DoktorG

Thanks so much for alerting us to this Technosomy. I also listened to the first two Pitch Black lps, which are also available on vinyl from Dubmission, but I didn't think they were nearly as good as this third Ape to Angel lp.

New Procs 12" available on Parvati Records: https://beatspace-parvati.bandcamp.com/album/sol-nedupp-g-ngen-sol

Thanks Tsotsi. I like this album because it really does induce a trance - a plateau state of hypnosis - in the listener. I think it also tickles those deep, uncomfortable places in the psyche that are close to, even within, the so-called "reptile brain". There's a Goa antecedent: one of my all-time favourite albums Orichalcum and the Deviant. Here's what I wrote about it back in the day: There was some weird voodoo going on in the studio when this album was recorded... To this day, I still don't know anything that is quite like it. When you have been around the block a few times, you realise how unusual and exceptional that really is. Orichalcum had this swampy chthonic feel that is unique. The sounds on this album are not designed for maximum contrast and crisp delineation. Rather what you get is a deep sound with an emphasis upon the bass - there are no bright cymbals or snare, no pixilated shining melodies. Nevertheless, this murky sound is packed full of detail, creating a sense of a downward journey into the realm of the unconscious. Here be sea monsters, dinosaurs, trilobytes, sea slugs, the great old ones. Orichalcum makes the music of the primal soup. None of this should suggest that this music is not danceable; Orichalcum brings a good percussive sensibility to the savage table. Wonderful, and rare! Now there is another album a bit like Orichalcum and the Deviant: Katedra's We are Not Alone. There may be lots of others, but I don't know of them. Big ups to Global Sect, a label with the courage to put out Astral Projection clones (no disrespect intended - the Centavra Project album is excellent), but also this deeply uncommercial album. I can't wait to hear what Katedra does next! ~*~

Katedra We Are Not Alone 2019 The MoonShip (mix 2019) 7:57 First Contact 10:41 Ring of Fire 8:58 Nagual 10:40 You Are Not Alone 9:15 Alienated Hallucination 10:20 Radiointerference (mix 2019) 9:50 The Edge Of Spaces 9:05 Drone Trance - Chthonic Swampdelica Was I sleeping or in a trance? Why did someone not tell me that there was a new genre when I woke up? Did anyone else notice that drone trance somehow slipped in under the radar and became a thing. Along with all things slo-core like drone metal (Sunn 0 and Bong), dark ambient (Lustmord et al), and drone jazz (Neptunian Maximalism), there is now drone trance, and I name Katedra's We Are Not Alone as a foundational album in this new genre. I don't know which mix I am listening to, but this is interesting and original music. This is Sloa Goa with a relatively slow, measured, unhurried pace. The rhythms tend to the industrial and have a grinding quality to them, which at times seems a bit linear and monotonous; I occasionally wanted more syncopation and percussive drama and different drum and cymbal sounds. However, the simple rhythm section avoids the plasticky psytrance sound completely and does tend to create hypnosis in the listener. Moreover, the simple pounding drums and pulsating bass are well balanced by rotating and whirling Goa melodies full of reverb and echo, often quite quiet and subtle, and most of which do not build to climaxes. This is the opposite of extroverted full on psytrance with its plastic rhythm section and bold shiny leads. Further, the bass is heavy and the sound is quite soft and muddy, almost lo-fi. The overall effect is entrancing - sucking the listener into a deep, dark vortex of murky chthonic intrigue. This album is all about the subconscious, that reptilian soup of instincts, repressions, desires, illegalities, unacceptabilities. Whilst this album reaches out to the stars, it also reaches deep within. So whilst all the ingredients are familiar, the way they are mixed together is unusual enough that a strange new dish is created: introspective swampdelica. Original! Just goes to show that there's more to this genre than we often think; imagination is the main limitation. ~*~ PS - beautiful cover art!

