Padmapani

i hope they don't do the mastering themselves. their last remix album left a lot to be desired mastering-wise.

it's exactly the same here. only my parents are 10 years younger. i drop everything off before their door and we talk on facetime afterwards. thanks for agreeing here. when reading the postings at newpapers forums or when talking to people at work it almost seems as if i'm the only one who sees that things are handled a lot better than elsewhere. everyone just seems to rest fine on the idea that we have "one of the best healthcare systems in the world", "we are better prepared than anyone else" and condemn other "it's all china's fault for not containing it sooner" or "the chinese should have warned us earlier", which is all bullshit. we have an excellent healthcare system compared to the u.s. but we are far from the best, we are not prepared at all (shortages everywhere), china could not have contained it (much) earlier, because they didn't know what the cause of the disease was for a long time and they fucking DID warn us earlier but we did absolutly nothing in response. there seems to be an underlying sentiment of "we are better than everyone else and if things go bad it's the others' fault"… another point about masks. they are commonly worn in asia when people are sick as to not infect others. when we stil had op-masks in the pharmacy and people (mostly not those at special risk) were asking for masks it was always the same conversation. they ask how well a mask protects one. i answer that everyone who feels sick should wear a mask because that is when it's most effective. they always say they don't give a fuck if it protects others they want a mask that protects themselves. i was never very optimistic in this regard, but one month ago i would not have belived the amount of selfishness on our society i see now. the next financial crises is probably just around the corner. i've heard that aribnb is of course not doing well and that people are selling flats and houses like crazy. ott says: "everything is acceptable as long as house prices don't crash" maybe this'll give us an opportunity to follow x-dream's words and create our own society, create our own happiness.

sounds very familiar. except we don't get tests (only people with symptoms worse than a flu who can prove they were in contact with someone who has already tested positive can get tested). yeah, paracetamol hamsteres were here too. that rumour was not only unfounded but also if it were true it would still be pointless to hoard paracetamol at home… i didn't see anything slow down here since i luckily got a day to recover now (we're working in two teams now, so we don't have to close if one team gets quarantined), but i do hope that you're right and everything will be a little less crazy and stressful next week.

working overtime here. pharmacies have to stay open. i come home from work after 10h nonstop trying to keep everyting running and fall asleep. i really hope people will come to their sensen finally start to take this seriously in the coming days. we have 80-year olds arguing about the discounts on aronia berry juice, while others demonstate their dry cough. fuck people. and fuck european governments. this place is such a mess. i seriously contemplate moving to asia where things just work a lot better when this is over. no matter if it's taiwan, singapore, korea, thailand, malaysia, (even china!)... they all were hit way harder from the intital wave than europe and did an infinitely better job at containing the virus, also doing a lot more testing. over here income from tourism was more important. i was acutally in singapore a few weeks ago and coming back from there feels like travelling to a 3rd world country. we have no access any protective equipment and those of us who are not feeling well do not get access to tests…

i hope people will stop panic buying soon (there's only so much food you can store after all). we had a customer record this friday. the whole pharmacy was crowded the whole day (not ideal for slowing the spread of the virus) and even though the medicines are available as usual the distributors could not keep up with shipping out what people wanted to buy. we will stay open all the time, there's absolutely no need to rush now. on the other hand, i've heard others still rushed the shops and hairdresser (of all things…) today before closure. what part of "stay at home" do people not understand? seriously… projections right now say we'll run out of intensive care beds in the first week of april. seriously people, stay at home, do a video chat with friends instead of meeting them! also, if you're not meeting people no one fucking cares about when you last visited your hairdresser!

hypnoxock is from barcelona and "x" is pronounced like "sh" in catalan. so it makes sense in that context. in the same way that anoebis is the flemish way to write anubis.

