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Let's be honest, Goa Trance truly emerged around 1993-94 and started dying in 2000, that's about 6 or 7 years of peak popularity. Then it came back around 2006-07, and now we are in 2025, that's almost 20 years of what we used to call new school Goa. Do you think Goa Trance evolved much in that time? After so long it's not surprising to see it decline, it's a natural phenomenon. Listen to a random Goa Trance album from 2023 and tell me how different it is from a 2013 album...

I don't really feel like getting into the pissing contest about how people (or kids these days) are listening to wrong music and listening to music wrong, but we can check some trends for sort of hard facts. One go-to place is IFPI's global music report. Right now the main site is acting up, but you can get a referring article or the pdf. For some possible key points: Music revenues as a whole crashed by about 50% from the late 90s peak (or "peak CD, no Napster yet") to the 2015-ish "how should we even get stuff" confusion low, but now they've actually made a new all-time high again. Nowadays the big money comes from streaming (51.2% subscriptions, 17.7% ad-supported, 69.0% together), but obviously not for everyone equally. Physical media is 16.4% globally, probably less in the US and similar countries. (You can find US stats separately.) Vinyl has outsold CDs since 2020. I still buy CDs and vinyl - for reliable hard copies and simply for collecting, but overall CD buyers are a small minority and people actually listening to CDs even smaller. That "I don't even own a CD player" boast was popular already 20 years ago. Today I know people who actually hoard CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives because their production is dwindling and eventually you won't be able to get any new ones even if you wanted. Anyway, streaming is how people get music. It's another story how "kids these days" listen to music. I'm not saying that everyone only checks six second video snippets, but I do think that swiping, skipping, shorter attention span and instant gratification are real trends. I'm obviously old and grumpy, but in my opinion psy-trance in general got a bit weird already in the 00s when it still insisted on 8 minute tracks, yet placed some crowd-hyping filter effect or fill in there every 20 seconds. It was different in the 90s when listening involved the effort of loading a physical disc, and a few minutes of gradual building was a thing, acceptable, or even expected. I don't know if I'm getting anywhere here but let's just say that goa, CDs, and goa CDs are on the losing side of major trends. Also, there is so much of everything that marginal stuff is ridiculously marginal now. I'm almost literally drowning in music and I'm buying it on physical discs. If I tried to follow even a fraction of all the digital stuff, RIP me. It takes me more than a month to process what I can easily get on a single Bandcamp Friday. I'll stop here because it's late again, but maybe I'll dedicate another message to Cronomi. Let's see.

its not a great album. in fact RA has a crappy sound quality. just listen to the highs, sharp annoying and generic boring egyptian-esque melodies. Khetzal did what RA couldnt, in making a proper album of this style. 😅 theres some parts that are allright, but theres at least 3 other artists who did it better, cleaner, and more well produced. sounds very amatuer the sound quality. 😙

@abasio I am with you up to a point. Throwing blame 100% on such people seems the obvious and easy decision. But I think things are a bit more complicated. Firstly, in some countries in Europe (or in Greece at least), even though the governments were very late to take precautionary measures in the beginning of the pandemic, after much harm had been done and the vaccines were out, they were trying to force the people do the vaccines. This made people suspicious and reactive. There was, and still is, a significant number of people that did the vaccine but still feel repulsion that they were forced to do it in order to keep their jobs. Secondly, the vaccines for Covid were developed urgently and the whole procedure took much less time than it normally does to develop a vaccine. If anyone raised a doubt, they were called conspiracy theorists, idiots, and so on. So, in Greece, instead of encouraging people to do the vaccine for the public welfare, the government's way of dealing with the problem was something like "shut up and do the vaccines otherwise you are anti-scientific idiots and you will lose your jobs." Thirdly, there were some reasonable concerns. AstraZeneca, for instance, has infamously been involved in several scandals, which has tarnished its reputation. And, if I remember correctly, some countries suspended the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine after some reported deaths related to it. And regarding the widely used Pfizer vaccine, so far as I know this is a completely new type of vaccine, so I suppose it is not completely unreasonable if someone wants to wait a few years to be convinced that it has no long-term negative health effects. Finally, poor practices have indeed been reported during Pfizer's pivotal trial of the vaccine. See this paper for instance, from the very respected and reliable British Medical Journal. https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635 So, I think it is unfair to point as idiots or extreme right-wing fascists etc. all the skeptics of the Covid vaccines (sadly, governments and media manipulated the public to adopt such an attitude). Of course, those who refuse to use face-masks are idiots indeed. And the worst are the real fascists who deploy the anti-vaccine hysteria in order to attract voters. Anyway, these are my thoughts. No intention to give support to the person you criticised, since I do not know him. Either extreme seems wrong to me.

