So how do you perceive/define Psytrance?

[Ormion]

Ok after the ongoing discussion in the Psytrance vs Full On thread I want to see how each one of you perceive/define psytrance. Apparently there are many different opinions, I added both nectarios view and mine.

 

There is multiple choice option in the second and third question.

 

If you don't agree with any option plz write your own views.

[IronSun]

To me, Psytrance is the metagenre under which a plethora of subgenre's can be classified such as but not limited to full-on, Goa, psychedelic progressive, dark, suomi, etc...

[sickdogs]

I can understand where nectarios is coming from because I do feel a little uneasy sometimes when I'm adding the genre tags in iTunes.

 

 

For example:

 

Older stuff: Infected Mushroom, Hallucinogen etc. I don't like putting under Goa.

 

Recent: Master Blasters, Logic Bomb, Kadasarva, Talpa etc. I don't like putting under full on.

 

 

However the distinction is really quite unclear, and for some reason I don't like having music catergorised as just psy trance when i sub catergorise everything else.

 

The way I roughly see it:

* Psy Trance

- Goa - Full On - Dark -Prog

 

For me that's good enough, categorising anymore is just a nightmare lol. Other terms I just call the 'style' ....Although I am starting to like Zenonesque as a genre in itself

 

Psy Techno is just psy techno or tech-trance. Can be integrated nicely into a dark prog set lol

[Ormion]

I do agree that there are many arists that don't belong to a specific genre.

Talpa's debut album is a perfect example. It's not Goa, Full On, Suomi or any combination between those. I just call it plain psytrance.

But that doesn't change the fact that I also call the other subgenres psytrance as well.

If a track belongs to a genre with an established name I prefer to tag is as that, since it's easier to find it.

[PRS]

Evolution vs Creationism was at least comical. Was this really necessary?

[Ormion]

Was this really necessary?

 

No one said it is.

[GagaISM]

Psytrance is obviously an acronym of the two words "psychedelic" and "trance", and that is exactly what Goa is. The Techno sub-genre trance mixed with the "bleeps and blops" of psychedelic rock music. The reason why people started using the term Psytrance instead of Goa was because a lot of the artist inspired by the initial Goa wave/sound had no personal relation to Goa as a physical location and scene. They had simply never been there. That's why Koxbox described themselves as Psychedelic Trance instead of Goa. This is the way Peter Candy explained it to me.

[abasio]

I use psytrance as the umbrella term with prog, dark etc as subgenre's.

With Goa & Psy I have never quite understood the distinction & I end up thinking of old stuff as Goa and new stuff (including what is touted as neo-goa) as Psy. Goa for me is a feeling, the feeling of being new to a scene and it really blows you away.

[Tatsu]

Besides the fact that it's a rather personal thing what psytrance exactly means there comes also the local component into it. In Switzerland you talk about "going to a goaparty" if you visit any psy doof. Which means the music can be everything from darkpsy, full-on, actually old- or new-school goa, proggy or any other of the possible subgenres.

 

For me the use of the word psytrance or goa depends a lot who I am talking to. I would not write here that I'm planning to go to a goa party unless it is really goa that is played. But I do use that therm when I talk with friends and they now exactly what it means. Same for the use of the word psytrance. On one hand I use it like a subgenre (for example the first Hallucinogen album I would label as Goa, the second as psytrance), on the other hand I use it as generalisation for the music I listen to when I explain to somebody what I'm listening. Means if I say I listen to psytrance this includes, goa, prog and so on (at least if I talk with an English speaking person in another forum for example, if I talk with a Swiss person I would use the word Goa for the exact same thing).

 

In the and all those genres and names are just words. It comes handy to look for music since each sub-genre has a certain definition so people can make recommendations and compare stuff. But all in all those names don't really say much about the quailty of the music. I mean I'm not into darkpsy but still I found one or two tracks I actually dig. While I dig progressive but still there are a lot of releases that I don't care about.

[GagaISM]

I can't see why people have to make it so complicated. Goa is essentially a sub-genre of Techno (Trance) fused with "psychedelic" effects and sounds. Therefore the term "Psychedelic Trance". All the different sub-genres (Goa, Dark, Prog etc) share these characteristics and can therefore all be labeled as "Psychedelic Trance". It's that simple.

[Guest nectarios]

Alternatively people dont call goa, dark, prog psychedelic trance cause its very far from it, be it in BPM style and generally sounds used. Its that simple.

Me and a lot of poeple I know, don't consider dark, prog...etc to be psychedelic trance.

 

Lets face it, people like different things and it does not seem like we are ever going to reach a uniform decision on this issue...which is no big deal anyway. Its not like people who like dark, prog, twilight, whatever, are going to stop loving it or stop considering said subgenre, as psychedelic trance.

All this is good for wasting time whilst I bounce a mix, although meaningless.

 

Peace out.

[travbrad1001]

For me psytrance is a subgenre of Trance that includes a variety of subgenres (Forest, Twilight, Full-On, Dark, Suomi, Goa, Progressive, etc). A lot of the best artists don't stick strictly to one of these styles though, and have an interesting mix (even completely outside the Trance spectrum sometimes).