global sect covers i think need either a nice screen or a large blanket to work well. they look really good in digital form (and presumably even better as deco at a party with uv light). but on a small cd in the shelf it's just a dark sheet with a few lines on it. i guess vinyl would already be better for the artwork than the dvd-size packaging that mystery and terraformer have. @diaks i've always loved the d5 covers but these are all amazing.

normally i can listen fine without dissecting the mix, but the balance of this one (it's also different for the different tracks in the video) reminded me so much of when i had worked on a track with headphones and switched over to monitors the first time, that my brain immediately went into mixing mode

interesting. i remember that i once found a proto goa track somewhere and thought "oh, so the kick of gnocchi is not an original one but sampled from here". i cannot remember the track atm but apparently it was just similar and not sampled…

now that'd interesting. i didn't know that artist or even similar goa. i thought i'd like an example of more dancefloor ready goa, but this one doesn't cut it. nova fractal nicely combines goa with more fullon-like basslines and it fits perfectly, but here it's as if you made some melodic goa removed the original kick/bass and replace it with some completely unrelated one, and turn everything else down a few db to avoid major frequency conflicts, then boost the click of the kick as well as the sub to make it cut though even more. it doesn't fit together and that the kick/bass but especially the kick is mixed so much above everything else (and with so much sub) doesn't help either. it almost sounds fine on headphones, sounds way off on monitors and i expect you don't hear much of the melodies when played at a club. an amateur producer is still a producer and i know you get a better balance in your mixes than that example you posted. you know how to keep the overall level of kick and bass as well as the sub within sane limits

i agree to everything in your first post in this thread, but have to disagree with most of this post. ime much of modern goa sounds worse on the dancefloor than at home. a few years ago i was looking forward to seeing cosmic dimension, skarma and morphic resonance live, but the livesets i've since heard from of all three of them were very disappointing. at home with good speakers or good headphones you can make out the details of the multilayered music, but at a party that's impossible and the music just turns into a giant mess. the same is often true for dj sets that focus on post-2012 newschool, so it's not just these producers. the problem is not compression or loudness; there is enough music that's limited even harder and still sounds good. it also can't be mixing; i've heard badly mixed oldschool sound good on the same system. neither can it be complexity per se; pleiadians sounded great at the same sound system where i left the dancefloor when cosmic dimension was playing. rather i think it's a peculiar combination of these things, where modern goa producers want to outdo past music by adding "more stuff", making the tracks harder to mix, leading to not quite perfect mixes that aren't optimised for loudness but are mastered to modern levels anyway. the result is ok when listened to on a good system, but in a real life environment where you neither have a perfect sound system nor perfect acoustics, maybe with levels in the red and with you not standing in the ideal listening position it all breaks down. goa can sound good on modern systems with modern, "competitive" mastering, but it has to abandon the idea that more elements always equal better, "more goa" sound. i'd definitely say quality over quantity when melodies are concened. not only for a story-telling but also from a mixing perspective. that brings us back to the definition of goa. would iconic, tracks that are minimalistic compared to modern goa, such as nmda - vitan, morphem - my plan or miranda - gnocchi still be released as goa trance today if we didn't know them already? vitan has kick and bass that are basically identical to early progressive and there are pretty much no leads playing for the first 2/3 of the track. most of it is kick and bass, percussion and a few strings/pads for atmosphere. then there is just a single true lead playing a single pattern at the end. my plan has at most one lead playing at the time, a few "drops" straight to kick and bass, and fx that talk to each other like in fullon. gnocchi again has "drops" to kick and bass, lengthy fx driven sections with no melodies at all, one bubbly lead that almost leaves the impression of fx rather than a melody (although it's playing a melody), one acidline and one "melodic" melody. both tracks rely heavily on atmosphere, as did a lot of early newschool, but most modern newschool doesn't. this atmosphere is possible because there are sections where you only have pads or long sweeps but it seems for modern goa everything has to be filled up with melodies. sometimes to the point where there's no room to the sounds to breathe. when there's no contrast between melodic climaxes and the rest of the track anymore (it doesn't have to be breakdowns. not needing lots of breakdowns is a plus imho), it all starts to sound the same, there is no room for storytelling or memorable moments. if it's that way for an entire set it really gets tiring. i don't think producers now are looking for the perfect kick and bass that much. at least the kicks on the tracks i mentioned (i'm not so sure about vitan) stand out more than the kick and bass in modern newschool. the kick in my plan even sounds much more like what we'd now call a fullon kick. btw: you've produced enough tracks to count as a producer imho

with hypnoxock and this 2020 is starting good already.