Don't forget 12 Moons and Phony Orphants, along with all the great Prog acts already mentioned above. All tracks by these two outfits are just great, but the earlier and closer to the 90s, the better. ~*~

I completely agree. How many times have you heard "but their first album is best"? In psytrance, it is not refinement I object to; indeed, I love subtlety and understatement. In psytrance, too often "fine tuning" and "professionalisation" = cliched bassline/rhythm section. I object to the same galloping horse or machine gun bassline in every track. In other words, I don't like the hegemony of the dancefloor - it is controlling and limiting too many artists and I feel the need to speak out about that, being naturally on the side of the artist. I repeat that I like Proxeeus' "Weird Tales" and "Non-Euclidian Geometry" - very good albums indeed. But for me, "At the Mountains of Madness" has a beguiling energy and spontaneity that is not so evident later. Moreover, by the time we reach "Perversion and Insanity", we have pretty much the same bassline in every track.

Various – Classic Goa Trax Suntrip Records – SUNCD74 Previously Unreleased 90's Goa Trance CD1 1-01 Color Box–Conky Knoll 8:24 1-02 Bypass Unit–Grumpy Ra 5:56 1-03 Nada–Travel In Space 8:09 1-04 Mystica–Thai Express 7:21 1-05 Virtuart–Nacht Und BoulesQuies 8:07 1-06 The Infonaut–Attractors 7:17 1-07 GAD–Out Of Square 9:47 1-08 Syrinx–The Relief 7:39 Bonus Track: 1-09 SUN Project*–Space Dwarfs (1997 Mix) 8:48 Previously Unreleased 90's Goa Trance CD2 2-01 Syrinx–Mindless Fun 7:52 2-02 Twisted Travellers–The Tesla Chant 7:47 2-03 Xploring Inner Space*–In-Flux 7:49 2-04 Andromeda (51)–Lifeform 7:21 2-05 SUN Project*–The Awakening (1996 Mix) 7:41 2-06 Goefly–Mindworms 5:59 2-07 Osmos–Planisphere 7:46 2-08 Atomas 303*–Cartesian Space (Sagittarius Remix) 6:30 2-09 Underhead–Nameless Booster 9:40 2-10 Dreamweaver–Cosmic Resonance (Tribute To Astral Projection) 5:58 All right trainspotters, here is one to test you: how many of these tracks do you know? Are you feeling like Amelie, finding buried treasure: "Only the discoverer of Tutankhamen's tomb would know how she felt upon discovering this treasure" (Jean-Pierre Jeunet Amelie) All credit to Suntrip for putting out this compilation of unreleased lesser known Goa tracks; a pleasant antidote to the greatest hits that have cropped up already on many compilations. A worthy exercise! For me the great tracks are Color Box, Mystica, Sun Project, Twisted Travellers, XIS, Underhead, Atomas 303. These tracks are all genuine discoveries and worthy additions to the canon of Goa trance. What a genuine delight and surprise to receive golden age music some 20 years later, with not a single familiar track. This is like finding the love poetry of obscure teens decades later: a unique historical window into the power of the trance dance ritual. ~*~

Promising track. I particularly appreciated the spacey sensibility, though I thought the leads a bit too upfront. ~*~

Two new 12" releases on Suntrip: https://suntriprecords.bandcamp.com/album/access-denied-digital-12 https://suntriprecords.bandcamp.com/album/pisces-moon-rising-digital-12

I'm licking my lips at those excerpts - the clear sound, hard metallic percussion, and uncompromising acid that we know and love from Nervasystem. Reminds me of one big reason to love Goa trance - very few acts sounded the same. I can't wait for my copy! Good luck with the rest of the production process. ~*~

