Fullon vs others and what subgenre is the face of psy

[Raferi]

Hey PsyNews, I'm new to the forum and this is my first post.

 

Why does it seem that there's so much hate towards the Full On genre? (Most of you guys just seem impartial to it from what I've read on various posts. And maybe some of you ignore it...) I've only known of Fullon as the face of Psytrance. Anything else tends to have a tribal sound. Which is definitely cool as hell, I would just consider it tribal music, and not Psy. But that's just me.

 

I'd like to know your guys' opinions if you show hate to Fullon, and either if you do or don't, which genre is the "face" of psytrance to you? Or maybe it's a certain sound, kick, beat, vocal, or whatever that does it for you.

 

I've just been curious.

 

EDIT: Some Psytrance sounds like industrial/futurepop

[Rotwang]

I think that people here don't hate fullon per se - the problem is that although the genre started out well enough, there were a few years in the middle of last decade when you had all these wannabe pop artists that just jumped on the bandwagon and made fullon that wasn't remotely deserving of the title "psytrance". That's pretty much died down now but there's still a stigma associated with the genre.

[acid-brain]

Melodies. We love goa trance for the melodies. The melodies that carry you away, that modulate and send shivers up your spine. For us, the bassline is a powerful element of the goa track, but mainly a vehicle to deliver the melodies.

 

Full-on minimised the melodies that were a core of the genre to us, and introduced a sound that stayed far too similar across tracks. Gone was the diversity of goa trance, the eastern sounds, the crazy, building melodies, and everything gave way to a bland bassline, delay feedback loop buildups (in every track). What's worse is that full-on psytrance started to get played at the parties that would have played goa before, driving a far more intelligent genre virtually extinct on the party circuit. Plus full-on frequently got really cheesy. It's too easy to slam down a psytrance bassline, a Terence McKenna/Anne Clark sample and some whoosy noises and ridiculously overstated breaks, and there you've got yourself a popular full-on psytrance track. But listen to the complexity of old Pleiadians or Hallucinogen; full-on just doesn't compare.

 

If I listen to psytrance, it tends to be forest-psy (Derango, for instance), since that is one genre that often retained the complexity and psychedelic-ness of goa, always pushing the envelope, without becoming boring. Rather than including half-assed melodies like a lot of full-on, forest psy often forgoes melodies altogether and replaces them with a bunch of weird incidental noises, which can sometimes be more interesting than the best goa melodies when they're done well.

[psytones]

Hey PsyNews, I'm new to the forum and this is my first post.

 

Why does it seem that there's so much hate towards the Full On genre?

Welcome.

 

It's about the drugs (and life). Full-on usually reflects coke, and other chemicals like mdma. Not psy.

 

sorry for short answer.

[Blair Thaumic]

Full on is a style, and like any style, it has a few gems and a lot of dross. Same with progressive, dark/forest, and melodic goa.

 

What I appreciated about 90s goa was that it wasn't a style. There weren't set rules for doing things. You had Astral and Pleiadians, but you also had Juno Reactor, Shakta, and Deviant Electronics. Artists didn't sound like each other, apart from a shared interest in more tuneful and head-expanding electronic dance music.

 

It's never going to be the 80s or 90s again, but I think there are lessons to be taken from the past and applied to the present scene. I don't care what you call it. I just want to hear something that makes me move and makes me trip while sober. The rules aren't so important, and I think both psytrance and goa confuse the map for the territory sometimes.

[Shpongled247]

...

Awesome post! +1

 

Basically for me full on lost a lot of its actual psychedelic qualities along the way. And there just seems to be endless people making the same sounding tracks, the same thing with progressive perhaps for me.

 

You have to go digging through more crap to find the true gems or the sound you are looking for. But they are still there if you look hard enough!

 

I definitely don't hate it as a heap of my favourite artists are morning full on oriented.

[mars]

Well said Earwall and Acid Brain!

Well, back in 2002, when FullOn surfaced, I was coming from the Goa times, where, indeed there were no rules and crazy buildups and melodies. I thought FullOn was way too empty.You know, that typical structure: boom boom 3minutes, uplifting break 1 minute, boom boom 3 minutes. No surpises, no dreams, only pure energy.