i must disagree (about this album. not synthetic resurrection). the samples sound really good. this is probably the best suntrip release since median project.

the track is not on soundcloud and i can't get any of the korean platforms to work.

nice! liked and subscribed

thanks for that list. some really nice suggestions in there that'll most likely find their way into my top ten.

i'm still in the process of compiling and actually listening to the albums of last year. so the following draft is subject to change. Uptempo: 1. UX - The Realm of a New Dawn 2. Median Project - Constellation 3. Shadow Chronicles - Arcadia 4. VA - Order Odonata: Metamorphosis 5. Mechanimal - Digital Nature 6. Psylent Buddhi - Secrets of the Atom 7. Lunarave - Transmigration 8. Braincell - Gaia 9. Pleiadians - Pyramid 10. Protonica - Symmetry i already notice two trends here. first that there's a conspicious absence of goa trance (i'm not really a fan of that chaotic melodic sound such as celestial intelligence, sykespico, morphic resonance, ...) and second that albums i have listened to more appear higher on the list Downtempo: 1. Advanced Suite - Shapes of Nothing 2. Lauge - Dawn 3. Globular - Untangled Everything 4. Tengri - Tengri and Friends 5. Astronaut Ape - Deep 6. Saafi Brothers - Mystic Cigarettes 7. Unknown Reality - Gaia 8. VA - Temple of Dub 9. Distant System - Infinite Continuum 10. Proxxeus - Celephais

happy birthday psynews!

now i'm really intrigued what sort of keyboard play we would have seen in this thread.

you're right, it depends on how you define "commercial". i totally believe that afgin produces the music because it's what he likes, but to me it is way more commercial music than before. if you just listen to music you can't necessarily tell the intention of the producer behind it (does protoculture make trance now because his music preferences shifted towards trance or because he gets more money from it?), so i do find my definition more useful lack of complexity also isn't something i'd associate with either commercial-sounding or easy-listening music either. there is music played on the radio with complex chord progressions and complex rhytms, but it still sounds horribly "commerical" and cheesy, while some underground techno or even psytrance is damn simple, but great and not easy-listening at all. now that iv'e mentioned the word, maybe our defintions are different because my native language has no other word to describe cheesy music other than "commercial"? btw: nitzho is more commerical than goa for me, even if it doesn't make you any money nowadays. of course that doesn't mean that i wouldn't enjoy another album from you, so i second astralprojection's question!

darkstep is high-pitched, scremy and not dark at all? music can be dark and fast/hard as well as dark and slow/depressing relating to this, the darkest darkpsy i know is still this one: hard and fast (for the time), but not just weird and chaotic but really with a dark atmosphere (just like mfg - on mars).

trance scandinavian express? interesting. i only knew it from the original spiral trax compilation.

even if it was not only less popular than psytrance but also less popular than goa trance (which i highly doubt), i'd still call it commercial if someone makes way more easy-listening music than before ;). music doesn't have to actually make you money to sound commercial.

interesting. shine on indeed sounds pretty much like his earlier stuff. i guess i just dismissed the release when i heard other tracks like feels like heaven. yeah. his change in style seems to coincide with the time he cut his hair the new stuff is not overly cheesy for trance standards but it's no goa trance either…

duke nukem forever eventually got released. i'm not quite sure for the ap album. but the game took 20 years in development, so with the new astral album they've still got 2 years left to beat duke nukem