antic604

A must have! <3

Yes, you usually build the tension by adding stuff to the mix - they'd don't necessarily need to be melodies, those can be effects, rhythmic elements, background arpeggios, strings/chords, careful modulation of already existing elements. There's no easy recipe, but simply listen to your favourite tracks and try to understand what makes them special, what musical devices were used to advance the track, to make it exciting. It is pretty difficult, but it's very rewarding when you get it just right Also - and please don't let this discourage you - you're not great with melodies and key-changes (they're very simplistic if not flat out wrong) so I'd focus at this time more on building ambiences, rhythmic patterns, atmosphere.

The fact that most of goa/psy nowadays sounds the same is not an excuse, isn't it? And the classic Tresor releases sounded much more versatile than this, e.g. Jeff Mills' Waveform Transmission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxAU6JVf6Q0

No, my eyesight is fine but I'm just used to more orderly formatting and kerning of text: color, bolds, underscores, caps, etc. should be used to accentuate particularly important info. But maybe I'm just out of touch with what works well for today's youth - hence my question

Yeah, I know - I started my journey with electronic music with labels like Tresor, Mille Plateau or Hearthouse so I can definitely appreciate that, but still it's nice to have some variety on a CD. 2-3 tracks of this sound very fine, but 20+ is too much IMO

Pretty good minimal techno, but I don't think I could stomach 2 CDs of it - it's very uniform, kind of a one-trick-pony stuff. But I will check the rest of the stuff on that label. Also, incredible cover art! Thanks!

Oh, that was in "What new music did you get today?", wasn't it? Yeah, I mentioned my initial reservation towards this album in the beginning. Glad I tried it after all - it's on constant rotation here since Saturday and I'm loving it!

The track with triplets & saxophone was hilarious(ly bad), but otherwise it sounds promising - it's an interesting mix of goa and full-on, but as @RL above said, it really could use some structure: the individual parts sound detached from each other, almost as if they belonged to different tunes. I think more layering would also help, because you have one motif coming after the other, while ideally they should build up, add and complement each other. But good work otherwise, keep on it!

Not realy goa/psy, but definitely a psychedelic music - I remember buying Second Toughest somewhere around 1997/98 and listening to it all the time on my cassette walkman player. Ah, the memories!

You mean the album doesn't make you feel like I described? I'm really curious, because maybe there's indeed something wrong with me Starting with his 2nd album, Tripswitch music was - to me - always sad, nostalgic and melancholic and this one is most depressing yet...

01. The Way Home 02. Divine Falsehoods 03. Vagaries 04. Glass Heart 05. Big Time Line 06. Zoetrope 07. Payola 08. The Left Bank 09. Hulahoop Nick Brennan - a.k.a. Tripswitch - got his 15 minutes of fame with 2005’s release of “Circuit Breaker” on Youth’s L.S.D. label. The album was widely praised and critically acclaimed because it successfully merged electronic music with tribal & ethnic sounds, producing very warm, inviting and summer-y vibe. The tempo was just right, the electronic elements were not very intrusive nor aggressive, the voice / singing samples were tactful and well chosen, the arrangements were unusual, full of lush and delicate details. It was a hit all around. The follow-up “Geometry” released in 2010 lacked the backing of the famous label and was missed by a lot of people, but for my money it was even better - the ethnic elements were side-lined in favour of more focused, rhythmic grooves but the music remained soft, warm, expansive; combining real instruments - guitars, pianos, etc. - with electronic, very rich backgrounds and leads. The music got a bit darker, moodier and nostalgic but still pretty bright and upbeat. I loved it! Fast forward to 2016 and to my surprise his new album - “Vagabond” - was supposed to be released by progressive trance power-house Iboga Rec. and to make matters worse Psyshop labelled it initially as “Dance” (then changed to “Progressive House” which wasn’t much more reassuring). Needless to say, I ignored it for few months and only recently got myself to check the samples - and boy I’m happy I did. Like many others I think, I have a pretty well established mental image of how progressive trance sounds like: 120-140bps tempo, simple “jumpy” bass line, dynamic percussion, “big” chords, stabs and arpeggios, catchy key changes, some female voices, etc. It all - at least for me - started with Son Kite’s “Colours” album that defined most of the typical “templates”, but whereas their music was innovative, full of flair and nuance, what followed later was a thoughtless copying & pasting of those ideas and inevitable dumbing it down. It’s therefore quite refreshing to hear Tripswitch’s take on progressive trance / house - he’s boldly flirting with those cliches, but is able to avoid falling into the tired and overused schemes most of the time: a good example would be “Big Time Line” which gets dangerously close to vocal trance, but magically turns it around in 2nd half, delivering very groovy, delicious, spacious finale with genius bass line tweaks. The album is mostly dark, with kind of cold, unsettling, schizophrenic mood created by dissonant, disjointed and un-harmonic sounds, that he somehow then turns into cohesive whole with just a few simple notes or chords - this works great in “Divine Falsehoods” or “Zoetrope” for example, that could pave way for new brand of progressive EMO chill-out. I’m probably projecting some of my personal experiences in close family, but to me a lot of “Vagabond” sounds like a musical depiction of mental illness - individual elements don’t make sense, are chaotic and erratic and when they slowly and successfully get pieced together you still get this feeling that inevitably it can and will fall apart again… It gets slightly brighter in last 3rd of the CD with “The Left Bank” surprisingly melting the trademark prog-bass stabs with Talpa-like squiggly, baroque main line or “Peyola” getting really hypnotic, rich and acidic; but it’s all still pretty melancholic. The album reminds me of someone smiling on the outside, trying to act “happy” in front of the others, but actually on the inside being really depressed and hurt. It’s haunting, unsettling ...but beautiful in it’s own, painful way - just like the cover, actually. The production and mixing is spot-on, very balanced, understated and perceptibly quieter than other Iboga relases, leaving a lot more space for dynamics and small details. The only thing I wasn't keen on were the obvious percussion lead-in / out segments made for DJ-mixing, which I could live without. If you’re willing to dedicate this album your time, it will reward you with tons of detail hidden behind the obvious kick & bass combo and it will provide meaning to sounds that don’t work together at first. Tripswitch has a knack for creating lush, warm but at the same time unsettling and dark atmospheres and is using tried house / trance templates to evoke feelings - this is a music to get lost in, to listen and reflect upon life and its various facets. I’m not sure how would it work on the dancefloor, but it surely made me drift away in my mind numerous times while listening to it… One of the best progressive house / trance albums I heard since Son Kite's "Colours" and Jaia's "Fiction", but it's definitely not for everybody. 4/5

