acid being

Have you done any more to this? I'm interested to hear how it develops.

RA - Visions Altar Records - ARDEP79 Ever since Earthcall came out eight long years ago, to quote from this new EP I have had a Burning Love Desire for RA to release more music, so to say I was excited when I found out about it would be an understatement! This is a downtempo release in a similar sort of style to the stunning album Unearthly (which has recently been remastered- not sure how they could improve on perfection!). Whilst I would have to say this one is not RA's most complex material, as always it's impeccably produced, highly pleasurable and soothing to listen to and a solid addition to their catalog. According to the credits, the Visions EP is a solo work by Lars W. Lind. I believe this is the first release from RA without Christer Borge-Lunde's involvement, so it is an interesting chance to hear Lars' influence on the project in isolation. 1. Enthralled 6:49 2. Mysterious Thing 6:51 3. Visions Of Touch 6:27 4. The Burning 7:18 1. Enthralled A seriously mellow and chilled out opening track. The synths wash over you and seem to melt together in a delicious slow ambience. 7/10 2. Mysterious Thing "The soul understands what the mind cannot conceive." a voice whispers enigmatically. This track turns the tension up just a notch with a more exotic flavor. 7/10 3. Visions of Touch The textures on this title track are delectable to my ears and brain, especially with that bass. That texture of the sound evokes thoughts of the synesthesia suggested in the track title. It's more upbeat, even funky, compared to the opening tracks. At the halfway point we get intense layers of euphoric synths in a mesmerizing chord progression. Now we're talking! 9/10 4. The Burning This has a trippier feeling than some of the earlier tracks with a pulsating ethereal voice and layers of gorgeous soundscape. It's simultaneously mellow, ambient, upbeat and psychedelic, which is a great achievement in itself, I think. We get a female voiceover with an American accent about Burning Love Desire. The theme of love, desire and romance is nice and I believe a change from the more purely spiritual or philosophical wisdoms we get in RA's previous tracks. I'll let you be the judge of how well it works here I think. 8/10 All in all, a great and extremely relaxing release and I hope with all my heart that we will be hearing plenty more from RA in the years to come. 8/10 https://ra-altar-records.bandcamp.com/album/visions

Wow this is getting really nice. You are getting really good at making everything sound clean and defined. The first version I listened to, the bass sounded way louder than the effects but I just listened to the latest one on your home page and it is much better. Your kick and bass and snares sound great. You're making loads of interesting sound effects but best of all is the lead from 00:53, a really nice Goa melody! And even better from 5:53 as well. I love the wavy bleepy sounds from about 3:42 as well. Keep developing it. I like this best of all your tracks so far. I would keep writing more melodies as well.

I enjoyed these last couple of tracks and can hear the Hallucinogen influence. It's extra impressive attempting this kind of music in a tracker and your music would have probably equaled or even bettered the music of quite a few on the Ultrabeat site which I used to be a bit obsessed with.

I will have to get back to you about the best one. What I do know is I've been getting real tired of the galloping horse KBBB these last few days, especially if it isn't done too well. What sucks is I have exactly that in the track I am working on. I will do something different next time. Off the top of my head, Hallucinogen always had great kick and bass and they were unique. I think he had the kick and bass playing at the same time as well. I am also reminded of this track, though listening to it now it's the bassy acid that's memorable but the kick and bass were still really good anyway:

Right now I am eating some pasta and hanging around on psynews as I basically live here now! Also doing tiny bits of work on my latest attempt at a Goa trance track, pondering at what point a Work In Progress deserves to lose that label. If I aim for perfection, it will never be finished. If I release it too soon I will want to change it later. But I refuse to have all my tracks labeled WIP - it's getting too much like those 90s web home pages that forever had an Under Construction icon. Remember them?

In my experience attempting to fight for control of the usual music in a household can be as perilous a pursuit as trying to gain control of the TV remote. Sometimes it's best to pick one's battles no matter the existence or size of one's balls - especially if you value keeping them intact!

