How's everything changed?

[Oopie]

Hey-hey. How's it? This is a bit of a large scale topic to tackle but I've been thinking about it every now and then. 

So the main question is - how's everything changed considering psytrance culture? What do you think? It's obviously a question that's intertwined with our technological/social/human progression.

It's difficult to start making an analysis but to get things started... I'm arguing people are in collective terms less focused. This means what we "consume" needs to be easy and fast to digest. Any person needs to make a conscious effort to withhold a long attention span in the age is smart phones and social media. A shorter attention span is not the only thing - if you browse through endless amounts of data (phone/computer...), the creators of this data are in battle to win your attention. Your attention is money, straight and honest. It's views, likes and ad revenue. 

As you might have noticed, this battle is intense and ugly. It's almost like as if you've suddenly landed in this weird zoo with endless amount of monkeys hitting cymbals together. The loud and obscene run the show. Attention is also a drug like phenomenon, some people crave for it and are willing to take any measure to achieve it. And it certainly has been this way before the invention of internet, but nowadays you can't escape this toxic energy that easily. We're physically less in contact and digitally affected by behavior that we can easily classify sub standard. But isn't it so, that we've actually developed a skill to avoid the negative aspect of internet to some degree? That skill is indifference. People are far more indifferent than before. We just have to ignore a lot of things, because the amount of stimulus has significantly risen in the 10-15 years or so. 

In global terms the rise of indifference is great for the ones in control. But for the majority, for the planet, for the evolution of mankind... it's toxic. It creates a world of apathy and that's when things get dark when we run out of empathy and hopefulness. 

Let's see how the aforementioned, in my opinion, affects psytrance culture:

1) Drop of quality / When it's "fast-food" it means you only have to figure out a few things like production standards to achieve the pop-appeal. And sure, there's a place for easily digestible music and it can be fun too. But how about the very opposite? The ruthlessly difficult yet intelligent sound? The reason to do music, the idea behind it, has certainly changed for the worse. The big names are very clinical in their approach and pretty much create the same track over and over again. These days there's more ego & less Soul. 

2) Drop of interest / People are less engaged. Less focus means we give each other, not to mention our art, less time and appreciation. We hardly stop to admire a great work even when we hear it. We don't write reviews. Those take time and who cares! Right? That's just the way cookie crumbles these days.

3) No more classics / There's no consensus on what's good and what's not. Just a few single opinions at most. There's no real indicators of quality and popularity these days neither, because views and stardom can be bought. We can all probably agree Hallucinogen's Twisted is a classic yes? But come to talk about anything from the last 10 years I wouldn't know. I couldn't know. 

4) Less story-telling albums / ...and more digital singles! Because singles can be released more often therefore staying "active" as an artist/label. Activity is one of the key elements to gaining attention online. A full length album? Yesterday's antics. 

[abasio]

I don't think I've resonated with a post recently as much as this one. 

I've been trapped in this culture of quick fixes and listened properly to music less and less. 

 

I've been trying more and more to make the effort to stop everything and just listen to music like I used to do but I'm doing this by connecting with my past loves, so I've no idea about recent albums that can draw you in on a journey. I'd love to know them though. 

[Kriestof]

interesting topic, my viewpoint on your four topics:

 

1. who cares about big names? a lot of people maybe, but for me the best music (jazz, electronic music,...) is made by smaller or almost unknown people, people that dont make money with their music and that are never will become known by even a small group of people, from psytrance to black metal, from hardcore punk to modern orchestral music, in every genre you have music acts that polish their music and make it more generic to have succes, but you also have real artists in every genre, and both are fine, if people are happy listening to dojo cat or to cheesy full on psytrance, that's a good thing for those people, if people want to listen to obscure power noise records, that is also fine, but there is still a lot of quality music als in the psychedelic trance world, to stay on topic, but in every music genre it's the same

 

2. you have always have people that take their time to watch, read or listen to a piece of art, and you have people that are not, i can watch three hours in a gerhard richter exhibition to one painting (drives my wife mad), and you have people that only watch 1 second to a painting.....both is fine, whatever makes a person happy...i also think that people take less time for something just because there is so much to choose from....but that is also a choice, i have never possesed a cell phone in my life and i never will, this forum is the most modern thing i do, because i dont like distraction, i like to live in the moment, doing one thing, and when i listen to music, i always do that in the dark with my eyes closed, so i can really listen

3. whatever you like, thats a classic for you, it doens't matter what other people think, i only read reviews to discover new music, other peoples opinion just don't matter, i do not care what kind of albums other people like, i only listen to what i think are the best albums and songs in the world

4. there are still albums being made with a story, but my adivice is, make your own album (or playlist) with your own chosen songs from all different acts, create your own journey

 

 

the point i wanna make:  psychedelic trance is about complete freedom of thinking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Tatsu]

I can't really talk about the scene since I haven't been to a psytrance party in years. I also haven't been in contact with any psypeople for even longer than that.  But there is something I can say about the music: it's true that there are a shitload of forgettable and uninspiring releases (for my taste anyway), but as far as I can tell that is not exactly a new development. I think it only was different in the very beginning but as soon as goa/psy left the state of being something very undergroundy this changed. Which is what happens to every style sooner or later, especially since it's gotten easier to release tracks or albums and put them online instead of having to have a physical release to get your music out to the listeners. But for my taste there is still a lot of very nice stuff that gets released. I just need to do the cherry picking and dig for the stuff that moves me. Not only when talking about psy/goa but also when it comes to hip-hop, metal or other electronic styles like indie dance or techno. This can be very tiresome but in the end the output I get is more than just worth it. 

About the short attention span: a rather popular topic in the media but I can't tell if it really is as bad as some people say. Obviously there are apps like tik-tok or instagram where you can post and watch reels that only have a limited amount of time they can last. But they are not the only media available and also not the only media used. If you want something longer there are still regular movies or series, or TV programs. Reading book is still (or again?) rather popular. But we have to face the fact that life is faster than it used to be: technology advancing faster than it used to, news being available faster (and in bigger quantities) than before the internet, an overload of personal opinions available on the internet and what not. When it comes to music there seems to be the trend (at least with techno, can't say how it is with psy) to play only very short sequences of every track and mix in a new one very fast. Not exactly my cup of the and this indeed seems to be a thing with or for younger people. But that's how it is, young people want to try new things instead of doing the same stuff we did again and again. Perfectly normal for any generation in my opinion. Never the less most of the tracks I buy for djing (techno, progressive, indie dance) and also the stuff I buy for my private pleasure (the psy/goa stuff) are in a "normal" lenght. This mans despite new trends I can still function/listen in the way I used to.