So many years have not tempered the insanity that is @CyclotronMajesty Every single post you ever made just dripped with conspiracy theorist "logic" and honestly was never anything I could take seriously. I always saw your posts as someone who just took too many drugs and completely fucked up their own mind. Seeing this post just makes me sad, not for you, because you have always been this insane, but for all the people that were brought over to your insanity during COVID. "Fake Vaccines" "Mask Hysteria" buzz words for the idiots. I live in Japan, everyone was really quick to mask up during COVID, and the vaccine take up was near 100%, the result was very few COVID deaths, yet the countries that resisted putting a bit of cloth over your mouth because it was so painful (fucking pussies) and distrusted the vaccine had 100s of 1000s of deaths. It's people like you @CyclotronMajestythat killed 100s of others. You should feel ashamed of yourself but I can guarantee that such scumbags like you will never ever dare feel like you were in the wrong and will never ever come to understand just how much pain and suffering you brought to the world

OCTOBER 17 - 2025 - RELEASED - SUNTRIP RECORDS track list: 1-1 Take My Hand 9:11 1-2 Children Of The Sun 8:09 1-3 The Path Of The Ascetic 10:11 1-4 Sacred Phase 10:50 1-5 Endless Ritua 10:43 1-6 This World Is Not For Us 7:40 1-7 Gone Like The Wind 8:03 1-8 We Can Never Go Back 8:54 2-1 Emptiness 10:09 2-2 For A Memory 21:05 2-3 Supplication 6:35 2-4 Everything Will Be Solved Today 7:15 2-5 Source Of Emotions 17:09 2-7 Heartfelt 4:52 2-8 Blurred Memories 7:55 3-1 Drifting Into Myself 8:13 3-2 Moment Of Decision 15:05 3-3 Longing For Something 11:18 3-4 Bottomless Pit 9:23 3-5 What Was Left Behind 5:30 3-6 Nowhere I Meant To Be 5:26 3-7 Impasse 4:16 3-8 Lasting Memories 9:36 3-9 Regeneration 6:05 Im not going to go thru each track. Ill just give an overall impression. There are very interesting pieces of music here, on all tracks. So i recommend if you like Mindsphere and New School goa, you will like alot of this one. But, something is wrong with the sound. I cant pinpoint it, but its very sharp, annoying and doesnt feel good. I think the wrong files was sent for mastering. Or rather, the wrong files was sent FROM mastering. Thats just my honest thoughts. Because it sounds harsh, digital, annoying, and the bass+kick doesnt feel well defined or pleasant. So while I might hear it in a technical problem area, you might not. But for me this reduces the grade ALOT. Cause, theres really no excuse for sounding bad anymore. Musically sure, but soundwise? no. Again theres tons of really cool tracks here, that I invite you all to check out. Maybe you dont hear the issues I hear. Afterall, Mindsphere is a great talent, so it saddens me that for me personally, this album goes into the trash just because of its sound. To me this music is WAY better than Astral Projection - For all Mankind. But the sound is even worse than it. Sadly. I cant understand what happened because his older albums did NOT sound like this. Again, sound only.... I hope I can come back to this later on , because i have lots to say about the music. But for now, unfortunately, the music will suffer due to unpleasant sound. And it is really sad, because the music deserves SO much better. 2.5/5 The best thing about this massive album is that he reprises or remixes alot of famous melodies. Thats worth the listen alone.

Congrats Reger 👍

Maybe we need a cassette player global plugin for our os 😋 Yeah it is a good album I'm just kinda waiting for the (hopefully) inevitable remaster/proper version to fully enjoy it. Tons of great stuff here.. Bunch of Easter eggs and hidden stuff that makes you go "oh, damn that's cool that's the xxx melody"

OK firstly, the music is pretty lovely. About harshness though, when I heard the first track I was going to say any harshness was a marginal thing, maybe hidden by my tinnitus. But I heard the second track and I started to notice it more. It is not the worst ever, but it is enough to notice, and enough that if I crank the volume my ears will start to get tired after a couple tracks or so. Across the whole album though, some tracks are more tolerable in that regard than others because they don't all flood the upper mids all the time. I wonder if it is just due to the fashion of cranking up the upper mids to increase perceived loudness, which isn't such a great idea for Goa because most Goa fans won't want to feel like someone is hammering metallic objects right into their ear drums, well IMHO anyway. Maybe we just need a cassette version AP! Good album.

this one surely is a spiritual healing version. one of the better ones then again i dont think it sounds that good tbh. sonically it lacks in alot of departements. .

haha thats funny. same chord progression on the bass, but i think its a key higher? i wouldnt call this a spiritual healing version per se, but its way too similar to disregard. hmm i think we need a spiritual healing versions topic 😛 i dont think this one really fits but why not.