Rita Raga - Flowing Circle Altar Records - ARDEP73 The Polish multi-instrumentalist Rita Raga is my favorite psychill artist (well, actually favorite after RA if you consider RA psychill artists rather than artists that sometimes make psychill). This new (last year ) EP combines blissful ambience with harder and more psychedelic moments. 1. Rita Raga feat. I.M.D. - Green Meadow 05:42 2 Rita Raga - Sea Of Fullness (Cabeiri Remix) 07:38 3. Mina & Rita Raga - Zywa Woda 10:50 4. Rita Raga & Fyre Ô - Wide Blue Sky 06:24 5. Rita Raga - White Blossom (Outro) 03:49 1. Green Meadow Dreamy vocals and a trippy and funky guitar plucking sound over some lush pads make for a seriously chilled out and ambient feeling piece of psychill. 6.5/10 2. The Sea of Fullness The mood starts off slightly darker and slightly more psychedelic here, a sharp pitch bending synth twangs into the foreground and a light sort of glitchy beat plays along with Rita's enchanting vocals. Some nice chord progressions and a bassy kick take over the last part of the track. Nice uplifting gated synths at the end are reminiscent of some of the best moments on her fantastic Mystic Melodies album. 7/10 3. Zywa Woda A more tribal beat here and a more eastern feel to some of the vocals. Lovely bass accompanied by haunting whispering sounds. The production quality sounds great to me. This is my favorite track so far. At the half way mark we get a really nice kick coming in and we're into harder psychill which I found really enjoyable. 9/10 4. Wide Blue Sky With a blissfully mellow opening, the track quickly picks up with the beat and introduces some very, very trippy patterns of sound. A hypnotic folky guitar melody takes over the foreground. This is great. I get a strong vibe of Irish folk music. We get a weird higher pitched voice-like synth picking up the melody and some quiet acidic sounds. If I had to give this a genre, it would be psyfolk. I'm reminded a bit of Posford's work with Celtic Cross and yeah some Shpongle but this is easily as good or possibly even better. It's so addictive I was really disappointed when the track ended. I would love it to go on for 15 minutes! Maybe Rita can give us some extended remixes of some of these tracks in the future? 10/10 5. White Blossom The opening to this with waves of string sounds is so beautiful I could feel the beginnings of a couple of tears starting to well up. We get a gentle, slow beat, some quiet piano sounds, Rita's beautiful voice and a sparkly sound. And just like that this lovely EP is over. Again I wanted this track to carry on longer but it works just right as a gentle outro. 9/10 This is a beautiful EP which I am excited to listen to again, especially Wide Blue Sky which I am utterly hooked on! The first two tracks are closer to ambient / chillout than psychedelic to me, which is absolutely fine because sometimes that's exactly what you need to calm you down. I find all Rita's music incredibly soothing and comforting, a guiding light through any kind of mental voyage. If you haven't heard much of Rita's music before I highly recommend you start with her Mystic Melodies album which is in equal parts soothing, groovy and extremely trippy and there are some harder full on remixes on it as well which were just great even for this old Goa head. Flowing Circle shows she's definitely still got it and has some amazing collaborations. Wide Blue Sky though, wow I want to hear it again right now! 9/10 https://altar-records-europe.bandcamp.com/album/flowing-circle

To be honest I doubt most of those Guests on Online Users are humans. Could be bots and AIs. Agree with the contribute comment. Don't agree with "no balls" comment

Dude, how long would it have taken you to copy and paste it in your own comment? I mean, you may have a fair point but why not do something positive along with it? Yeah I know I'm grumpy too. Bad couple of days. FWIW I hesitate to put up youtube links myself because some artists don't like it and prefer someone listens to a sample on bandcamp or similar and buys the record...

Fantastic news Dok thanks. I'm listening to the opening track and it sounds just as excellent as his Elysium output. I love the way he builds up very unusual and strong rhythms by combining a number of different sounds. He is a master of rhythm. I agree about the texture too. Really excited to listen to the rest of this.

