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Best Neo-Goa album in the past five years?


healium

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Probably my favorite neo-goa wasn't even a full album, rather the 2 free releases from Sky Technology at Ektoplasm:

 

http://www.ektoplazm.com/free-music/sky-technology-time-space

http://www.ektoplazm.com/free-music/sky-technology-next-visions

 

"Mindsphere - Patience for Heaven" is great too though.

 

To be honest I'm not the biggest neo-goa fan either. When it's done right it's amazing, but most of it just sounds too "perfect" and doesn't have enough soul IMO. Just packing as many random melodies as possible into a track doesn't do it for me.

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And now I notice that I fell in my own pit by jesting about multiple listings. Gah.

 

I say...Radical Distortion - Psychedelic Dreams. It's rough and tough and doesn't sound like listening to a Tiësto CD at 145 BPM. It's the CD you can mosh to. There's no chance of confusing it with any other newschool release.

 

But of course, some other day the answer might be Filteria, PortaMento or Artifact303. That's the pitfall with choosing a single release...

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Thanks again for the suggestions! Surely going to check out the Mindsphere album..

 

Yea my issue with the neo-goa is that the sound pallete is pretty much the same - both the fx and the melodies - they use treble notes/high notes for all the melodies - bassline underneath and lots of high note melodies - because of this it tends to all sound pretty similar..

 

I'd like to hear some goa style but with those really trippy progressive/minimal sound effects and different tones to make up the melodies.. Dunno if it would be goa then but whatever..

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I'd like to hear some goa style but with those really trippy progressive/minimal sound effects and different tones to make up the melodies.. Dunno if it would be goa then but whatever..

 

To my experience that happened just before the millennium and people started calling it psychedelic trance instead of goatrance.

And it became mainstream...

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To my experience that happened just before the millennium and people started calling it psychedelic trance instead of goatrance.

And it became mainstream...

 

Lol, I was kinda thinking that actually as I was typing - "wait, that's psytrance"!

 

WIll check those out Depth/No Hitz

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I'd like to hear some goa style but with those really trippy progressive/minimal sound effects and different tones to make up the melodies.. Dunno if it would be goa then but whatever..

 

Thinking afterwards...

 

This compilation will fit you. It's more trippy (darker atmosphere), minimal compared goatrance in that time period with different tones.

And it still has that typical goatrance baseline and produciton (not like psychedelic trance)

 

http://www.discogs.c...ca/master/33241

 

Also check the Flying Rhino Records compilations (some) + Matsuri compilations (some)

 

http://www.discogs.c...g Rhino Records

 

http://www.discogs.c...uri Productions

 

You'll have to search, but if you start a topic about it, you shall get good advice ;)

 

I'm to lazy at the moment :P

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I haven't heard the Mindsphere or Crossing Mind albums mentioned, so my opinion may change, but I'd lean towards:

 

Portamento - The Portal

 

Although I've really been enjoying the Zion 604 VA - Flight 604. It's sort of a scrappy underdog story. It seems it hasn't been reviewed here yet, so perhaps I will, although I'm not much of a reviewer.

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  • 1 month later...

Just to update this - I'm very much enjoying Artifact303 "Back to Space" - listen to it quite a bit. Also finding very tasty tracks on the Erta Ale compil.

 

Have given the Mindsphere "Patience for Heaven" album a couple spins and don't yet get the hype - but will listen more while paying closer attention.

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The latest Nova Fractal is great and is already in my top 5 now.

If you are a fan of E-mantra - pathfinder and the Mindsphere waves, This is your thing.

It's a Suntrip experience released by Ovnimoon Records, they've got competition :)

I adore this concept of goatrance. Warm subtle long stretched waves, not explosive, super floating, but still euphoric...

Don't expect something new or original. You have to be a fan of that typical concept imo...

 

 

Nova fractal - Fractal Landscape (2012)

 

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Indeed a lot of people liked Arcana more because it's more varied and the style is a bit darker.

But Pathfinder is one of my favorites concepts of goatrance,

So it's a big imo...

Also I think you have to know the albums I gave for example pretty well to put my post in the right perspective.

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Well, I'm officially a neo-goa fan now - thanks for the help! Artifact303 - "Back to Space" is my favorite so far - very addictive music!

 

I will say though I think some of the goa needs more "signature" to it. One of the things that separate great music from good music is that you don't confuse it for anything else.

 

You should be able to hear a track and know right away who the artist is. If you can't tell and you think "hhmm this could be Dimension5 or this could be Cosmosis" or "hhhmm this could be Alienapia or this could be Filteria"- it tells you that those two artists need to have a more unique signature.

 

The best artists and albums are those I would never confuse with anything else - Hallucinogen "Twisted", X-Dream - "Radio", Hux Flux - "Cryptic Crunch", Infected Mushroom - "The Gathering", Koxbox - "Dragon Tales" - tracks from those albums will never be confused for one another.

 

I can't say the same for Astral Projection vs Chi-Ad vs Dimension 5 vs MFG, or for most of the neo-goa artists. There is much less difference in the way they sound - a discerning ear can tell them apart, certainly, and they are very talented and produce wonderful music no doubt - but the music conforms much more tightly to a certain "goa sound" than do some of the truly landmark albums in psy/goa trance.

 

I think what might help this is more distinct thematic melodies - a lot of the new school goa has nice melodies, but they all sort of weave together, and a main melody is not often repeated later in the same track - the tracks frequently lack a running thematic melody that ties it all together. Because of this, very often I can't remember specifics about a track afterward and I can't pick out the ones off an album I really like. The new Mindsphere album is a good example of this - with the exception of the superb title track, the whole album sounds great, but the music all sort of runs together. The individual tracks on their own lack a really distinct personality and signature thematic element. Making the melodies more catchy would help too - bigger "hooks" - a track can be very catchy and have strong hooks without being cheesy. Lots of these neo-goa melodies just aren't that catchy and so they aren't that memorable or euphoric/addictive to listen to. I'm not a musician - is it just that really catchy melodies are harder to make, or do these artists intentionally not make the melodies catchy because they want a different sound?

 

Compare this with Hallucinogen - "Twisted" - in that album, each track is massively unique and immediately recognizable, and I think it is in part because of the thematic melodies and elements that tie the track together ("Alpha Centauri" or "Solstice" for instance).

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