[What music are you listening to right now?]

Listening to this and reading the beautiful Bhagavad Gita. 🌸 

[THE SUPERMAN - PSYCHEDELIC TRANCE CAROL 2024 PART. 1 RELEASED (NHJO MHJO RECORDS)]

11 hours ago, psytones said:

Silver Bells is very emotional. Like having testicular cancer emotional (i would presume). Anyway, too much greatness, what super album, man. Btw. Superwoman is stupid, also firewoman n policewoman.. Know why, man? Bcs the Wo- in woman is for womb. All this human kind madness. PS. I want Blümchen 'boom boom boomerang' to bcm my wife, and she will thru my wish hire NJHO to make, or if poss. perform at our wedding. 

 

[THE SUPERMAN - PSYCHEDELIC TRANCE CAROL 2024 PART. 1 RELEASED (NHJO MHJO RECORDS)]

7 hours ago, NHJO__HYENNRO said:

Hey.

And My new The Superman album - "Tanzen Musik 1 2024" will be finish and will be released at 2024/04 later.

Get excited about it!

will be 10 new style of melodical goa/psychedelic trance.

also movie will be making.

thanks.

 

Excellent, a movie you say? Hollywood must be salivating right now. And probably P-Diddy too.😅Nothing but pure respect for your jingle bells Goa project. 

[Situation Update 2024 - and a question for the future!]

3 hours ago, MikroMakro said:

I may have this wrong but it does seem many here are rather Goa Trance focused, be it classics or neo Goa etc. And that is fine by me though I like modern as much as old. Less people discuss modern trance. Maybe it is these 20-30 something that are on social media more. I suppose one can achieve greater attention on social media if that is what you need.

Personally I find social media generally to be a vast drain of my energy and psyche so I feel much better not being on the usual platforms.

People use it as a business tool as much as a personal share. I don't think it would be much to ask for a few movers and shakers to post a little.

Thin skinned ? Well I suppose that might be an issue but surely people are a bit stronger than that. Scene success will surely overcome a few anonymous internet moaners. Maybe on social media say FB it is easier on artists as the only people who visit your page are people who like what you do. There you have to active seek a specific artist where as here it rather broader than a single page set up for yourself as an artist.

Anyway you can only lead a horse to water as they say. Whatever happens I hope it stays online.

I suspect a lot of artists come by for a look and never post. It will be, what it will be.

Moderation is quite important, that cannot be denied it takes time to do that properly. i.e. allowing people to post opinions but without extreme behaviour which is a turn off for all. Moderation can make a forum a good place to be or a place to avoid. I would like to have hoped that there would be some mutual respect between members. It can be difficult with a mix of anon and non anon profiles, anons spouting their mouth off with little regards and with luck non anons representing their actual selves. With forums it can be a difficult mix to handle.

Yeah I feel ya, some similar observations over here regarding social media. I mean I really loved and love the focus this forum had and continues to have to some degree on everything Psytrance. Like you say, the social media platforms are like a barrage of "offtopic" constantly vying for one's attentions, so it a rather different experience for sure. And besides the algos there are very much working against whatever preferences one might have, I have followed soo many interesting artist pages there, interesting creative brands etc etc, still it serves me stuff I have no interest in. So yeah, this type of forum, is much more of a deliberate experience, more like reading a dedicated Psytrance newspaper/gossip, as opposed to the social media experience which is more akin to beeing inside a TV-commercial.

As for the different styles popular here, I've always felt it had a bit of everything, I met lots of people here before who were into all kinds of Psy styles I had no clue about, and it was interesting for sure. Going to DarkPsy events, Swedish Forest music, some Suomi stuff, etc, Prog Trance, Full-On events, Neo Goa events sprinkled with some retro Goa as well. But yeah that was quite some time ago now. I'm sure the lurkers here represent a wider variety of styles. But I understand your impression, after all this forum was somewhat managed before by Suntrip peepuz, so it probably attracted a lot of Goa heads so to say. And Belgians overall seem very into Goa.  I think there was quite a few of those here.  

[Spiritual healing re-remix (official)]

14 minutes ago, technosomy said:

This track was remixed around you and Galactic love era, and it's around, just not looking hard enough 

Was it bootlegged or featured on a proper release? Link please if it's on the legal platforms Youtube/Spotify etc  Gotta hear what all this fuzz was about. Better be epic.

