DoktorG

Twisted writes: "We will soon be offering LP sales of the latest collaboration by Simon Posford and Raja Ram entitled Improvisations for Piano & Flute. This super-chill album by the dynamic duo is a salve for the soul, an atmospheric antidote to the relentless stress and fast pace of our increasingly complex world. The digital release of this album is a 1xLP pressing on golden nugget vinyl - a luxurious way to enjoy these eight beautiful tracks. Stay tuned for LP sales link on 28th November. You can pre save the album now on all good streaming platforms": https://simonposford.lnk.to/PianoandFlute

Pre-release on Suntrip of Bypass Unit vs Color Box: https://suntriprecords.bandcamp.com/album/bypass-unit-vs-color-box-nanosphere-courier-digital-12-shipped-4h-of-oct

A round of applause for your sensitivity Rapid Flow, but what you are saying is no secret on this forum. Lots of us identified the cul de sac of the galloping horse and machine gun rhythm section with irritating build ups many years ago and are openly critical of it. In fact, this critique has been going on since the early 2000s when so-called full on developed.

Enjoying the gnarly, crunchy Bamboo Forest vibes on this.

Yes, Amtinaous are excellent and obscure, but not quite overlooked. Here are the Discogs reviews of the 1996 "YOD" ep on POF records: peuk Oct 19, 2023 Edited 8 months ago Huhh... As the articles before me, I can say this is the key to answers, what we are try to found every time when listening goa trance. This record is beautiful! Four tracker gem, with pure goanish elements, magical soundscapes on every single track. But not a regular release. Bravo! chimushi Apr 13, 2022 Surprisingly deep, 4 track gem that will not disappoint any true Goaseur. I missed this one on my first tour of the small Amtinaous catalogue of releases and was very happy I came across this must have release on my second pass. This is contemplative level Goa Trance of the highest quality and is not for the Greatest hits of Goa Trance crowd so if you have time to really listen to this release, you will be rewarded by it's depth, nuance and subtlety. A note of Thanks to the artists who created this gift. doctorg Jul 11, 2021 Edited 2 years ago Good quality floaty Goa from France. "Y.O.D." is wonky; lots of little tweaky sounds and clanky percussion moving in and out of a gentle beat, it hovers in the liminal zone between the dance floor and chill area. "Araxia" is squarely in the dance floor with a stumping beat, insistent bassline and shimmering synths. "Organic THC" in the "Imothep Disturbance mix" is a gentle chill out track with Indian flute and tribal percussion - very nice. "Nyamgal" returns to the dance floor, though it is a fairly gentle and trippy track with long textured synth lines verging on drone; an excellent track. A lot of work went into this varied ep and it shows. ~*~

You're most welcome to use what I wrote. I agree that nothing trumps quality tracks, but sets and comps with good flow create a journey. Ag I guess I'm just an Etnica fan; for me they are so plugged into cosmic power at their best that most everything else sounds a bit undramatic by comparison no matter the tempo. The kosmiche opera of trance. The production on this new track sounds promising; their old stuff was badly compressed, especially Alien Protein. Wild acid lines? Yum

Thanks Acid Being. Yes, I did listen to the Etnica "Universo" ep and I liked it, but none of the tracks achieve take off like "Golden Era". I don't want to undermine your forthcoming review, but as you asked here's what I thought: "Different Species" is a collaboration with Ovnimoon to remix the Crop Circles (Etnica + Lotus Omega) original from the "Full Mental Jackpot" ep (1997). Excellent track. I think Ovnimoon is one of the best neoGoa/prog artists. "Chemical Brilliance" seems to be a new track and has a full on psytrance beat with fabulous Etnica melodies. Stunning melodies but the robotic beat works against them a bit for me. "Fireworks" is also a new track I think and has more of a techno vibe, like on Nitrox. I found this track a bit meandering and it didn't quite hold my attention, especially towards the end when it kind of peters out. Going back to Acidum Influxum, I think that it was a programming error to make the awesome "Golden Era" the first track; it set the bar a bit high for the following tracks. It would have been much better placed towards the end of the compilation I reckon. Overall, I felt the compilation lacked flow (admittedly only a few compilations really get this right).