Does this kind of formatting of the post (bolds, colours) really works for younger people? Because I can't see shit...

For some years already Sony releases a line of mp3-players under the brand "Walkman": http://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/walkman-digital-music-players/t/walkman

Based on samples I'm actually a bit more excited for Tripswitch's "Vagabond", which I initially dismissed completely because Psyshop labelled it as "Dance" But the actual samples are very promising, much more varied than Ticon and with that characteristic Tripswitch's warm, inviting and very spacious musicality. Despite not much hype around here myself & some others really liked his 2nd album, which already signalled that - more house-y - direction. I'll have some time to listen to both over the weekend, so we'll see - both are not reviewed here

No roundabout kicks, no like & subscribe Weird there's no Astral Projection playing in the background - I remember you loved them?

Oh, wasn't really following it as I'm not a huge fan of his previous goa releases (I actually prefer his Rymdfunk or Holm & Andersen housey stuff more ), although I need to say this one sounds great and I'd definitely buy it!

Is that what you all mean? It still says "due to be released in 2016" so there's hope

I think Google Play gives you some 20Gb of storage (more can be bought) where you can upload your own music to stream anywhere. EDIT: apparently it's 50.000 "tunes" instead of allocated Gb space. Nice Otherwise, don't you download your digital purchases & rip your CDs/vinyls? I have everything neatly stored on my laptop at home and my tablet, so most of the music is always with me.

I'm embarrassed to admit that, but I'm returning to this album quite a lot recently I'm not sure why that is, but there's a mix of simplicity, in-your-face(edness) and energy that somehow captivates me. It's just like with the movies - it's clear that "The Shining" or "A Clockwork Orange" are artistically superior, deeper and have some actual intellectual message, but once in a while it's fun to watch a Jean-Claude van Damme movie: you cringe at the details, direction or dialogue but it's able to deliver a rush of excitement when all stars align. It's still 3/5 IMO, but it delivers on fun if you don't expect it to do more than that.

The samples at Psyshop do not really do it justice - all I could hear was the same "jumpy" bassline over & over... But then I went to YouTube and quickly browsed through all of it and ...ordered it immediately! along with Beat Bizarre's "Pandora's Groovebox" (last copy @ Psyshop.com apparently), Jaia's "Re:works" and Tripswitch's "Vagabond". Should make for a pretty diverse & awesome blend of proggy goodness

Vocoder is fine. My issue was he tried to sound too serious on his debut - mimicking the tone & phrasing of some sci-fi movies, etc. - and the effect was comical

Very spot on!

@HH, awesome of you for doing that, but I guess it's beside the point. Obviously a lot of synths at that time were already "digital" and artists used computers to orchestrate them, but the overwhelming difference was that those synths were still circuit-based (i.e. prone to external factors, like magnetic fields), the sound was made & modified in a much more tactile ways (velocity-sensitive keys, knobs & pads), the sound was routed via cables to the mixer and effects - and this whole chain was adding "warmth". I even vaguely remember S. Posford or Ott saying something to that effect on one of Twisted DVDs when asked why they still use those mixing desks. What I mean, if your production starts & ends entirely in a computer, using just a computer keyboard and a mouse, it WILL inevitably sound much "colder" (i.e. with less soul, much more quantized to the virtual perfect timing grid, the individual sounds are "dead" so to speak) unless you specifically go out of your way to program that "soul" in. Whereas in the past - and for some current artists, see the setups of Filteria, Mindsphere or M-Run above - the "warmth" is just a by-product of their process.

I LOVED that album but my God I hope he resigns from sampling himself for the next one...