[Spiritual healing re-remix (official)]

3 hours ago, astralprojection said:

 

Who knows when it is from. But it feels like it's kind of new, maybe 2005s and beyond. But noone knows. 

 

Brother. Why sit on something the fans love? What is the harm of releasing it? It's just an ego thing. "this is too good to be released I'm just gonna play it live and not release it." 

That's asshole tactics. Makes no sense. What if he died, God forbid, and it was forever lost in his hard drive? 

No, the right thing to do is to release it. 

Sure I can see both sides of the issue. You know I wouldn't mind hearing it in good quality for sure, and yeah as you say one day he'll be gone, so why not leave something more for his own legacy? Still, in the end it's his choice, his life. On the other hand, if I try to put myself into his shoes, and try to see what he could benefit from it. I mean there isn't much besides you know for the fans. As for everything else, we all know there aren't that many that purchase this kind of music sadly, so most of it will likely be pirated. And perhaps he feels at ease, knowing full well that he achieved what he might've wanted already with his music, IMO.

And btw on a side-note regarding his musical output after the 90's era, did he release something I should check out? I haven't kept tabs on his music besides his classic album. Could give some ideas as to the quality/style of the new remix.

[Most Angelic Trance?]

So what's your favourite "Angelic" or you know just very uplifting heavenly euphoric Trance for the spirit?

And I don't mean in terms of the tracks needing to have an angelic thematic for the track name. Just you know the general feeling it evokes.

I'll start with these:

 

[Spiritual healing re-remix (official)]

So to chime in, out of curiousity. The remix in question, is it a relatively new remix or from the golden olden age? Or perhaps from the full-on 00's era? I really love the original track and the remix from the Goa Head era.

As for Juan keeping the track to himself/for his live audience. I mean can't blame him, his own property. I think it's quite common, to have a something a little extra special for the live sets. I even think Hallucinogen had that when I saw him live. I'm not sure, but I think he played some remix of Gamma Goblins. 

[Future of Psynews Survey]

13 minutes ago, astralprojection said:

Oh okay..

I don't think private is a good option. On some days you have like 10 pages of people browsing the forum without being logged in. (online users) 

 

Closed would be sad, to never see it again unless through the Internet archive? 

 

I'd rather see it dead with no option to login at all, or continue to have it open like it is. The other two options seem counter intuitive. 

Indeed I agree. If for example Psynews had a huge active user base, then the private could make some more sense perhaps.

But alas it doesn't so yeah that's that. Either way one flips the coin, the inevitable reality of changed internet behaviours/trends, the effects of the generational shifts, is plainly visible for us.

[Future of Psynews Survey]

1 hour ago, astralprojection said:

make the options a bit more detailed, like does closed mean its gonna be deleted?

make it private, what would that mean, only admins can login? etc. 

My first poll here so bear with me, I can add more details surely. 

With private I mean as in, members have to login to see the contents of the forum. Which could perhaps make the lurkers step out of the shadows? Maybe just wishful thinking on my part.  

Many forums have like a mixed setting. In which some content is only visible to logged in users. And some is visible to lurkers too.

In such a scenario I think the news section would be a good contender to keep public. Which is a kind of smart option, because it tends to incentivize, the joining of a forum/participation. Reddit is a bit like that, and yeah facebook, is to some small degree. The down-side to this closed approach is that, threads would get less exposure/views overall on Psynews I think.

And also so that the AI search engines like Bing still gets Psynews relevant search results etc.

The closed options were those that RTP proposed, I.E: closing the forum permanently (kinda like deleting it from the internet I suppose?). Or archiving it, meaning it's still visible but not open for participation. Like a Psynews museum if you will. 

[Future of Psynews Survey]

So I just wanted to check what our dear forum members think, I don't hold the fate of the forum in my hands obviously. That's the admin/mod teams/owners decision. But I thought it would be interesting to see what the opinions are. With a little poll/survey.

The poll is anonymous.  

[THE SUPERMAN - PSYCHEDELIC TRANCE CAROL 2024 PART. 1 RELEASED (NHJO MHJO RECORDS)]

Indeed, anyways you gotta admit, he's been very consistent in his spam over the years. It's like Pavel invented this theme, and then stuck to it.  