Haha yes thanks, didn't know that one, could clearly be a remix, and it actually sounds really good, has the same chords but on top of that a different melody that fits perfectly... very nice one!

Even Fractal Glider has his own Spiritual Healing. A unique 8-minute track that radically changes its melody at around 04:09 (I love that kind of thing). For the first four minutes it’s this driving acid trance, and then at 04:09 — bam — the track turns into a perfect floater and a clearly recognizable Spiritual Healing. Fractal – Them (1999) https://youtube.com/watch?v=IY9-6lDyMdY

I am glad to see this forum still alive, although there aren't much new threads. Wish you the best webmaster!

Very good but not as good as the tracks on Shing Faces.

This is a very good track by MFG. I also like a lot MFG - The world is a narrow bridge

This is a very good track

pure psychedelic doesnt get much better

Thanks!!! ❤️ ...and only 10 copies left

I don´t remember you ever having on Facebook.What about Amen, which tracks are your favorites? ON AStral Files, why don´t you like the tracks I emntioned, I find them very melodic and good. Astral Files is a popular album among the goa trance scene, so I don´t understand why you like only one track. https://ibb.co/GvPCXv6M This is how I look now This is how I looked earlier https://ibb.co/FbX9tgbn

As Cronomi is unfortunately about to disappear off the face of the Earth I am listening to, and yeah in many cases purchasing, their various releases. I will try to do some mini reviews of some of the ones I have missed. Portamento - The Portal Cronomi Records – CRONOMI005CD 1. White Dwarf 08:41 2. 48 Hours 08:05 3. The Portal 08:07 4. Monkshroom 08:41 5. Injected Spawn 08:17 6. Biosphere 09:24 7. Vitamin E 07:56 8. A Grain Of Sand 07:33 9. Controlled Experiment 09:12 This is such a cool album because it really nails the sound of early Goa, with tons of croaky acid, highly resonant synths and classic sawtooth basslines. It is incredibly old skool and yet the sound production sounds a lot more clean and modern. It manages to be highly energetic, highly melodic and highly acidic all at the same time. Very, very good. Do Cronomi a favor in their last days and BUY IT NOW: https://cronomi.bandcamp.com/album/the-portal If you don't they will actually destroy the CDs! No joke: 8/10

Maximum Goa

I am the real radi6404, I can remind you of the talks about Monika or of my likings rarlier of Electric Universe, where I praised Electric Universe in the What are you listening to? thread more than Astral Projection. On Amien I like Chaos,, Electric Blue, Heavens Gate, Sticks and Stones, The Nexus, Electrogroo. That´s all. I don´t like the track Flying into a Star because of the one key melody, that is between the main melody at repeattime 1 and repeat time two.

I think it is disrespectful from the goa scene public not supporting artists by streaming all their music for free or on platforms that don't pay them I refuse to still participate in this charade and changed priorities, to do what feels authentic - the choice has been made ❤️

this is just noobs uploading stuff and titling stuff whatever they want 😛 theres nothing here thats copyright infringement. sure the bassline follows the exact same progression and to fans it is CLEAR he is trying to do his own "spiritual healing" but its not a remix its a homage if anything but nothing more.

you have a very strange taste when it comes to AP. for example you left out Nilaya out of your "another world" list. and you mentioned Ionized, zero, free tibet and kabalah on your "astral files" list and theyre all trash imho. Time began is good, utopia, electronic, ambience again trash. and you left out Enlightened evolution remix which is the single best one on that album and one of the best AP tracks full stop, top 3 without a doubt. your taste isnt Wrong, its just Odd, to me at least. i couldnt stand the sound of For all mankind so i havent listened to a single track on there more than once. it basically hurts my brain listening to it. but, considering your odd taste, what do you think of Dancing galaxy, which tracks do you prefer there, and which do you not like. again youre not wrong, everyone is entitled to their opinion and i respect yours fully. i just find it interesting. And one mans treasure is another mans trash and vice versa. but to answer your question i thought For all mankind was a huge fail. maybe in 5 years ill go back to it, realise im wrong. maybe. hard for me to gloss over the way it sounds though, its just too squashed and very very flat.