This is the first, and in my opinion best, Proxeeus album. I like it best because it drips with spirit juice and is true to Goa trance. After this album Proxeeus' albums are best described as neo-Goa, and whilst "Weird Tales" and "Non-Euclidian Geometry" are both quite good, they are a bit hectic for their own good, a bit too laden with layers - almost as thought they are trying to outdo each other, instead of embracing the simpler powers of harmony and structure. By the time of "Perversion & Insanity", Proxeeus has abandoned Goa and embraced psytrance and that album, probably the darkest so far, has galloping horse and machine gun basslines galore - I personally struggle to listen to more than a few tracks in a row as a result. But back to "At the Mountains of Madness": I like it that this album has the direct simplicity of original Goa - it does not try to achieve too much, using economical means to summon up a mysterious, slightly ominous atmosphere. It is not nearly as dark as Xenomorph, but there is some eeriness on offer here - appropriately for an artist obviously influenced by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft with his cosmic materialism and great old ones - ancient beings and elemental forces, many of them malevolent. There is a certain minimalism in this album that appeals to me. One of the things that particularly strikes me about this album is that there do not seem to be any weak tracks. That is a very good thing, obviously. However, by the same token, there aren't really any obvious stand-out hits either. This record seems to be more about the plateau than about the peak. Nevertheless, I think that probably my favourite track on the album is the closer "The Sea of Tranquility" - tranquil, sure, but with a hint of the sinister about it. I think this album and "Celephais", a psychill album, are the best of Proxeeus - at least so far. We wait to see what the future will bring (along with the great old ones, that is...). ~*~

Check out Anathema - especially the later albums are gothic doom with ethereal female vocals and some electronics. But my highest suggestions are fantasy/symphonic/ethereal black metal with darkwave aspects: Midnight Odyssey The Ruins of Beverast "Exuvia" (very trancey) & " The Thule Grimoires" Summoning (Tolkien influenced) Emyn Muil (Also Tolkien fantasy influenced) And then of course there's dungeon synth: Old Sorcery Druadan Forest etc

I love the concept and some of the Danny Elfmanesque orchestral sounds and atmosphere, but as others here have pointed out the beats and rhythms are really lacking and that is a cardinal sin in dance or dance-orientated music I'm afraid. I also feel that this album is so derivative of Classical Mushroom that its own identity is limited, not that I usually care soo much about originality. Unfortunately, try as I might, I am too annoyed by some of the drums and bass and knees up moments to be able to listen to this repeatedly. ~*~

Liquid Bloom & Pere "Afar" lp https://desertdwellersmusic.bandcamp.com/album/afar

Yes, I was guessing money too. The usual And yes, there are more and more new pressing machines being manufactured, including some very good quality Canadian ones. According to the manufacturer, these new presses do not really improve on the best of the old ones, but they apparently have lower defect rates, which is good news.

Very disappointing; I wonder what the reason was?

Yeah, City of Moons is a contemporary Ultimate Experience; both albums are awesome. I sometimes think that whereas Ultimate Experience puts you on Mars, City of Moons puts you in a ruined megalopolis on Mars. I can't help but think that Jules Villeneuve missed a trick by not edging out some Hans Zimmer and putting a track from City of Moons at an appropriate point or two in Bladerunner 2049. The vaulting arpeggios on this album would really put the audience's hearts in their mouths and spin their heads with some of the imagery from this film. But I'm wandering away from Astral Projection. I'm not sure if you heard this, but if further proof were needed (which it ain't), that Astral Projection still have "it", this came out last year. Some dissed it, on this forum and elsewhere, for being fluffy and simple. I couldn't disagree more: listen with an open mind and heart and this is so deep, so harmonic, so beautiful, such a wonderful blend of form and content, so inevitable, that all barriers, expectations, criticisms, melt into insignificance. Truly eternity now:

Thanks for your comment Tsotsi; I tend to agree with you that Filteria and Morphic Resonance are not the most subtle of artists (which is not to say that subtlety is automatically good or that being upfront is necessarily bad). For me they tend to over-indulge in maximalism at times, what I think of as manic layerism - just a bit too busy, which can become tiring. Nevertheless, I do think that the first two Filteria albums are mostly very good and Morphic Resonance's City of Moons is a neo-Goa classic in my estimation, with a particularly evocative dirty apocalypse kind of atmosphere.