 

I only discovered Psytrance around 2002 though, so perhaps that's why I don't consider goa a seperate genre. When psytrance started it was all "goa" I guess, but it has evolved to include a lot more sounds. When Rock music started it was mostly just blues sounds, but it also evolved to include new ideas. Elvis and Olivia Tremor Control are very different sounds, but they are both "Rock" music.

 

I can understand where nectarios is coming from because I do feel a little uneasy sometimes when I'm adding the genre tags in iTunes.

I just tag all my stuff as "Trance". If I want to listen to some suomi-trance I know which artists have that sound, likewise if I want to listen to goatrance, etc. I do this with all my music too. All of my Metal is just tagged as "Metal", even though I have death/black/progressive/thrash/classic metal.

[Veracohr]

I go with the psytrance-as-umbrella-genre terminology, and all of the above being sub-genres. And psytrance (as a whole) being a sub-genre of trance. I don't think I consider trance a subgenre of techno, it's been around long enough and moved too far away.

 

I definitely have an idea in my mind of how 'goa' is different than other kinds of 'psytrance'. It's not a clear and concise difference, but there's a certain feel to a song determined by arrangement, rhythm, scale, etc. that tells me to call it 'goa' over any other label. Whether it's old or new.

[kathmandu]

psytrance boom shanker.

[mephistopheles]

Personally I use the term "Psychedelic Trance" as an umbrella .... underneath are to be found subgenres as Goa, Psytrance, Full on, DarkPsy, Proggressive Psytrance, Forest, ....

 

But that's just me ....

[Rotwang]

But that's just me ....

 

Not according to the results, it isn't.

[Panoptes]

in the beginning there was nothing. god was born. he created the heavens and the earth, and goa trance music.

[Penzoline]

Psytrance has all the subgenres in it that we all know and love/hate, but I personally seperate Goa from rest of Psytrance for various reasons. Somehow I've always just made a clear distinction with goa and other form of psytrance. It's definitely subjective but it, for some reason, just makes perfect sense to me. There's just something about the sound that makes the clear difference between the two.

 

Actually I also seperate psytrance from full-on, darkpsy etc. because there are releases that don't really fit those (subjectiveish) extremes, like Fragletrollet, Cybernetika or Principles Of Flight. So those are just psytrance and others that fit the bill on something like full-on are a subgenre of psytrance.

 

So kinda like this..

 

Psytrance

-Goa

-Psytrance

*Full-on

*Darkpsy

*Psyprog

*Suomi

[frozen dream]

[cyborg]

psy is psy, goa is goa etc.

 

simple as that.

[remnant]

[the goa constrictor]

Everything is psytrance

[Scandinasia]

Psytrance is 3 things :

 

 

1_It is trance that is psychedelic, and begins with Goa trance in the late 80's.

2_It's a term used to distinguish Goa trance from less organic, more modern forms of 604. It includes darkspy, full-on, prog, and all that is not Goa.

3_It's a precise form of psychedelic trance that is not full-on, not dark and not full-on and that sounds like forest, but with a more tech-ish feeling.

 

Example :

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAZ0y8kOY8k

 

 

So, psytrance is :

 

1_all psychedelic trance including Goa

2_all psychedelic trance, excluding Goa

3_a specific subgenre

[franki]

Interesting poll.

 

Back in the 1990s when I first started going to trance parties in the UK, the flyers first called it "Psychedelic Techno" then "Psychedelic Trance Techno" and they were playing what we now call Goa Trance. (We did then too, in the main.) The techno term seemed to be dropped later, but there was by then a very clear difference between the trance at these parties and the music at techno nights, so that's not a surprise.

As I understand it, the term Psytrance came about when the music started to evolve from Goa Trance, as it wasn't Goa, but clearly was related.

My personal view is that Psytrance is an umbrella term now, covering all the various sub-genres, from Goa to Darkpsy and even Hi-tech, but I'm nor sure a lot of Prog should be included.

To be fair - if you look at Psyshop's listings, they seem to feel the same. They have a Prog catergory and then Psytrance which covers everything else. (Apart from techno, chill, dub etc, obviously.)

 

I could be coerced into accepting Prog under the Psytrance banner, but some of it is so commercial and clinical sounding, with no twisted effects or suchlike, that it has little in common other than the 4/4 beat, IMHO.

 

Having said that, for the sake of convenience, I sometimes use the term psytrance to mean:

 

"a precise form of psychedelic trance that is not dark and not full-on and that sounds like forest, but with a more tech-ish feeling."

Others might still call this full-on, but I see this music as a mile away from your standard Nano style offerings and calling it "twilight" seems a bit silly.

 

 

[Rotwang]

To be fair - if you look at Psyshop's listings, they seem to feel the same. They have a Prog catergory and then Psytrance which covers everything else. (Apart from techno, chill, dub etc, obviously.)

Goastore does the same thing. I don't get it myself. I'm no fan of psyprog either but...

 

 

some of it is so commercial and clinical sounding, with no twisted effects or suchlike, that it has little in common other than the 4/4 beat, IMHO.

... while the above is true, IMO it's true for the other subgenres as well (albeit to a lesser extent), and there does exist progressive trance that has as much in common with psytrance as it does with regular prog. Excluding it from the psytance umbrellla just seems kind of arbitrary.