I think NHJO have been posting these things for around 15 years or so on Psynews, maybe more even. So yeah it has become a bit of a tradition, many people came and went since then. But NHJO is eternal no doubt.

[Situation Update 2024 - and a question for the future!]

 

@MikroMakro

Yeah I mean that's one thing that has been quite noticeable over the years on the forum. The absence of the artists themselves.

And when there were artists here, many were drama queens anyways. And got booted, so maybe that scared some away. Thinking it could affect their, reputation. One thing many of those who were on the dramatic side here had in common was how thin-skinned they seemed. So obviously that often lead to some drama, when this forum housed some pretty strong opinions/critique on albums.  

On the other hand, maybe it was a wise decision, after all. Better focusing on making music then risking beeing involved in some meaningless online drama.

But it's still a bit intriguing, seeing that many of the Psy/Goa artists are quite active on social media posting memes and political blablabla and conspiracy theories.  

But yeah personally I think we should either close the forum down, or make it private. So the lurkers would have to login too.

And I am all for embracing new technology, we could employ bots to ignite the news section. And yeah the bots could boot/mute people as well. No need for many active mods in that sense, more than to check what mess/wrong decisions the bots might've made every once in a while.

We could set up some strict filters. So everyone would be banned in the end. Cursing? Boom banned, wrong opinion on a classic album? Boom banned.  Nah just kidding, that would be like Instagrammy or Faceduck.

[THE SUPERMAN - PSYCHEDELIC TRANCE CAROL 2024 PART. 1 RELEASED (NHJO MHJO RECORDS)]

[Situation Update 2024 - and a question for the future!]

5 hours ago, Tatsu said:

I personally would prefere it if the forum keeps running. I'm only posting once in a blue moon but I do read it way more. And I've been able to discover some amazing tracks/artists/albums through this forum lately so it is still very helpfull for me. I don't think it's that bad if moderating the forum only happens with a delay. Considering the forum is not very active anyway I don't see any harm with that.

My suspicion is that there are more lurkers here than one might think, if only we could entice those to participate somehow? Maybe some free cookies and soda?  

And yeah maybe unban some people. I mean a life time ban seems a rather strict measure?

Some drama and popcorn could be necessary sometimes.

[THE SUPERMAN - PSYCHEDELIC TRANCE CAROL 2024 PART. 1 RELEASED (NHJO MHJO RECORDS)]

[Classic Goa Trance basses/leads/FX recreated in modern software]

This thing sounds sick! What a squidgy filter, a pure liquid acid machine. Should be quite easy to get some Hallucinogen Deranger type leads out of this in tandem with Dune3.

 

[How's everything changed?]

On 9/11/2023 at 3:32 PM, Oopie said:

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. 

I agree with pretty much all of your acute observations. And yeah it's both fascinating and kinda uninspiring at the same time, the trajectory of this genre. It's constantly changing/morphing, not always for the best of everyones preferences of course, but ultimately it's the commercial success of the front-runners that will shape a large portion of what will define the style. Anyways as with all other genres. And as you've pointed out, the change of mediums/platforms and ways in which people consume and distribute music always have a huge impact on the shape of the music itself. As we can see right now due to TikTok and Instagram, with electronic music getting shorter tracks, due to the song lenght limits on those platforms. And yeah probably due to shorter attentions spans too.  

I hope that the underground aspects of Psytrance always will continue to work, as a counter-balance to the genres most commercial aspirations. So that it doesn't completely lose it's original message and unique identity. Because sadly much of what I originally fell in love with in this genre, has changed quite drastically. Buy yeah it goes back and forth, some trends come and go, there's always somekind of new revivalist movement on the not too far away horizon, when people get bored. And start to look back in time for inspiration.  

[Situation Update 2024 - and a question for the future!]

@RTP I'm thinking that the most logical thing to do, would be to create a poll. With the options you suggested, kinda like: Keep the forum, close the forum, archive it etc. The participation rate to such a poll, would in itself give an idea as to if the forum is game over. (As if the statistics RTP mentioned, weren't enough of an indication.) The way I see it, if there's less then 10 active forum members, then perhaps it's nothing more than a little chat group. And as such, a forum with all it's associated costs to run it, perhaps becomes quite a bit redundant?

The forum is stagnating any way one chooses to view it, the grumpy old male energy is quite noticeable. And that is obviously what happens, when there's no active female forum members. 

