within days of Multiple Personalities 3, and in terms of style they are very similar; both are dark, noisy and seemingly more designed to get your brain moving than your feet. When I set out to write this review I was hoping to conclude by recommending one over the other, but I just can't. While this album, unlike MP3, has a couple of tracks which are duds in my opinion, the good tracks are too good to miss. If you like either this or MP3 then I can't imagine you'll regret getting both. 9/10 Favourite Tracks: 1(!), 2, 3(!), 4, 5(!), 6, 8, 9

I gave this a try partly because I loved his track Lucid Dreaming and partly because I found no evidence that anybody else on psynews bought this album and I felt like one of us ought to. And I'm glad I did. Nice melodic psy, it's cheesy in places but has moments of sheer euphoric brilliance.