 

It was sometimes pleasant for a short while at the end of a party of in a festival afternoon, but I went to some parties where it was 12 hours in a row in a crowded place! And it lasted until 2011 or so. Almost 10 years of FullOn, and it was only getting worse: ultrastereotyped stucture, the fattest kick+bass possible, and even some lyrics. Only a few artists managed, in my opinion, to tell a story in their tracks: Xerox & Illumination, Optokopler, The Misted Muppet, Silicon Sound, Sulima, and to some extent Chemical Drive and CPU... all the rest was the same receipe over and over again. Imo the worst was Eskimo, the Everest of what Acid Brain describes!

 

Now I can understand that someone with a different music background may like it.

[kartoonz]

well you should refer to a couple of threads below to understand what quality full on is really about. I'm new as well and was surprised when i read so manu posts bashing full on. I still like them, those cheesy one's but to get a taste of real fullon listen to the albums mentioned in theses threads

http://www.psynews.org/forums/index.php/topic/67411-quality-full-on/?hl=full

 

http://www.psynews.org/forums/index.php/topic/66825-best-full-on-albums/

[Amygdala]

When full-on first started appearing, I was off it instantly. Mainly (I think) it was because Transwave got nuked, and Absolum booted up his Full-on-ish project. I have long since explored many styles under the psytrance umbrella - and now full-on is appearing more and more often. I have had a ton of melodies in my head over the years, and I find it nice to tone it a bit down, and go for the pure energy, as Mars puts it.

 

It's too easy to slam down a psytrance bassline, a Terence McKenna/Anne Clark sample and some whoosy noises and ridiculously overstated breaks, and there you've got yourself a popular full-on psytrance track.

 

I strongly disagree with this statement. I agree with the majority of what Acid Brain writes, but the quoted is simply wrong. Full-on (as I see it), is about maxing completely out, and get every single last drop of sonic power out the membranes of the speakers. That takes incredibly devoted effort, enginuity and study. Some of the overstated breaks are indeed ridiculous, but many are marvelously complex - it is insane how some people can tear a piece of music apart, and assemble it in a supernova without killing the drive and pulse.

 

I still write tunes. I like it too, but I am leaning way more towards less-is-more in the melody department, and then let groove and SFX max out instead. Tunes are predictable, full-on elements messes up the mind.... For me

 

- A

[acid-brain]

I strongly disagree with this statement. I agree with the majority of what Acid Brain writes, but the quoted is simply wrong. Full-on (as I see it), is about maxing completely out, and get every single last drop of sonic power out the membranes of the speakers. That takes incredibly devoted effort, enginuity and study. Some of the overstated breaks are indeed ridiculous, but many are marvelously complex - it is insane how some people can tear a piece of music apart, and assemble it in a supernova without killing the drive and pulse.

I have to agree that the statement of mine that you quoted was something of a caricature of full-on. I guess to talk of how bad 'full-on' is at least partially mistaken - it's like talking about how bad the 'Catholic Church', or 'Barack Obama' are. Sure, these things have serious problems, but there's also positive sides to them if you look hard enough. And I admit that lots of full-on is jammed full of effects and interesting structures, however...

 

I was going to compare Boris Blenn's later releases with his earlier goa stuff to try to demonstrate how even established and skilled full-on musicians produced very simple tracks, but then I remembered that early Electric Universe stuff wasn't exactly the most complicated goa around either, so Blenn wouldn't make the best example.

 

The truth is though, that once you've got your phat kick and bassline down, there isn't that much sonic space to add layers onto. This at once limits the amount of complexity that you can get compared to goa. In addition, previous full-on tracks have already tried just about every permutation of breaks and build-ups that you could imagine, so for me, making a full-on track just feels like assembling elements that other artists have already employed (if you can point me towards some full-on tracks that do really original things, I'd love to hear them). As Earwall points out, Goa has much fewer rules, and far more diversity. I'm still amazed by goa when I find tracks that seem to completely transcend all the elements that I had heard before, and I can spend all day listening to this assortment. Full-on... well I get bored of nonstop energy very quickly.

[Dolmot]

I call it nothing-on, as in "99 channels but there's nothing on".