Moon Tripper - Hypnotic Frequencies Altar Records - ARCDA130 I hadn't heard of Moon Tripper before, the Dubai-based artist Brad Ashtar. I came across this album because I enjoy psychill and want to start posting reviews of new music here so I was looking over Altar Records' recent catalog. 1. Moon Tripper – Inside Your Head 13:03 2. Astral Waves – Black Panther Medicine (Moon Tripper Remix) 10:15 3. Moon Tripper – Mystical Realm 6:57 4. Moon Tripper – Transcendental 7:15 5. Moon Tripper – Arise 6:00 6. Moon Tripper – Hypnotic Frequencies 6:59 7. Moon Tripper – Dopamine 7:55 8. Moon Tripper – Spiritual Smiles 8:53 9. Moon Tripper – Elevated State 8:00 10. Moon Tripper – Earth's Consciousness 6:46 1. Inside Your Head: This has a lovely long build up with mysterious pads, slow flute, growly synth sounds, what I think is a sitar sound, tribal drums and later a nice kick and bass come in. A little reminiscent of Elysium to me but with the psy turned down and ambience cranked up I suppose. 6/10 2. Black Panther Medicine (Moon Tripper Remix): We start with some tribal voices and cool drippy sounds. The kick and bass makes it sound a little bit dark and we have some nice somewhat tribal percussion coming in then some really trippy melodic synths. Nice. 9/10 3. Mystical Realm: This track is harder and a lot more psychedelic than the earlier ones but still has a lot of ambience. A nice, slightly more irregular beat. 7/10 4. Transcendental: We continue the harder psychedelic theme with this one which is really nice with layers of squelchy synths and still little bits of ambience sprinkled in here and there. 8/10 5. Arise: A mystical sparkley opening with a female voice and some flutey ambiences. Then the driving kick and bass come in quite near the start and groovy synth stabs. It feels more ambient than the previous track whilst maintaining the pace and energy. 7/10 6. Hypnotic Frequencies: For the title track we're back to harder psy again with some really tasty acid lines. The production quality is nice and the pads envelope you with a real sense of depth and immersion. If you only have time for one track, listen to this one. 9/10 7. Dopamine: This sounds closer to pure psytrance to me. The light sort of synth-almost-a-flute melody is nice from about 1:40. Past the halfway mark I must admit I was losing interest a bit but the closing parts of the track were a bit better. As mainly a Goa fan I may not be the target audience. 5/10 8. Spiritual Smiles: It opens with chanting, then the standard kick and bass, and a fairly laid back mood with lots of weird ambient sounds and one meandering synth. Then from around 4 minutes we get nice acid coming in. A trippy breakdown where the chanting comes back. 8/10 9. Elevated State: This one is some crazy mind jumbling psytrance. Sounds to me a bit like darkpsy with the tempo turned down slightly. 6/10 10. Earth's Consciousness: We end with another serviceable psytrance track that's well put together but not really my cup of tea. 5/10 As primarily a Goa fan who also enjoys psychill and ambient but is less keen on modern psy, I find this album a bit of a mixed bag, but the good bits are great and the rest of it I certaintly wouldn't mind having on in the background. I deliberately listened to this before trying any of Moon Tripper's older music. It will be interesting to see if that is more to my tastes. 6/10 https://moon-tripper.bandcamp.com/album/hypnotic-frequencies?label=3714585001&tab=music