Understandable. Talk about the same boring lineups with the same well-known names over and over again! Not to mention the very high ticket prices for the festivals.They are not affordable for many of us. It's kind of sad that many people who go to festivals have deep enough pockets to pay for travelling costs, festival tickets etc., but not for an album. You're probably right that most of the new audience don't really care about buying the music or at least getting acquainted with relevant discography. They just want to go to festivals, even if they don't know who's playing. I feel the scene is becoming more commercialised, like the rest of Psytrance. Fast food for the masses. Not sure though whether the Goa scene itself has shrunk. It seems it's becoming more mainstream. The underground feeling is fading away, and instead you get big expensive festivals with extravagant, flashy decoration, and very prominent, levelled up DJ decks, as if they are some kind of superstars. They look ridiculous, egotistic attention-seekers to me. When the scene emerged in Goa in its most authentic form it was not like this; the dancing experience itself was the focus. There are more events and music released than 15 years ago. It's just that there is no "quality control" anymore. As physical format is gradually being abandoned, individuals and labels can publish virtually anything online, which is not costly I suppose and therefore not risky. And then you end up with tons of music released, most of which is of poor quality, and most of which almost nobody buys.

I think astral managed to create way more memorable melodies and patterns on the previous albums. This one was really flat. It felt the same as Prana's latest album, just really boring, although approachable stuff. There's nothing that sticks.

Yeah but random people named it like that, it's not considered a remix officially.

Very nice find. Yeah part of this one is nearly identical to spiritual healing. Two of the key changes are the same, two are not. Then you have the main screaming lead which is very close to the ending part of spiritual healing. Excellent find I've never heard this before so thanks for that 🙏 Did Juan gather inspiration from this? Very possible! Because there's no denying at some parts, it kinda goes in and out, there for sure great resemblance. 🙏🥳

Terra Ferma - The Scream (1996) I think that this track is where the roots of the legendary The Muses Rapt — Spiritual Healing come from. Just don’t look for similarities in the first seconds. The Scream has a very long build-up, and the part that resembles Spiritual Healing starts around 05:00. But again, not immediately — it builds up for another minute and a half, and then it becomes really similar. At least I can hear something familiar there. I wouldn’t call it plagiarism, but these two tracks definitely share something in common…

<<Then I read about Vaccine Electronic through the narrative that Younger Brother caved into pressure from fans not liking Vaccine, and I must admit this narrative immediately soured my expectations of Vaccine Electronic, because if that is true, it is rarely good when an artist works under duress.>> I dunno. From talking with Benji, I do not take this to be the case. Maybe you know more than I...

@Astralprojection, I also think that Time dilation by Pleiadians is one of the best goa trance tracks.

i guess the reason why this album got so many enthusiastic reviews was the fact that it was released in 2001 and at the time goa trance was dying because otherwise i agree with astralprojection the sound quality is very poor and now it sounds very old the album 9th is so much better

very boring album 🥰

This album is simply a masterpiece. Words fail... So beautiful, magical... It transports you to transcendental realms. The only thing I don't like much is the cover artwork. But who cares when the music is timeless!

I want to review this but I am not sure I can do it justice. Every aspect of it is beautifully and expertly crafted. It is so melodic, so trippy, so atmospheric and so meaningful. I think every single track is at least a 9/10. I stand by my claim that their later downtempo album, Unearthly, is the greatest musical work of all time. This on the other hand definitely makes my top ten of uptempo Goa albums. I am reluctant to award it a full 10/10 but then I cannot really find any obvious fault with it. OK, what the hell then: 10/10

Hmm. I think there's a difference if the user himself asks for a comment to be deleted compared to a mod action. But if you feel that way, then sure. Tbh I'm kinda flabbergasted that's your reaction. In fact that's the craziest mod response I've gotten from any mod any forum past 30 years ☺️ I respect it though.

Fair enough. I am of the view that trippy and psychedelic music can be successfully done without an overload of layers; At some turning point, many layers ruin everything. Arronax has mentioned his admiration for this album and no wonder why his music is so chaotic. The three masters you've mentioned are highly appreciated by me and in general I think they have been more careful in their selection of sounds and layers. Fair enough though, each one to their own taste.