Etnica "Golden Era" First of all the alien atmosphere, then the bouncy bass, then the beat: that slapping kick and rattling percussion that Etnica perfected. Slightly loose, swinging, so easy to dance to. But I should have known that was just for starters, because when the 303 kicked in at 3.20 I felt every hair stand to attention and I thought "Fuuuuuck this is the sound I've been missing". The Italian masters know how to make a fractal melody like no one else. I wish the initial form of that melody came back later in the track, but what a bliss to get a blinding power Goa track from Etnica in 2023! It is like reuniting with your soul mate 24 years later because we haven't had a track like this from Etnica since "History" from Equator in 1999. The only question is why it took them so long to go back to the golden era. If they carry on making tracks like this we are in for a new golden era. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the compilation pales compared to this track, for me at least, but I must mention Antidot & DICA's searing "Soulbinder" which could light up a dancefloor, Inner Zone's blissed out "Heaven's Gate", and the whimsical trippiness of BotFB "Tenderlion (Anthem Remix)". Welcome back Etnica! ~*~

Agreed. In certain realms, the accusation of cheesiness is the kiss of death and it can take guts to bring the cheddar in such realms. However, please allow me to clarify that while I find the sample both intriguing and kitsch, it is the generic elements of the track as a whole that make it a bit cheesy to me. It just seems a bit psychill-by-numbers, especially the angelic choirs towards the end. Please note that this does not decrease my appreciation of RA's fabulous art. I said a bit too cheesy, not quattro formaggi. 😅

"Enthralled" starts off with a simple quiet piano-type melody, slowly evolving into a sweetly melancholy slow ambient track via squelchy and clicky percussion - kinda reminds me of ambient techno ala Autechre. There's a bass growl in this track that is appreciable, sounding like waves lapping on a shore. The big pads that come towards the end build to quite an intense climax. Super ambient track that is well structured, if somewhat simple. A- "Mysterious Thing" is just what it says on the tin - exotic ambience that reminds me a bit of Entheogenic. I like this track, though at times it verges on the generic. B "Visions of Touch" revs things up a bit in that it actually has a beat and is the outstanding track here, managing to be both chilled out and acidic, a winning combination. A "The Burning" has some sounds that have become generic for psychill - choirs, panpotted bass growls, swooshes etc. However, it also has a long voice sample about love that might well make this one of the few Goa tracks that is overtly romantic (it reminds me a bit of Boris Blenn's "the ultimate experience is love" sample from Galaxy's "Musication Celebration" on the Angel album). Is the romance here tantric-style or Romeo & Juliet type? I don't know, but even though I find the sample both intriguing and kitsch, this track is just a bit too cheesy for me. C I'm a big fan of RA, going right back to the 1997 "R.O.M./Azure Child" ep. I rate "To Sirius" very highly and "9th" is my favourite, but I also think "Earthcall" and "Unearthly" worthy works. This latest chill out ep from RA is solid, but I can't help feeling that it is just throat-clearing. The singing is yet to come. Let us hope we get another album soon. ~*~

No worries; all apologies gratefully accepted! I've tended to avoid youtube links in the past because so many of them are dubious in both legality and quality, but I'm happy to post bandcamp links in future. 🙏