Either way, the forum had a good long run. And as all good things, they have to end sometime. What originally constituted the forum, I.E the users/potential new members, have gone with their favorite labels to the other platforms obviously. And the labels gained the most from that, they cut the middle-man so to speak.

Anyways I miss the good old days, when Psytrance and Goa was all one would get in places like this forum, the Isratrance forum and other places. The new platforms obviously offer a lot more unrelated noise, and not enough quality content to be engaging for Psy/Goa for me. The labels own dedicated groups on facebook, I think suffer from a bit of a too narrow scope. And yeah it's mostly just links to music on youtube, and neverending praises. It becomes a bit fanboyish/cult-like.  

And not much in terms of nuanced discussions, or anything near the in-depth reviews that once flourished on Psynews and similar forums/portals. Maybe people still do that on Bandcamp? I don't feel like investing in that platform tho, it feels like the next myspace, to fade away.

On the other hand, this trend with artists/labels having their own dedicated channels, was somewhat starting back in the days too, particularly with Infected Mushroom's and Hallucinogen's own forums.

My two cents.  

[How can we make Psynews more active? Post your ideas/opinions.]

@Penzoline

So after evaluating the changes we made to the forum structure, for a while now. I think it's safe to conclude, that it didn't change much, in terms of activity in the reviews section. So I suggest we try putting the: "Latest Topics" section which is at the bottom now to the top, and restore everything else to how it was before. Since the most popular section seems to be the news section. And it was kinda on the top before if I remember correctly, so I suggest putting the news section high up, under the lastest topics tab or something.  

Let's hear what everybody else thinks/have for suggestions. As for the rest I think it's good, people probably check the news section first, then scroll down to the general section or so, and see the promotional sections while doing so. So those sections get their share of exposure, which is good I think.

[Awkward and cringy interviews]

13 hours ago, astralprojection said:

bipolar seems to really suck total ass.. on one hand, one is in the deepest of lows barely moving or getting out of bed. and on another hand they are like seemingly on drugs.. i always liked the tv series Homeland cause the lead character had that. wouldnt surprise me if (he is NOT on coke) he has that disorder.

erez is totally his other half, he is always calm and ei"zen". 

 

Maybe who knows, the whole world seems bipolar/depressed atm. But yeah sometimes or probably very often, good music comes from such states of minds. Kinda like Vinnie Paz.  

Eminem's music always seemed like that to me as well, you know either really dark or very very too much happy/manic. But yeah difficult to know what's what, with the excessive substance abuse issues Eminem had. Could be the psychedelic influence or the MDMA. 

Btw Erez had a side project/alias called I-Zen. I think maybe only one track made under that alias, but very nice nonetheless, "Into the Matrix" maybe it was Duvdev ft I-Zen, have to check later.

*found it:

 

[What music are you listening to right now?]

 

[Awkward and cringy interviews]

23 hours ago, astralprojection said:

 

I think he's just on coke tbh 

I mean you never know, but my guess would be that's just his personality style. Since he is like that in every studio blog I've seen. Not that one thing excludes another so to say, but yeah speaking from my own experience, I am like that too. I speak very fast,think fast, move fast.  Maybe that is the secret Ying and Yang recipe of Infected Mushroom? Erez seems very calm in comparison.

[Over Destination Goatrance Podcast]

On 3/16/2024 at 9:50 AM, Trolsk said:

The Destination Goa compilations were compiled by Robert Jarnroth, and sometimes with help from Peter Hartzell and DJ Anti. The podcast guys are not the same, so not related.

Anyway, thanks for recommending the podcast, will listen to it.

Thanks for clarifying! Since they use the same or at least similar font, as the DG-compilations I assumed some relationship. Besides the name of the podcast as well, anyways a little hommage perhaps?  

[Classic Goa Trance basses/leads/FX recreated in modern software]

1 hour ago, acid being said:

Nice work That sounds really close to the Sheyba lead - do you mind sharing what shape waveforms you used?

It's a nice mystical feeling track.

Hey thanks! The waveform was just default saw waveform in Dune3, and default LP filter, nothing special at all.  I imagine perhaps Sheyba just put a SH-101 or something through an Eventide or similar big type reverb and tweaked away.

I wonder what the Dune default osc were modelled after? Maybe Nord Lead or Virus?