RA - Unearthly You may think I'm crazy. I do not think I am being hyperbolic when I say that I truly believe this album is the greatest musical work of all time. Sure, there are classical pieces that may be more technically impressive in terms of composition and performance, but I make this judgment based on the end result, the acoustic experience that the listener is transported into. To take everything that is great about classical music and then adopt synthesizers, creating sounds, textures and subtle effects that are simply impossible with a traditional orchestra, that's surely how you go about making the best music we can possibly hear on this planet at this present time. But even in the world of synths, Klaus Schulze, Jean-Michel Jarre, nobody has ever equalled the best moments of this gorgeous album. 1. Floating Shrine of Inanna Inanna is an ancient Mesopotamian Goddess associated with love, beauty and fertility (also war but let's skip over that for this music) and I really feel those themes infusing this deliciously mellow and warm track which immediately draws you into RA's world. The vocal sounds by Marthe Borge-Lunde Pfirrmann are lovely and very much add to the ambience. This music awakens my visual imagination and as the title suggests I do get a picture of an ancient eastern temple floating on a rectangular platform high above the clouds. 10/10 2. Rain No Water The title of this track suggests a tragic twist of fate to me. Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink? The looping pattern of the main melody does evoke the idea of rainfall and the mood may be very slightly on the melancholic side but the overall impression is one of soothing ambience and warmth, as well as an epic sense of scale and awe. It's also another stunningly beautiful piece of music. 9/10 3. Ascend From the intro, through the second track and now into this one the pace and intensity has been gradually building up. The voiceover on this one immediately reminds us of RA's previous albums and once again the words are deeply meaningful and inspirational as if they were genuinely transcribed from some blissfully benevolent universal intelligence. "Everything you see around you is what you create. And all you can do is experience this ascension process as it unfolds. Lived in the now." This echoes the wisdom on an earlier work that "There is only one thing we ever truly control: whether we are good or evil." Both phrases represent the idea that the content of our instantaneous life experience is determined in massive part by the millions of choices we make which in turn may be determined by our genetics combined with the information we learn from our travels on Earth. In this track there is also a hint of philosophical Idealism which is the belief that ultimately all of reality is generated by consciousness. This induces a state of awe and wonder as the beautiful track progresses. 9/10 4. Shift Now I've claimed the album is the greatest musical work of all time, by extension logically this track must be the greatest track of all time, and it certainly is my all-time favorite Goa trance track, and I believe Goa is the best genre of music, so yeah, I believe Shift is the greatest of all. With each track so far, we have been building up to this, and now RA absolutely pulls out all the stops. It's nothing short of amazing. We get some slightly sinister pads at the start and the first of a number of sci fi voice samples about space and time travel. Then we hear some tubular, erm, bells? - Let's call them chimes - that hint at the main melody to come. It's got a more uptempo beat this time and nice bits of acid. When it finally comes in fully, the main melody may just be a relatively simple sequence of notes, but RA have somehow uncovered one of the most mystical and intriguing tunes I have ever heard and what makes it perfect is the inspired choice of synth and effects. It sounds dark and very exotic and conjures up images of an early Medieval bazaar in the East where some ancient magic has animated objects or strange alien beings into dancing in wild circles. This tune plays over lots of exquisitely chosen layers with even some barking acid notes in the background. Towards the end of the track this main melody gets even better still as some subtle effects are added that make it sound even stranger with a sense of uneasiness. I'd love to know how they did it but it could be increasing the detune, flanging, some kind of slight pitch bend or maybe a combination of multiple effects. However it was done, for me it's the perfect moment in the perfect track. 10/10 5. Lifethread (Serene Mix) At the start of the review I mentioned Klaus Schulze. Well the moody, swirling pads in this one are reminiscent of Schulze's Timewind. Then we get an upbeat, optimistic arpeggio. That drops out to some moodier, growling acidic sounds which are great. Some gorgeous pitch bending synths follow and it sounds lovely. There's even a cute little xylophone that comes in to accentuate the melody. All that said, I do find this one less memorable than the earlier tracks which is inevitable given Shift is to me, musical perfection (Did I mention that? ). 8/10 6. Lightspark This has a fast kick and bass, a spacey synth and some nice little bits of melody. A light, playful track. As before it only suffers by virtue of existing in the shadow of the first four tracks. The fact that most of the tracks seem to have similar sounds means there's a risk this far in of things feeling just a bit samey. However, when those sounds are as warm, clear and exquisitely beautiful as they are on this album, I am extremely grateful for every track that features them. 7/10 7. Unearthly A catchy opening melody here is filled with love and hope and it builds with some faster, crystal clear trancey sounds. We even get a high piano to reinforce the strong melody over the driving, trippy beat. Then the goregous lead synth. This one is quite addictive. From the 6 minute mark we get some really nice interplay between the different layers and then the lead comes back again. 9.5/10 8. Celestial Slice This builds up layers of lovely, bouncy, oscillating high pitched melodies and then that stunningly gorgeous lead synth comes in again. It gets joined by the tasteful use of an acoustic guitar. A spacey and uplifting track. I agree with other reviews on the themes of hope and love. The title of this one makes me think of space, but also perhaps our celestial slice is the little slice of time and space we are each gifted with to experience reality, lived in the now. And thus concludes some of the most beautiful music of all time. 9.5/10 I cannot recommend this album enough. I generally agree with johnb820 and Jon Cocco's reviews and with the consensus that tracks 5 and 6 are the weaker ones, but in my opinion they're still great. As for why I seem to be the biggest fanboy on the planet for RA and Unearthly, I loved ambient and enjoyed a little bit of the older Berlin school output before I discovered Goa and psytrance. There is a bit of a retro feel to some of this music. I can't believe that for years I overlooked RA because I snootily assumed they must just be yet another new school psytrance project that only the kids were into, from what I can remember some troll dismissed their music and I stupidly took that as confirmation. I couldn't have been more wrong! If you love ambient, Goa or downtempo you simply must hear this! 10/10

This is a collaboration between Norweigan musicians Xerxes and Phoenix who is Marthe Borge-Lunde Pfirrmann, sister of Christer Borge-Lunde. She did some of the vocal work for RA. Some of Xerxes' earlier solo work is well worth a listen as well:

