simorq Posted June 25, 2009 Share Posted June 25, 2009 So, I stumbled upon this review of Radio posted on Discogs and was pretty surprised. I only got into psytrance a couple years ago so I'm very much still learning about it all. You can read the review, but the reviewer's first sentence pretty succinctly spells it out: "This is the album that destroyed the original goatrance sound." Being the experts that you all are, do you think this is a fair appraisal? Or is this inaccurate? The reason I made this thread in not to rehash 'is goa dead?'....I personally am not concerned that it is, I find lots of new stuff out there + all the old stuff. There is a lot of passion for goa still. I'm just trying to learn more history of goa/psy. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ormion Posted June 25, 2009 Share Posted June 25, 2009 IMO Radio was just another album, it didn't destroy anything. However more and more artists took that path of repetetive, techno style which eventually led to the 2000 a.d. the year that melodies in psytrance officially dissapeared. Now about Radio itself never really cared that much about it tbh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest antic Posted June 25, 2009 Share Posted June 25, 2009 Look at it from another perspective. Maybe if it wasn't for Radio, we wouldn't have today so much (main) sub-styles of 'psychedelic trance', including: old-school, full-on, darkpsy, techtrance, suomi and progressive? I know most people are fixed on one/two sub-genres and despise everything else, but there's a lot of quality releases in each of them and personally I'm glad we have this diversity. And regardless of everything, Radio is just wicked release on its own, no matter what was its influence on the genre. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amphiton Posted June 25, 2009 Share Posted June 25, 2009 "This is the album that destroyed the original goatrance sound." This statement is spiral, they said exactly the same thing before about Astral Projection bringing cheesiness to goatrance, and you can check forums for the same phrase regarding later albums, which took other directions. You can even change 'goatrance' to any other genre's name and it can be applied to any musical context. Psychedelic trance is evolving and albums like this one, though I don't enjoy it, take the genre to the new horizons and it's normal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ritual om Posted June 25, 2009 Share Posted June 25, 2009 radio is not goa trance.it's far away from goa trance.it's like saying that powermetal destroyed epic metal. psy trance music took a turn in the gms sound,which is totally irrelevant with what radio has to offer. musicwise radio is a masterpiece.new ideas,mixed together in a complex and innovative way,creating a unique story,an atmosphere that is sucking you in its own magic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otto Matta Posted June 26, 2009 Share Posted June 26, 2009 I disagree. There were other forces at work at the time to take Goa trance into a more minimalistic vein. Radio seems to get blamed because it was more present in comparison to others. Planet B.E.N.'s Trippy Future Garden, for instance, was released two years earlier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simorq Posted June 26, 2009 Author Share Posted June 26, 2009 Yes, I think I grok. Thanks, fellers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LLB Posted June 26, 2009 Share Posted June 26, 2009 X-dream has never been a real Goa band, check their first tunes, check the history discography of Tunnel records... X-dream at first was an over the norm creative kinda hardtrance band due to his presence on Tunnel rec. (re-listen Children of the last Generation, Zebra, Trip to Trancesylvania) then little by little they get closer to the the psy scene & "Radio" was one of this perfect example just by bein licensing on mythic uk Blue Room label. The second thing is that quite quickly Marcus Maichel has incorpored his dark, minimal,tech desire directions inside the X-Dream stuffs & obviously, their sound definitively evolves less harmonic & melodic for more stomper, roouger sounds with this album. