acid being

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.

I love tracker tunes. You've got some good rhythm there.

Please keep it going. As we get older other things take up our time but sometimes we also end up with more time. I'd been reading the site occasionally for many years but only signed up two years ago and am visiting much more often now and writing posts. I much prefer old style forums and if you ended this site the members would disperse onto multiple sites making a small community even smaller. I also love the feeling of timelessness this site invokes. People happily continue discussions inside threads that had been dormant for many years. It's trippy. Your average web surfer would get confused by that! The threads remain timeless because the great music is timeless. Thanks for all your hard work keeping the site running.

This track's actually not bad psytrance. I wouldn't call it groundbreaking but it builds up nicely with some slightly spooky sounds. It sounds more coherent to me than a lot of the modern psy, there's variety to the percussion, quieter bits and little bits of melody. Love the artwork as well.

Yes I like this one even better than version 4. It definitely feels like it's got more sort of space and depth to it. The quality is really nice and everything sounds well defined.

Any good? I know the sound quality needs some work. It's really hard to get it to sound clean when I turn up the distortion.

No worries. I figured you knew some of it but decided to share the links as they help me. I use the list of chords to help write my arpeggios.

About the music theory, I've just been learning what I can as I go. I'm no expert, very far from it, but just following some tutorials to understand scales (and modes), the chords of your chosen scale, and importantly how different intervals between the notes sound, give you most of the tools you need to start writing melodies and harmonies. This https://feelyoursound.com/scale-chords/a-harmonic-minor/ lists all the chords in the A Harmonic Minor scale which is basically the same as E Phrygian Dominant (just with the notes in a different order), commonly used in Goa and psytrance. It's an easy scale to remember because it's all white notes apart from the G# and you can always transpose your music to other keys later. After the above topics, this https://music.tutsplus.com/the-contemporary-musicians-guide-to-counterpoint--audio-4630t is a good tutorial for learning counterpoint which is useful to keep in mind if you want layers of melodies. Sorry if I'm teaching you to suck eggs with this, but it might be useful for others reading this as well.

There's a new version of the track now in the original post above. Yep I learned all about sidechain compression and I'm using it on the bass and tom toms now to slightly lower them when the kick plays. I've done the same thing to very slightly lower the lead synth when the flute is playing as well. There's a tiny bit of reverb now and loads of delay. Does the delay on the lead synth sound OK or is it overdone? I still can't get a true ping pong delay but it has different delays for left and right and I had to manually calculate the timing to match the bpm!

I use Ardour. The lead is an Alpha Juno emulator. You're right about the kick and bass not sounding very Goa yet. Those were just presets I found in the Xhip synthesizer plugin until I can replace them with something better. No I've not used sidechain compression before - I'll have a play with that. I've not done any mastering yet, only basic adjustments to the levels and stereo positions in the mixer. It's a topic I have a lot to learn about. At this stage I am a lot more focused on getting better at writing melodies and harmonies, and experimenting with synths and effects. There is delay on the lead synth at the moment but I definitely want to make the delay more noticeable as I think it will help a lot. You only really notice it when you stop the track playing at the moment, because there aren't very long gaps between the synth notes, so I think I need a stereo or ping pong delay. None of the delay plugins I have at the moment offer stereo but maybe I can route each stereo channel through a different delay plugin to do it, more stuff I need to learn. I played with reverb on another track but all the reverb plugins I had seemed to just make the sounds go kind of metallic and a bit messed up, so where I use it at the moment I would only put a tiny bit on, unless I'm after a very particular sound. I want things to sound like they are playing floating in outer space but I think better delay is the key to that. Anyway, I really appreciate the comments, thanks!

Yeah I'm not sure what you did but it already sounds a lot better, to me at least. The synth phrases stand out more and sound more interesting. I especially like the synth that goes into the breakdown from about 2:59 - it sounds a bit more melodic. I'm sure you already know by the later stages of the track it still sounds a bit repetitive, but that's easily solved as you develop it more. Good luck!

OK then.... Have a look here: https://www.psynews.org/forums/topic/77953-slightly-tribal-goa-track/ I'll have a listen to your updated one tomorrow.