Moon Beasts – Unexpected Turn Of Events 2022 Alexandre Cohen & Jerome Lesterps Real Externality La Petite Porte Escaping The Plague Walking A Tightrope Towards The Unknown A silvery ray of darker Goa from Moon Beasts (I'm not too convinced by this name), which features Jerome Lesterps of Proxeeus. The mastering and pressing are solid on this white vinyl issue and the sound is generally excellent (unsurprising since the mastering is from Tim Schuldt). I'm tempted to pronounce some pretentious nonsense about this ep being appropriate to our darker times, but I will avoid that (largely). Real Externality There's Goa psychedelia on offer in the storming track "Real Externality", which has enough sawtooth and 303 madness to get any dancefloor moving to its screeching hectic intensity. Good track. Make that a very good track. I appreciated the vocal sample from Lovecraft, which really set the mood. La Petite Porte "La Petite Porte" has a stomping techno beat and some spooky synth lines; there's a bit of haunted forest flavour in this track, which again features some 303 madness towards the end. A darker track, though it is a bit spoilt by the knees-up faster beat at the very end - it seems that the musicians did not know how to progress or end this track. Basically, I thought it a good track that should carry on for another few minutes and found it ended prematurely. Escaping The Plague The darker vibes continue on "Escaping the Plague", which may be a reference to coronavirus? This track features wailing siren synth work which works well, but again I feel that this track could have been developed further and gone on for longer. Nevertheless, I enjoy the crossover with darkpsy and darkwave/ebm in this track, which does succeed in conjuring an apocalyptic ambience and feeling. Walking A Tightrope Towards The Unknown The last track "Walking a Tightrope Towards the Unknown" is downtempo and has a head-nodding beat that is infectious. There's a "Bladerunner" style moody Moog ripping sound that gives a dystopian quality to this track, but yet again it seems still-born and ends too quickly. Super track nevertheless, probably my favourite on the ep. My take away: one dancefloor stormer and three good tracks that seem unfinished to me. What this suggests is that I was really enjoying the tracks and didn't want them to end! A promising ep and it would be great to see more by these guys, especially if pressed to vinyl, not to mention Proxeeus on vinyl - I would love to see Proxeeus on vinyl! ~*~

I'm grateful to Tsotsi for alerting me to this new psychill album from Suduaya, an artist I haven't listened to before. This is certainly thoughtfully arranged music, with carefully crafted mellower and slightly more intense sections. I particularly appreciated some of the twitchy guitar and the clicky percussion. I may, however, be one of those curmudgeonly heavy metal types that Tsotsi wants to recite the Bhagavad Gita to as he lectures them on their shrivelled hearts and overly analytical craniality because my cheese alert, admittedly often on high alert, goes into the red on this album - most notably when the sax utters its nasal sonorities on track two or when the predictable vapourous silky synth textures float by on nearly every track. Yep, I was thinking Cafe Del Mar, Buddha Bar, Om Lounge level cheesecore - lay it on thick - quattro formaggio. There's barely a minor chord on the whole album and the melodies are often nursery rhymeish. Call me a Scrooge if you wish, but to me a soul quest that does not involve facing, if not delving deeply into, the dark side barely merits the title Soul Quest. Indeed, for me a work of art needs to have salt and pepper, light and dark. The pitch black is as banal, uninteresting, and lonely as the purely light; it is contrast that makes for energy, propulsion, and intrigue. Even leaving aside this persnickety criticism, which I freely admit may be my bias, I do not think this stacks up with the classics of our beloved genre. It comes off as lightweight and superficial compared to anything by Shpongle, Entheogenic, OTT, Androcell, Carbon Based Lifeforms, etc. This is music for the yoga studio, the incense and crystal shops, the airport, and the lift in a Dubai skyscraper. As such, it is a triumph. ~*~

+1 for Roy Sason, Youth and Ovnimoon.