I'm just starting to learn about mastering and in the past it seemed just a little daunting, being so far outside anything I had experience of combined with all the talk of it being a field best left to highly skilled specialists with lots of experience. Since then I've read tutorials and have the basic ideas and techniques now. What surprised me is when I started to watch the spectrum plots of some of my favorite Goa tracks (some of RA's beautifully mastered sounds for example), they were pretty much just totally flat across the whole spectrum, at least at the important parts of peak activity in the tracks with the most instruments playing at once. Now, adjusting EQ to give a flat response for the key parts of a track seems really straightforward to me. There's so much talk about making sure the music sounds good across a range of different sound systems, but surely if the spectrum is flat, it's flat, and it leaves room for the listener to adjust the EQ to fit their listening environment. I guess if I were trying to master some rock music recorded live and needing to correct for anomalies in the recording environment, it could get more complicated. When 99% of the sounds are coming from software synths, surely you're most of the way there to begin with once you get the mix where you want it? I know about compression to increase loudness and I do use it on some of my sounds as well as filters to stop frequencies clashing but I do most of that as I go and not really as part of a separate mastering step. On some tracks I will look at just a little compression on the master channel to make them a bit louder. Is there more to mastering than I am seeing, or is it really this easy for Goa trance?

It still manages to be groovier than anything I've come up with so far! I enjoyed the sounds around 5:30 on as well.

Nice work That sounds really close to the Sheyba lead - do you mind sharing what shape waveforms you used? It's a nice mystical feeling track.

Nice arrangement. I think you're some of the way there with the Sheybaish sound. It sounded a little sort of thinner but that's probably just my terrible laptop speakers - I need to repair my headphones! EDIT: My comment was about an earlier video you put up. If there were two, I only heard the first. What waveforms are you using for the lead is it a saw?

In my opinion, Artha already has that nicely covered. If someone had told me Influencing Dreams was the new Hallucinogen album, I'd have believed them! I hope Artha's still active though. It's been eight years since his last album. https://www.discogs.com/artist/342098-Artha I agree though, it would have been fascinating to see where Simon would have taken that sound next all those years ago. Still, he made that new track recently, so there's still time for more uptempo if he wants to.

Yeah it would definitely make my top 20 Goa trance tracks at the moment. Sheyba / Elysium have the best rhythms and I love the way it builds up. Thanks for the tips. I'll keep playing with plugins - you've given me some good ideas. I was some of the way there before but then I got diverted into making music. I wouldn't want an exact duplicate of the lead anyway, just to recapture some of that lovely warm, bright, squishiness. If I had to describe it, I would say it sounds like a thousand glowing chocolate oranges caught some rays of sunshine and partially melted, sent tumbling, rolling, curling up on themselves and gurgling into a puddle of pure bliss! Yes, it's a great lead!

I think it is in Ganesh as well but my main reference was Ancient Lands. It's the synth that first appears about 3:30 and is playing solo (well, almost) at 5:28: When I first started writing my earlier comment, I think I was looking at the waveform at a point where there were other sounds playing and getting confused.

I've always slightly preferred The Lone Deranger to Twisted though the albums are similar and it's hard to tell exactly why. I can't rule out if it's just the fact that I heard the Lone Deranger first. But I feel like Simon was already evolving as an artist in that second album. His sound in the Younger Brother albums has more of a Hallucinogen flavor than in Shpongle to me as well. Learning and evolving as an artist is a separate thing to choosing to explore a different style of music, although they are related.

I can see where you're coming from. Most of his other work has more depth to it. I enjoy it for what it is, though, as I say, I haven't listened to it very many times. I don't disagree with that assessment. Flux is not his strongest work. I will give Codex VI another listen as well. I was personally a bit underwhelmed by it because with every new album I'm always hoping for something more like Nothing Lasts or honestly even something closer to Hallucinogen but I'm starting to accept that Simon has moved on. I found some of the talky bits a bit distracting on Codex as well but I'll give it another go and I'm glad others are enjoying it. Hearing Klaus Schulze when very young must be one of the main things that set me on a path to loving Goa trance and psytrance. I've not heard much Brian Eno; could you recommend me an album to start with? The more electronic, the better.

Interesting how much opinions differ because I think I prefer it to most of the tracks on Codex VI (I saw your discogs review of that), with the possible exception of Empty Branes. Nothing Lasts is currently my favorite Shpongle album though and I haven't listened to Flux that many times. It's quite a departure from his other music. I see it as a bit of an experiment.

https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/shpongle-simon-posford-20-questions-flux-contemplation-9414552/ Not sure how many of you already read this, but he says some interesting things. Probably the most unsettling bit for us is that he said his album Twisted now sounds "a bit irritating" to him! And Leftfield are great, but Underwold? I was starting to wonder if he was winding them up a bit. I mean, it's not the best interview question for a psytrance pioneer, is it? He also said he hadn't listened to much psytrance since the early 2000s. Most of the best stuff was before then so I think I get it. Worth a read anyway.