Vaporized Human Odyssey 2023 Digital Reprints Human Odyssey 1 1-1Vaporized (2)–Return To The Source 12:51 1-2Vaporized (2)–Circle Of Dust 11:21 1-3Vaporized (2)–Solar Cycles 10:38 1-4Vaporized (2)–Human Odyssey 9:44 1-5Vaporized (2)–Full Moon 9:44 1-6Vaporized (2)–Silverbox 10:54 1-7Vaporized (2)–Enter The Circle 10:37 Human Odyssey 2 2-1Vaporized (2)–Return To The Source (Dig Deeper Mix) 12:51 2-2Vaporized (2)–Circle Of Dust (Red Rock Mix) 10:36 2-3Vaporized (2)–Solar Cycles (In Orbit Mix) 11:03 2-4Vaporized (2)–Red Dust 10:22 2-5Vaporized (2)–Silverbox (Acid Mix) 9:47E 2-6Kristian* & DJ Cosmix–The Vision (Vaporized Remix) 10:00 2-7Vaporized (2)–Artifact 12:22 This is a fascinating double album released in 2023 by Danish artist Kristian Thinning Andersen. He is most famous as Elysium, though he has a variety of other monikers. Andersen made some of the greatest Goa tracks ever in the 90s with a unique mellow, tribal, and hypnotic style. One of my personal favourites is the Sheyba ep on Flying Rhino from 1995: Who can forget the wolf howls in "Ancient Lands" which take the listener deep into the ancestral past. Other notable releases include Spiritual's "Ride the Snake", Kaaya's "Ormazd", Kailash's "Higher", and the two Elyzium albums Dance for the Celestial Beings (1995) and Celestial Sounds and Neurotic Tribal Beats (1997). Evocative, storytelling stuff, more for the inner journey than for 'aving it on the dancefloor, though plenty potent on the dancefloor too. Rather than give a track by track formalist description, I want to try to sum up Andersen's artistic goal and the feel of his tunes, with which I'm sure many of you are familiar. Perhaps the most important thing then is to point out that if you are a fan of his work, as I am, then this is a must. Andersen has not changed his style. This is not to say that he is stuck or lacks variety or experiment or is narrow, but he simply has his own unique style that is instantly recognisable. And what a style it is - poised hovering in the liminal zone between the dancefloor and the chill out area with bpms seldom getting up into the 140s, its distinctive feature is hypnosis. In a sense, then, his music is the very essence of trance, which is a hypnotic state, a state of immersion if you will. There's a deep calm in his music, that is quite different to the ecstatic excitement, even freneticism, of a lot of trance and psytrance. It is more of a highlands plateau than the peaks and valleys of psytrance. It is likely that the Dionysian among us will not like this calm and will find this album boring. If you want high drama, crushing rhythms, major chords, frenzied build-ups, hardcore blastoff, then look elsewhere. For those who can enter this calm state, it provides the meditative bliss of relaxation and acceptance. This music creates the atmosphere in which it is best appreciated. Here are the words of the man himself: "I wanted to return to the way I think trance should be like. To me, trance is a slowly building journey on the dance floor by its hypnotizing patterns and deep soundscapes. Repetitively rhythmic to put you in a state of trance." Andersen emphasises his return to proto-Goa, which was slower and lacked the build-ups and galloping horse basslines of post-millenial psytrance. What I most appreciate about this relaxation is that it tends to grant the space for the mind to expand into fantasy - it is quite easy to be swept to far-off lands with these tunes. This does not mean that Vaporized lacks intensity. Intensity may be provided by tribal vibes through vocals, samples, percussion. Whilst I do miss the tribal vibes a bit on this latest album, they are still there in the background. Intensity is also provided by the microdynamics of texture and small changes. A master of texture, Andersen was always good at making sounds that ranged from silken smooth to ragged ripping. Many of his sounds, showcased by the relatively constant rotating polyrhythms in the background have more pixels per nanosecond than there are motes of dust in the Sahara (though you will need a good hifi to hear this). Part of the sonic magic is the recordings and masterings: no compression wars here and sounds have space to breathe, do not blur together, dynamics are free. I checked out my vinyl and cds and the only information on the mastering I could find was "Prodam" and "Podam" - I searched but nothing came up. This is also true of this new work, which is also well produced. This high quality recording and mastering pays off in psychoactive sound with good micro as well as macro dynamics. This is crucial to Andersen because he is very good at small changes, subtle shifts of delicate percussion, unexpected time wobbles - small changes amidst heavy repetition that can tug at your ear, especially when you are in the calm and receptive state of trance. There, in a nutshell, I think you have the spirit of Elysium/Vaporized: hypnotic trance. It is relatively introspective stuff that eschews drama, performativity, grandiosity, hysteria, going instead for meditative calm. This, of course, does not mean that the artist is always so calm himself. Hypnosis is also invariably haunted by the image of the zombie: who is controlling the hypnotised is the question that typically arises. Is it a corporate AI? Perhaps it is the Soviet nostalgia hackers? No, it is definitely the aliens described by Cixin Liu. Whether you are concerned about being hypnotised or not, the questions that have historically accompanied the inner path do flutter about this introspective art. Of course, this means that this is more home music than for the main floor. If hypnotic trance sounds appealing to you, then you won't do better than this excellent album and the stunning back catalogue behind it. ~*~

Thanks so much for yet another super mix Basilisk! Loving those Quietman/Platipus 90s vibes and "Space Shanty" is a stomper that can work in many sets. 🙏

Super track with good production and lovely smooth and delicate synths. I don't know the track and I don't have time to help you search, but for what it is worth the style reminds me of Cass v Slide. Around the millenium Christopher Cutbush and Peter Martin were known as Cass v Slide and they did similar sounding melodic and gentle prog tracks and remixes; the style is similar.

I am not a fan of full on, and there's a lot of South African stuff I'm not really into, but both of these Shift tracks are good and my vinyl sounds fantastic - excellent recording, mastering and pressing with kicking bass. Shiva Space Tech didn't put out many vinyls, but the ones they did sound fabulous.