[Amygdala]

I have to agree that the statement of mine that you quoted was something of a caricature of full-on. I guess to talk of how bad 'full-on' is at least partially mistaken - it's like talking about how bad the 'Catholic Church', or 'Barack Obama' are. Sure, these things have serious problems, but there's also positive sides to them if you look hard enough. And I admit that lots of full-on is jammed full of effects and interesting structures, however...

I definetly agree on that - I don't think my taste has changed that much, but I think I have gotten better at finding the gems (the ones that are gems for me...), when it comes to full-on. I still dig melody heavy stuff, but timbre oriented music without (not bereft or void of, though) tunes are shining more and more through these days.

 

 

>The truth is though, that once you've got your phat kick and bassline down, there isn't that much sonic space to add layers onto. This at once limits the amount of complexity that you can get >compared to goa

But, to mee, that "limited sonic space" is exactly where it's at - this is where the craft comes in, and separates the artists from the herd. The expertly built rhythm section is rare enough, but when it is accompanied by solid atmospheres on top, blasting away, that's pretty decent! Limited sonic space or not, it is never actually "limited" - sonic space, however much constricted, is infinite.

About complexity - I don't see melody as something separate from groove, fills, SFX, ... that can add complexity. Two different noise sweeps can be just as different as two melodies, major and minor. The difference between them can even be greater, bit-by-bit. It's probably just a matter of taste and attention...?

 

> In addition, previous full-on tracks have already tried just about every permutation of breaks and build-ups that you could imagine,

That can be said about melody as well. Maybe even more so, as they have been around far longer.

 

> Goa has much fewer rules, and far more diversity

That is definetly true! Genre-discussions are always tricky, because Goa having fewer rules, just means it's less of a genre... It would be like saying "I like cake better than fois-gras". While true, it's a pretty weak statement... Thinking about it, to your credit, your definition of "Full-on" is probably waaay tighter than mine (as my definition of Goa is tight as... Sumthin' really tight!). I am a dunce with styles and genres, so that's probably just it

 

Sorry about the colours, I am not quote-formatting 1337, so it helps me this way.

 

Hmmm, I just realised what I missed about Psynews - good talking!

 

- A

[Raferi]

Wow thanks for the awesome replies, guys!

 

I read somewhere that psy usually has no melodies, but trippy sounds and like, 1 measure melody rotations. But it is up to the artist what to do...

 

I partly agree that fullon is pretty easy to bust out a song. All you need is 4x4 beat with 0111 or 0011 bassline, quick breaks at the end of a bar, and some fancy FX here and there haha. But to make it unique, I believe you need to sample or use interesting synthesis for your FX and just overall, make it unexpected. (But even expected sounds can build hype!) I like the "emptiness" of fullon, but it needs to be used in moderation to create energy in the audience.

 

...Why don't we learn from goa if it's so intricate, and add those elements to fullon? The kick and bassline is really all you need to make it dance/trance. I don't know.

[Veracohr]

I read somewhere that psy usually has no melodies, but trippy sounds and like, 1 measure melody rotations. But it is up to the artist what to do...

 

Sounds like someone equating bad, cookie-cutter fullon with the entire genre. Or dark psy, which can often be minimal in the melody department because it focuses on other stuff. Either way it's not accurate to equate the whole umbrella genre of psytrance with one sub-genre.

 

But it might be accurate to say that fullon is the "face" of psy, from the perspective of non-fans, because it's the most widespread and prominent type. That doesn't mean I'm necessarily happy about the fact.

 

 

 

...Why don't we learn from goa if it's so intricate, and add those elements to fullon? The kick and bassline is really all you need to make it dance/trance. I don't know.

 

Considering fullon grew out of goa/psy from the 90's, it's not like fullon producers are unaware of goa. They just choose to do otherwise. But there are of course those who do try to blend goa and fullon, to varying degrees of success.

[Imba]

 

Considering fullon grew out of goa/psy from the 90's, it's not like fullon producers are unaware of goa. They just choose to do otherwise. But there are of course those who do try to blend goa and fullon, to varying degrees of success.

 

Billy does it nice!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VTlPrp4IKI

 

 

I want to see this combination often. This is like 70% goa and 30% fullon for me. You can often hear it in goa sets... and really works great on dancefloor!