Indeed, people. This is one of the many, many reasons why only posting a link to an external resource without any hints is a bad idea, no matter how deceptively easy it might feel. Anyway..."An Eagle in Your Mind" seems to check out, including the timestamp. The video with that Youtube id is discussed here. https://xoxo.zone/@tonx/110234057092485667 (Oh the irony of posting a link to an external discussion... But you have the name here now.)

Lul, now I can’t remember and the earworm is long gone … If it pops up again I’ll write it down here. Posting only a YT vid. which is now gone was a mistake.

+1. this very sound is a big reason why we love this album. To me personally the quality is really really excellent. I think it sounds just the way it should. 😇 i know what everyone means when they say muddy. but that really is a part of the whole sound for me. its more organic and alien. and if you wanna get technical, for 1998, it sounds amazingly well produced. more so even than Dancing Galaxy (albeit a year prior)

Glad to have helped! It's a good solution for unofficial remixes where you don't have access to the stems. There are also AI tools for stem separation, but I haven't used any, so I don't know which are good.

MFG - Project Genesis Phonokol – 2118-2 I have been listening to this a lot lately and it is rapidly turning into my favorite MFG album. I loved Pure Energy but a lot of that album is remixes of older tracks and I think Project Genesis is darker, which I like. For those who say it has a muddy sound, I really think it is supposed to sound like that as it makes it gloomier, bassier and creates a harder, tougher sound. I am sure you know MFG's music and indeed their name itself feature a lot of religious references. The title of this album in particular is interesting in itself because it references not only the first book of the Bible concerning the creation of the world and life, but also as we will hear in track 3, the Genesis Device of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (first introduced in Star Trek II). The latter device was designed to terraform planets which ultimately proved to be dangerously unstable due to the way the device was made. As this album also has killer robots, the message seems to be that using human technology to play God and create life and intelligence can have catastrophic consequences. Such a theme is hinted at in the book of Genesis itself where the knowledge Adam and Eve gain leads to humans being expelled from the Garden of Eden. 1 Intro 0:41 2 Intelligent Machine 7:30 3 Project Genesis 7:34 4 Open Mind 8:08 5 Why? 8:12 6 Voices 8:27 7 Sunshine 7:41 8 On Mars 8:02 9 The Creation 7:42 10 Metamorphosis 9:29 1. Intro: Really nothing much to say about this very short intro. It does the job just fine. 2. Intelligent Machine: Definitely at least 99% as evil as Psychaos - Chaos to Order, actually maybe even more evil, this track introduces us to killer androids with scary voices, thus establishing the mood of most of the rest of the album to come. The sounds in this track are just incredible. The effects at the start at the sides of the stereo field are modulated just right to actually tickle my ears. It is groovy, everything about the track is dark, the choices of sound, the little bits of melody including a nice gated synth flute sound and one of the most awesome basses ever with key changes as well. 9.5/10 3. Project Genesis: Another nice bassline, but pretty much every track has one because MFG are the masters of amazing basslines. Nice acid. Nice effects again. A nice build up of layers as the track progresses. Some people may feel this borders on the chaotic but I would say it is part of the point and what chaos there is is expertly selected and delivered. The Star Trek samples are cool and the crazy tweaking bassy synths after those are lovely. 7.5/10 4. Open Mind: This has some cool weird melodies, loads of twisted sounds. The mood I would say is slightly closer to neutral compared to the darkness of the previous two tracks (yeah I know, "life from lifelessness", but like I said, watch the movie). This is a perfectly serviceable track but some of the others are even better. 7/10 5. Why?: has cool distorted drums and a wild wailing melody that is gated so much it feels like it has been torn up into little bits. Then of course there are the evocative voice samples. Nice key changes again on this one. It's catchy. 8/10 6. Voices: Others have considered this a weaker track. For me, it is a favorite. The best bit is that loud twitchy, twangy acid lead which is pretty memorable and unique. It has a fast, energetic pace, and I just really like the particular way all the crazy effects fit together in this one, and how unsure of herself the woman sounds when she says "I don't hear any voices". 8/10 7. Sunshine: This is a bit smoother than the previous track, a little bit upbeat, and the title and voice sample suggest a happy mood yet it is still filled with plenty of darkness and layers of wild sounds. 7.5/10 8. On Mars: The dark bassy synth at the start of this sounds like an evil alien slurping up all life from a planet. The bassline itself is heavy and great yet again of course. My head was bopping at the relentless drive of this one. 8/10 9. The Creation: A slightly more laid back feeling with some fascinatingly gloopy vibes bring you into the start of this track, then the heavier kick and bass and snares come in and as the track goes on the tension builds and the darker mood returns along with nice layers of melodies. 7.5/10 10. Metamorphosis: This is such an excellent way to close out the album, with a relentless deep, dark resonant synth pattern playing almost continuously in a groovy, hypnotic pattern and later wailing melodies come in as well and the track builds and gradually metamorphoses, like the name suggests. At the end we get key changes. 9/10 My favorite tracks are 2, 3, 6, 8 and 10. They were not all my highest scored tracks, because I try to score on technical and artistic merit as best I can rather than just my own subjective preference which seems to vary quite a bit over time anyway. Overall score: 8.5/10 https://mfgmemo604.bandcamp.com/album/project-genesis