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mars Posted June 26, 2009 Share Posted June 26, 2009 Well, all this depends on your point of view. A point of view of 1998 or a point of view of 2009? You have to place yourself on the spring of 1998 first. Tandu and Oforia albums had been released, Xerox & Feeman too...3DVision in France and Twisted, Dragonfly, Phantasm in the UK were raging too. Parties were completely crazy; it was 100% absolutely uplifting Goatrance all over the place, and reaching heights. Looking back at it, maybe we had actually reached the top and the movement was about to be longing or something else. When "Radio" tunes arrived in DJ hands, with their earthquake bass, pounding rhytmic, etc, it was a real eruption, something so different, almost refreshing despite its heaviness. The Delta track "As a Child..." was also turning around and, well, people went crazy on them all. At the core of the night it was compulsory for a DJ to play XDream tracks. At the time everyone, absolutely everyone loved the music. It is absolutely right imo that "Radio" changed the face of Psytrance, and very suddenly. It initiated the minimal phase (1998-2001, remember Intact Instinct, Shiva Chandra, etc) during which melodic goatrance almost disappeared. And I remember that, at the time, many people blamed X-Dream for that, not for Radio itself. The same peoople that praised the new musical approach in the first place See how little it takes to pass from a "changer" to a "destroyer", and the contradiction? But looking back again from my 2009 POV, I wonder if "Radio" didn't actually save the movement before people got tired of Goatrance, by introducing something totally new! Radio is kindof the same as Atmos' Headcleaner in the sense that it introduced new Psychedelic music trends, created discussions and criticism, and finally became all-time classics (difference is Headcleaner was much more criticized and is now recognized as one of the first progressive albums). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simorq Posted June 26, 2009 Author Share Posted June 26, 2009 Well, all this depends on your point of view. A point of view of 1998 or a point of view of 2009? You have to place yourself on the spring of 1998 first. Tandu and Oforia albums had been released, Xerox & Feeman too...3DVision in France and Twisted, Dragonfly, Phantasm in the UK were raging too. Parties were commletely crazy and it was 100% absolutely uplifting Goatrance all over the place, and reaching heights. Looking back at it, maybe we had actually reached the top and the movement was about to be longing or something else. When "Radio" tunes arrived in DJ hands, with their earthquake bass, pounding rhytmic, etc, it was a real eruption, something so different, almost refreshing despite its heaviness. The Delta track "As a Child..." was also turning around and, well, people went crazy on them all. At the core of the night it was compulsory for a DJ to play XDream tracks. At the time everyone, absolutely everyone loved the music. It is absolutely right imo that "Radio" changed the face of Psytrance, and very suddenly. It initiated the minimal phase (1998-2001, remember Intact Instinct, Shiva Chandra, etc) during which melodic goatrance almost disappeared. And I remember that, at the time, many people blamed X-Dream for that, not for Radio itself. The same peoople that praised the new musical approach in the first place See the nuance and the contradiction? But looking back again from my 2009 POV, I wonder if "Radio" didn't actually save the movement before people got tired of Goatrance, by introducing something totally new! Radio is kindof the same as Atmos' Headcleaner in the sense that it introduced new Psychedelic music trends, created discussions and criticism, and finally became all-time classics (difference is Headcleaner was much more criticized and is now recognized as one of the first progressive albums). Thanks for speaking to this; this is really what I was trying to discern from the review: was it that X-Dream's album was an unfortunate phenomenon for the goa scene or was it that a critical artistic mass had been reached and a shift/new avenues were immenent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mars Posted June 26, 2009 Share Posted June 26, 2009 IMO a shift was inevitable. And once again, at the time, nobody blamed XDream for the Radio music. Criticism arrived after, when all artists turned to making minimal and goatrance almost disappeared. Many people believed these artists had changed their style because they saw XDream stuff worked on the dancefloor. I do believe that for some of them, and it didn't only happen for the minimal. Check Boris Blenn's trajectory for example... Now, just listen in a row to Etnica's Nice Toy (1998) and tracks like Warriors or Robot Rebellion (2000) that arrived during the minimal era. You could understand that some people wanted to find a culprit for this change ahahah [the example is a wrong one I know] Things like that happen in any kind of music. Just look at Rock'n'Roll and how it evolved between the 60's and later the 70's, 80's, 90's. Change is inevitable because there are new artists, because they want to demarcate, because this is art. What people say depends on the context, and more often than not, points of views change over time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LLB Posted June 26, 2009 Share Posted June 26, 2009 If X-Dream should be blame for one of their album, it wouldn't be Radio but i'd rather say about "we interface" but it's another debate... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.