A good accompaniment to reading Edgar Allan Poe on perversion and Howard Philips Lovecraft on hermeneutic uncertainty and alien horror. Poe's theory of perversion was prophetic and only now are we beginning as a species to grasp its full import as we begin to reap the cruel crop of our bad seeds and benighted sowings. Far from patent leather and whips, Poe basically said that we all have the potential for perverse self-destructiveness, often planted in us in childhood by the constant "no" we heard and had to hear from our parents and peers (you know, kids want to probe everything and stick everything up their orifices...). Plain old ornery self-destructiveness shades into perversion when we go so far into it that the only way to achieve redemption is via full self-slaughter of some variety. That dark turning point is when our addictions, gamblings, lies, cheats, thievings, evasions, procrastinations, etc begin to seriously harm others. No way out but forward go into self-annihilation you might say is Poe's theory. But here comes the kicker: Poe theorised that this dark turning point is programmed into us by the desire of all matter to return to undifferentiation in his proto-science disquisition Eureka! - a work of genius in which he conjoined science and emotional psychology. Once we have messed up our karma, so to speak, by harming others, our body requires cleansing and expiation and the only way to achieve this is by returning to undifferentiation, ie God, ie the whole, which our bodies remember. We need to dismember ourselves to remember unity, and this operates at a subconscious, preconscious, physical level. In other words, it is our bodies which judge us - a classic inversion of our usual cranial narcissism. If we consider rightly of this remarkable and unique deconstruction of our narcissism, we can see that Poe has given us the tool to understand the repeatedly dumbfoundingly inexplicably stupid self-destructiveness of humans - from the mundane level of tail-gating on the highway when it is clearly foolhardy, or procrastinating on that term essay, to spending all our family's savings on gambling, or unleashing appalling orgies of xenophic mass slaughter via weapons of mass destruction. Very few such tools exist in the world and I hail you Edgar Allan Poe for being honest and clever enough to provide us with one. This tool is a key for self-liberation at the deepest level; as another literary genius, Oscar Wilde, put it: "learning to love yourself is the beginning of a life-long romance". If you've managed to read this far, I'm sure you will be glad to hear that I will not be embarking on an exhaustive disquisition about and analysis of H. P. Lovecraft's cosmic materialism, suffice it to say that Lovecraft was influenced by Poe and that reading him is required if you are to explore the full horror of what Proxeeus unleashes on the listener here. If you're a sick puppy like me, you will also need to become intimately acquainted with the scribblings of possessed demons like Clarke Ashton Smith, Aleister Crowley and so on, not to mention the black metal abominations of bands like The Great Old Ones and countless others. Leaving aside the background reading and listening that any researcher into arcane horrors needs to undertake in order to fully understand this latest Proxeeus album, I am left with an aesthetic question by this inheritor of Xenomorph's dark legacy: is this intense darkpsy album more grimly effective than the Goan horrortrance of At the Mountains of Madness or the black psydub of Celephais? To ask the same question another way, is Proxeeus a multiply talented multigenre artist, or is his true metier in one of the genres? For sure he leaves both psydub and Goa behind on this latest more full on album, which has galloping horse and machine gun basslines (the weakest aspect of the album to my ears). Which of these genres is he best at? I leave you with that question. ~*~ PS - My favourite Proxeeus albums by far are At the Mountains of Madness and Celephais. The other albums lose some of the spirit in going a bit too busy.

Humble apologies for raining on anyone's parade, but Equilibrium is a compilation of previously released tracks: Tracks 1,2, 3 & 7 were originally released on "Transparent" on CD and vinyl on Plusquam Records in 2001 Tracks 4 & 5 were originally released on vinyl on Spirit Zone Recordings in 2002 Tracks 6 & 8 were originally released on vinyl on Spiral Trax International in 2001 Remastered and compiled in 2020 All tracks © and ℗ Steve Good 2020 The good news is that I have all these tracks on vinyl and I can attest to their phenomenal quality. I still rate Double Dragon's first album Continuum as Steve Good's best album (it is for sure the most psychedelic and most Goan), but Transparent is also great, albeit more on the progressive tip. One of the remarkable things about this second album is the superb production and recording quality, something which also stands out in the equally fine "Tin Drum" and "Cabin Fever" eps from that same time. Seriously good quality releases these - favourites for me for many years and sounding unbelievably good on a quality hifi. ~*~

Listened to this again 30/6/2024 - yes, rather derivative, but excellent album.

The thing about physical media is that it is just so much more memorable, not to mention literally tangible, than the anonymity of the giant digital akashic library in cyberspace. Yes, it is less green, but if it is good art that is being pressed, then that is not such a problem. What we don't need is trees being cut down for airport novels, if you catch my drift. I personally prefer the sound of analogue, even if the original recording is digital - it has a visceral warmth that speaks to my body directly. Goa trance sounds amazing on vinyl, provided you have a top hifi - mo psychedelic!