Yes - depending on the program used, it usually gives you 4 layers (drums, bass, vocals, other). The stems have some artifacts, you might wanna compare apps (I know Cubase 15, izotope RX and Spectralayers, but there are others - possibly there's some online app too) for the best result. You can work with an mp3 as well but, since the stems aren't perfect and mp3s are already a lossy format, you might wanna try to find the best possible quality original file.

It's a Darren Beale alias. Darren Beale + Drezz = Nervasystem 94-96 Well, I used to be a heavy crate digger back in the days...

OOOD - SOURCE CONFIRMED - PHANTASM RECORDS, 2024 TRACKLIST Source Confirmed – 140 - Gmaj Starcaster – 138 – Fmin Aurora Lux – 144 - Gmaj Seven Minutes to Sunrise – 135 - Cmin To The Stars – 142 - Gmin Outer Space Type Music – 145 - G#min Have You Ever – 145 - Fmin The Search - 125 – Amin Beatport: https://www.beatport.com/release/source-confirmed/4840527 Bandcamp: https://oood.bandcamp.com/album/source-confirmed All links: https://phantasm.ampsuite.com/releases/links?id=230 Hello Psynews, it's been a while I'm extremely proud to present our 7th album "Source Confirmed", released on Phantasm Records on December 20th 2024. Here's what the label wrote as promo text: As you can see from the track bpms, this is a very different album from the one we released in 2021 on Iboga Records, and we're super happy with where we are right now in terms of writing and production. The release includes a continuous DJ mix of the album which you can download in WAV. Please check it out!

