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Evolution of Goa/Psytrance


Shpongled247

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Are you happy with the way Goa trance evolved? Or devolved if that's what you think? Do you like the way things have progressed from the early days?

 

As much as I love old school goa I am equally as thankful to have been alive to hear all the things that have come from it since. Some wonderful genres in themselves that might never have existed if things didnt evolve..

 

I couldn't picture the scene today if the old school sound just never changed.

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I appreciate the evolution of goa trance and the skills/story telling abilities of artists through this music. I like how the melodic sounds of goa evolved into the more mechanical psytrance and then to progressive/minimal with resurrection through neogoa. We now have many styles developed over the past decade, some of them I don't care for, but the beauty is that every style has its own fan base. For instance, the popular fast paced dark psy has not got my attention and it is not my preferred sub genre.

 

Change is constant, and as other art forms music also evolves through time. So yeah...overall its good.

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I have been studying the evolution of electronic music and its culture for about eight years now. From what I know about Goa, 1994 - Now, the evolution of the genre is similar to the evolution of every other electronic genre. Simply put, people have access to more technology. Because of this, the psytrance sounds of today are much more diverse. Goa, however, strives on being nostalgic, simple, and engulfing. The whole "NeoGoa" movement, I feel, is attempting to bring back that vision and improve upon it. The famous album "Twisted," for example, is considered one of the best Goa albums to date, likely because it is often considered the first. It brought forth a new set of theory that really blew people away. The mastering, however, wasn't necessarily all that fantastic. There are many areas I think could be improved upon, earning the personal score of the album a 9/10. Now, we could reproduce it, and make it sound even better. There are people who will suggest the oldschool sounds are better than the newschool sounds as well. It is all a matter of taste and how you grew up on it.

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I think psy/goa, every electronic genre TBH, have not evolved. But have not "devolved" too. I said in another topic that I used to think in the 1990s what Goa would sound in 20 years time from then - in my imagination it would be so spiritualizes it would become sort of a religion, a philosophy, bring the best of young people who would listen to Goa. 20 years now, it is not even close to that. Worse, current Goa (with a few good exceptions) is dull and lost its energy.

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I find it funny when people talk about how newschool goa has "a few good exceptions" when one could say the same about old goa, although I do admit the ratio has changed. Also claiming there has been no evolution is either an outright lack of sensory perception or a sad misunderstanding of the term. I'd say, there was and still is a bunch of bad and/or average goa, however the difference in technological capabilities of higher processing power and better softwares has resulted in various changes and ushered the evolution of the genre's sound.

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I think psy/goa, every electronic genre TBH, have not evolved. But have not "devolved" too.

 

 

Excuse me Procyon, but I find this opinion very difficult to deal with. I think it can be safely said that music in whichever genre is in constant flux by definition, if it wants to or not. This is because every contribution by every individual and/or collective to a certain genre adds a bit (or more) of themselves to the repertoire of the genre and therefore expanding it and letting it evolve. Then we have the technological improvements and improvements in production through evolution of knowhow. Then again we have the other side, the audience which changes too and with it the music. And this is only three factors which contribute to the evolution of music, I'm sure there are much much more.

To me, saying there is no evolution in any electronic music genre is like denying the holocaust (excuse the harshness of this comparison).

As a second point, I wholeheartedly deny that modern Goa has lost the energy. For example, just listen to GoaTree's The Force debut EP. It's free. It's packed with energy, and I'm sure he's only just getting started. Then there's this new VA on Zion604 which has some awesome new tracks from the likes of Lapsus. Or look at Cosmic Dimension's Viral Breath on the latest Suntrip VA... And that's just from some releases of the last months, there's quite a lot of very good modern Goa around. Of course there's garbage (which will change with different taste into very good music, mind you) but there has been garbage since Goa was first conceived.

For me it is thrilling to see how Goa has become the handle to this giant umbrella of different subgenre's. I'm entirely satisfied with how the music has evolved as long as proper goa is being released, which is. You can say that it is a pity how full-on and some forms of progressive are evolving and how these kinds of subgenre's attract the largest crowd, but then again this is the same case with every other kind of music. The simplest forms of music always have (or get it over time) the biggest following, even within every underground genre I think. I also believe that judging the evolution of any musical genre is pointless as you can do nothing to stop it, it just happens.

Here you go, superb 'newschool':

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Good thing about nowdays Goa trance scene is that people can choose, there is enough of music that can be decribed as oldschool-influenced, even there are labels who dedicated their work to bring back some old sounds to the people, for example DAT, Zion604, Anjuna. On the other hand there are labels who are offering modern sounding goa trance music, so basiclly there is something for everybody, all you need to do is to do small research and dig a bit. If we decribe evolution as a change than we can say that psychedelic trance music has evolved and we got plenty od diversity (regarding the goa trance). Just take a look at the period between 2001. - 2004. and you will see how bigger and stronger goa trance music is now. I'm not gonna speak about other genres such as darkpsy or progressive because i'm not that much into it, but i'm sure that there is diversity in other types of psychedelic music.

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