Super beat in this track; I'm not so keen on the melody that comes in at the 3 minute mark because it sounds nintendo plasticky, but otherwise this is a winner Astral Projection-style track and I appreciated the breathing sounds at the end - nice touch. It strikes me that mastering and pressing to vinyl in this era helped to make early Goa sound less like arcade games because all the sounds became a bit warmer, more organic, more delicate.

Xenomorph Netherverse 2024 Suntrip Records 1 Sinister Contours 9:17 2 Dying Sun (Sol Aeternus Mix) 8:03 3 War In Heaven 8:35 4 Negative Time (-L Di/-Dt Mix) 8:20 5 No Beginning No End 8:39 6 Nebula Of Souls 7:47 7 Subdimensional Anomaly 8:38 8 Abode Of The Damned 8:46 9 Netherverse 8:38 So Mark Petrick comes in 2024 with Netherverse, his fourth album and the one to accompany 2023's superb ep "Negative Time". Is it any cop? "Sinister Contours" telegraphs Petrick's self-evident intention: he is for sure following the left hand path. This means a heavily arpeggiated track with a threatening minor melody. There'll be no easy upliftment on this album; and no cheese! But isn't the whole gothic darkness thing quite cheesy? Well yeah, if we are talking Twilight movies with aristocratic pretty boy vampires who bling in the sunlight, or perhaps campy Tim Burton style goth-lite. But we are not talking that here. No easy joy, no happy endings, on this sinister path, but plenty of eerie and other disquieting feelings. A "Dying Sun (Sol Aeternus Mix)" is probably my favourite track on the album. Here we seem to be on a space ship on a quest for a new home and we dive deep into a black hole, or something like that, indicated by the "our sun is dying... we are dust" sample and another spaceship sample (Petrick is a master of the appropriate sample - he really tells stories with his samples, which are carefully chosen). We sense here how cosmic Xenomorph's vision for this album is. The production quality on this track has to be heard on a good hifi to fully appreciate it - mindblowing. EPIC! A+++ "War In Heaven" starts off with a simple four-note melody that summons up fairy tale horror, but at the half way mark the track shifts up a gear and achieves take off with sawing synths. The "war in heaven" sample states succintly Petrick's apparent philosophy that the tension between good and evil is the propulsive force that drives the universe. A dance floor monster! A+ "Negative Time" is from the accompanying ep of that name. Plenty of pretty tinkles and juddering synth melodies here make for a track that is almost progressive trance - a more mellow track than the ones that preceded it, quite blissed out and dreamy. A "No Beginning No End" is an ourobouros in both concept and in big swirling melodies. These melodies do seem like spiralling nebulae. At 3.15 it turns darker with some delightfully chewy bass 303 and then the spiralling begins again, growing out of the darkness. Another epic trancer with massive melodies. Petrick has worked hard on making these melodies as echoing and big in scale as possible. A "Nebula Of Souls" - I love this slightly more minimal track. It features mysterious vaporous synths at the start, which are utterly beautiful and uplifting in a creepy way. There's a whap-whap sound that continues throughout, giving propulsion; it builds to a grinding climax and then ends on moody cello - simply stunning. A+ "Subdimensional Anomaly" starts with twinkling synths (lots of those sounds on this album) and then builds towards twisting leads against a stumping beat. There's a lovely sense of calm and observation behind this track. A "Abode Of The Damned" is as dark as its title, beginning with a sample about a graveyard and its ghosts. There's a great climbing bass arpeggio that kicks things off and then we have minor key choirs so beloved of dungeon synth and black metal and used quite regularly on Cassandra's Nightmare. This track could easily have been from that first album. At the four minute mark the bass goes into double time and here comes the growly acid that slowly morphs into long pads. Yo party people, are you ready to chew your tongue off and lose your shit? I'd love to see what this track would do to a dancefloor. A+ "Netherverse" - the come down track. Vaporous spacey synth, twangy echoes, a slow beat, eventually builds to the expected long and melancholic pads. I'm a huge fan of sloa Goa, but this is not an especially outstanding example, coming across as an unfinished fragment, and is the least good track on the album for me. B So is it any cop? You betcha it is. What I particularly liked about this album is that Xenomorph has not stood still, unsurprisingly perhaps as so many years have passed. This is a unique lighter and more cosmic album in his discography. Terrifying, eerie, haunting, sinister, at moments, but also full of cosmic beauty, Xenomorph's vision achieves maturity here. It seems that his albums are all quite different, despite there being strong similarities (not least the superb production and sound quality of all of them). I characterise them like this: Cassandra's Nightmare 1998: cinematic horror trance Qlippoth 2003: spirit possession Demagoguery of the Obscurants 2007: the conspiracy album Netherverse 2024: cosmic darkness and light In this fourth album, it seems to me that Petrick goes scifi and reaches for the stars, seeing the dialectic between light and darkness, matter and antimatter, creation and destruction, as the cosmic turbine that powers all. His vision has become epic and fully realised by this point it seems to me in that it appreciates all, including the disgusting and repressed, and values all equally. A divinely balanced cosmic vision. Does such a vision appeal to you? It is a bit early in the year, but I have no doubt that this is already one of my records of the year. Actually, my only strong criticism of this album and the ep is the cover art - weak in both cases. Finally, I am inspired to look back over his oeuvre as the body of work that triggered an entire (sub-)genre: darkpsy. You could argue against this notion, pointing out the other great dark Goa albums that helped ignite darker psychedelic trance: Sandman's Witchcraft, Orichalcum and the Deviant Orichalcum and the Deviant, Cydonia Fear of a Red Planet, UX Ultimate Experience, and so on. This would be correct: all played their part. Nevertheless, nothing was nearly as dark and scary as Cassandra's Nightmare and it remains the keystone album. So Xenomorph's latest album deserves to be seen in this wider context as part of the genre that his first album kickstarted. Amazing what can come out of watching a few horror movies and being open-minded enough to meld trance with the gothic, industrial, and metal. ~*~