RA - Unearthly You may think I'm crazy. I do not think I am being hyperbolic when I say that I truly believe this album is the greatest musical work of all time. Sure, there are classical pieces that may be more technically impressive in terms of composition and performance, but I make this judgment based on the end result, the acoustic experience that the listener is transported into. To take everything that is great about classical music and then adopt synthesizers, creating sounds, textures and subtle effects that are simply impossible with a traditional orchestra, that's surely how you go about making the best music we can possibly hear on this planet at this present time. But even in the world of synths, Klaus Schulze, Jean-Michel Jarre, nobody has ever equalled the best moments of this gorgeous album. 1. Floating Shrine of Inanna Inanna is an ancient Mesopotamian Goddess associated with love, beauty and fertility (also war but let's skip over that for this music) and I really feel those themes infusing this deliciously mellow and warm track which immediately draws you into RA's world. The vocal sounds by Marthe Borge-Lunde Pfirrmann are lovely and very much add to the ambience. This music awakens my visual imagination and as the title suggests I do get a picture of an ancient eastern temple floating on a rectangular platform high above the clouds. 10/10 2. Rain No Water The title of this track suggests a tragic twist of fate to me. Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink? The looping pattern of the main melody does evoke the idea of rainfall and the mood may be very slightly on the melancholic side but the overall impression is one of soothing ambience and warmth, as well as an epic sense of scale and awe. It's also another stunningly beautiful piece of music. 9/10 3. Ascend From the intro, through the second track and now into this one the pace and intensity has been gradually building up. The voiceover on this one immediately reminds us of RA's previous albums and once again the words are deeply meaningful and inspirational as if they were genuinely transcribed from some blissfully benevolent universal intelligence. "Everything you see around you is what you create. And all you can do is experience this ascension process as it unfolds. Lived in the now." This echoes the wisdom on an earlier work that "There is only one thing we ever truly control: whether we are good or evil." Both phrases represent the idea that the content of our instantaneous life experience is determined in massive part by the millions of choices we make which in turn may be determined by our genetics combined with the information we learn from our travels on Earth. In this track there is also a hint of philosophical Idealism which is the belief that ultimately all of reality is generated by consciousness. This induces a state of awe and wonder as the beautiful track progresses. 9/10 4. Shift Now I've claimed the album is the greatest musical work of all time, by extension logically this track must be the greatest track of all time, and it certainly is my all-time favorite Goa trance track, and I believe Goa is the best genre of music, so yeah, I believe Shift is the greatest of all. With each track so far, we have been building up to this, and now RA absolutely pulls out all the stops. It's nothing short of amazing. We get some slightly sinister pads at the start and the first of a number of sci fi voice samples about space and time travel. Then we hear some tubular, erm, bells? - Let's call them chimes - that hint at the main melody to come. It's got a more uptempo beat this time and nice bits of acid. When it finally comes in fully, the main melody may just be a relatively simple sequence of notes, but RA have somehow uncovered one of the most mystical and intriguing tunes I have ever heard and what makes it perfect is the inspired choice of synth and effects. It sounds dark and very exotic and conjures up images of an early Medieval bazaar in the East where some ancient magic has animated objects or strange alien beings into dancing in wild circles. This tune plays over lots of exquisitely chosen layers with even some barking acid notes in the background. Towards the end of the track this main melody gets even better still as some subtle effects are added that make it sound even stranger with a sense of uneasiness. I'd love to know how they did it but it could be increasing the detune, flanging, some kind of slight pitch bend or maybe a combination of multiple effects. However it was done, for me it's the perfect moment in the perfect track. 10/10 5. Lifethread (Serene Mix) At the start of the review I mentioned Klaus Schulze. Well the moody, swirling pads in this one are reminiscent of Schulze's Timewind. Then we get an upbeat, optimistic arpeggio. That drops out to some moodier, growling acidic sounds which are great. Some gorgeous pitch bending synths follow and it sounds lovely. There's even a cute little xylophone that comes in to accentuate the melody. All that said, I do find this one less memorable than the earlier tracks which is inevitable given Shift is to me, musical perfection (Did I mention that? ). 8/10 6. Lightspark This has a fast kick and bass, a spacey synth and some nice little bits of melody. A light, playful track. As before it only suffers by virtue of existing in the shadow of the first four tracks. The fact that most of the tracks seem to have similar sounds means there's a risk this far in of things feeling just a bit samey. However, when those sounds are as warm, clear and exquisitely beautiful as they are on this album, I am extremely grateful for every track that features them. 7/10 7. Unearthly A catchy opening melody here is filled with love and hope and it builds with some faster, crystal clear trancey sounds. We even get a high piano to reinforce the strong melody over the driving, trippy beat. Then the goregous lead synth. This one is quite addictive. From the 6 minute mark we get some really nice interplay between the different layers and then the lead comes back again. 9.5/10 8. Celestial Slice This builds up layers of lovely, bouncy, oscillating high pitched melodies and then that stunningly gorgeous lead synth comes in again. It gets joined by the tasteful use of an acoustic guitar. A spacey and uplifting track. I agree with other reviews on the themes of hope and love. The title of this one makes me think of space, but also perhaps our celestial slice is the little slice of time and space we are each gifted with to experience reality, lived in the now. And thus concludes some of the most beautiful music of all time. 9.5/10 I cannot recommend this album enough. I generally agree with johnb820 and Jon Cocco's reviews and with the consensus that tracks 5 and 6 are the weaker ones, but in my opinion they're still great. As for why I seem to be the biggest fanboy on the planet for RA and Unearthly, I loved ambient and enjoyed a little bit of the older Berlin school output before I discovered Goa and psytrance. There is a bit of a retro feel to some of this music. I can't believe that for years I overlooked RA because I snootily assumed they must just be yet another new school psytrance project that only the kids were into, from what I can remember some troll dismissed their music and I stupidly took that as confirmation. I couldn't have been more wrong! If you love ambient, Goa or downtempo you simply must hear this! 10/10

I'm just thinking: Recently I contacted someone to do a remix ... price was 500 EUR If you charged 500 EUR for your trax you'd make 194 716 * 500 = 97 358 000 EUR 97 million EUR ... that's some damn big money

Ah shit, that's a lot of music bruv