I can't help but comment on the cover art. A cartoon banger on chitty bang bang? What looks like a giant sausage is tied to the roof of a VW Beetle. And then a gaggle of aliens and freaks watching some Victorian gentleman wrapped in a saddhu's cloak presenting a chalkboard lecture next to a supposedly Hindu temple on "No karma, just physics"? But physics is karma; Newton's third law "action and reaction are equal and opposite" is as concise a statement of the law of karma as any. I thought hey maybe I'm being uncharitable so I took a brief listen to the first track - I'm afraid I didn't last more than about 15 seconds. Wtf that is some hilarious cover art and it seems the contents are equally dire🤣

Psychoid "Manic Organic" Koyote Records 2000

I listened to Codex last night on vinyl - I love this album and it is the one closest to the first, as I said. Brian Eno? The golden era for this artist is 1978 to 1984. Anything from then is great. My personal favourites include "Ambient 1: Music for Airports", "Ambient 4: On Land", "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts", "Fourth World: Possible Musics", "Apollo" and "Pearl". However, he's been having an Indian summer of sorts in more recent years, and some of these releases like "The Equatorial Stars", "Small Craft on a Milk Sea", "The Ship", and "Foreverandevernomore" are good too. I highly recommend O Yuki Conjugate, especially Equator. Have fun listening...

All good; I will listen to Flux again. As you say it is a departure and I wouldn't really compare it to Shpongle in that it is mostly a fully ambient album - I just thought it was quite limp compared to Klaus Schulze, or Tangerine Dream, or Brian Eno, or Lustmord, or O Yuki Conjugate, or other ambient greats. All the Shpongle albums are excellent and Nothing Lasts might be the most obviously psychedelic of them all. I liked Codex VI because it is dubby and a bit darker and reminds me of Are you Shpongled?, which is still my favourite and the one I listen to most. I've also listened a lot to Ineffable Mysteries; I'm not sure why.

Thanks for alerting us to this. Lots of brief, flippant answers in this interview. Simon is a proper humble human, so of course he's hypercritical of his own work. Also, he has genuinely moved on from the Hallucinogen days so it is faintly embarrassing juvenilia for him. Ironically, however, for me "Flux and Contemplation" is by far his weakest work yet. I couldn't even bring myself to buy it, and I was really keen to do so until I heard it. Similarly, Underworld's "Second Toughest in the Infants" and Leftfield's "Leftism" and "Rhythm & Stealth" are classics, but since then...

Ooo the speculation is tantalising...

Thanks for those replies. "Vinyl-only" would be more grammatically correct to indicate tracks released only on vinyl before, but hey the Twisted copywriter might not be either the most grammatical or the most correct writer ever 😉 It seems we will just have to wait and see in the absence of more specific information. Everyone seems to have loved the album remasters, so hopefully this will be just as good. Now could we please have a vinyl release of "In Dub" and "In Dub (Live)"! ~*~

The press release for the Hallucinogen singles box set states: "You won’t want to miss this phenomenal collectors’ edition, which will include the only vinyl pressings of some obscure Hallucinogen masterpieces alongside familiar favourites, all beautifully remastered and in gorgeous sound on 180g vinyl!". I'm curious as to exactly what tracks never before released on vinyl it will contain - does anyone know? ~*~