Penzoline

Thank god you are back! And that theme for the album is right up my alley! Fuck yes! <3 The only negative thing about this whole thing is... I don't have an Unreal Tournament game to play while listening to it(they're all dead)! Ah maybe one day... And I mentioned this in another thread, honestly, if you managed to get all of your albums remastered and released in a box set featuring sci-fi artwork and a nice booklet explaining on how you approached each album and how you come up with these ideas... kind of dreaming here, but even seriously speaking I think as Limited Edition I could see it working... maybe..

Haha I think the artwork is so cheesy I actually like it. lol. I'm confused though, are Micronesia and Perfect Invisibly one's with Shakta? And Perfect Invisibility was also released 4 years ago on a Suntrip compilation, so is that the same version?

I hate it I hate it I HATE IT. I am allergic to animals and I have had no time to get used to it, so everytime a dog starts barking out of the fucking blue it scares the shit out of me. Here I am, minding my own business, then Bam! Screw your happy place, guy!

Good posts and I totally agree with ormion and I think VA - Erta Alé as a whole showed us this darker more psychedelic side is still alive, we just need more people pushing for it. Maybe asking psytrance producers to try this type of goa, you know, lay off the sharp kicks and use acid. Is that so hard? As far as the morning sound, I guess it had to start somewhere. The other psytrance styles were generally more darker post-2000 like darkspy so I guess people wanted to keep it more uplifting and melodic(?). The evolution is surely noticeable but it just spread out to many different genres which themselves kind of ended up generally stagnating - probably indeed because of pigeonholing the genre they were supposed to play. Though there is always an artist or an album that changes the situation with a release that tries new things, which is indeed evolution, but it doesn't happen frequently enough as has been mentioned - thus the genres seem to stagnate. Same with modern goa, it's great and getting super refined with the styles we got going, but it needs darker and more psychedelic releases to balance the playing field. We just don't seem to have enough labels/artists that want to release/make it! Also imo these are also absolutely evolution of goa even though they don't fit the majority releases of what we (or just I) call goa. So what we consider goa still has broad range through and through, but you really have to dig deep to find the other styles of it in releases that aren't neccesarily classified as goa. Taking modern psytrance and removing the plastic ultra sharp and precise sound makes a massive difference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFVku4jWI50

I want to see this happen!

LOL Goddamn you that's funny!

T2MU's Lost Buddha review made me want to revisit some other tracks from Filipe. I remember many years ago when I was playing Unreal Tournament 3 religiously and I always had blasting tunes in the background. It was usually whatever Goa I had acquired at that time and the Metaphysical Rec stuff fit the game like a glove. Cyberpunk super scifi visuals and crazy melodic electronic dance music? Even the official game soundtrack was like that! This EP seems to get overlooked. Is it the cover art? The poor mastering (hey there mr brickwall)? The fact it was a digital purchasable EP in 2007? Come on, nobody bought mp3's those days! Well it's not even purchasable anywhere now so more reason to not notice it! Wait what's that, yes that over there... http://www.boomtrack.net/album/Metapsychic%20records/Lost%20Buddha%20-%20Regeneration%20EP%20%28MP3%20version%29#.U4enkyhvcZ0 Well I'll be. Still not the reason? Well here's 4 pages of drama for everyone to enjoy. Embryo Wow that's loud. And interesting. Crazy sound-escapades start off this track and longer than 41 seconds and we have our first melody. Typica acid driven Lost Buddha with boomy bassline and majestically atmospheric pads filling up the track until the main driving melody arrives at 1:34. Those are some super synths I tell you. From there on the track is pretty straightforward some breaks and buildups but there are interesting segments like 2:27 onwards acid driven ride and when it breaks up at 4:13 there's an AWESOME sounding robotic acid lead that's just rips any dancefloor to shred like Terminator. It doesn't last very long unfortunately, but does creep in later. Regeneration Welp. That intro is totally fucking awesome and wicked. a Superb atmosphere, it literally transports you to whatever magical and exotic place you want to be at. 0:40 breaks that up and starts up the driving bassline with a sample "Regeneration is gods first move to which our fate is a reflex-response at work" (I don't know if I got that right). Totally ballsy! Again lovely acid leading melodies and a fast tempo but this time the atmosphere is even more at focus with having atmospheric pads throughout the track with different instruments. Around 3:06 there's a very interesting trippy melody spinning around that drives us into a break and oh yes, the robotic acid driven melody from last track is back at 3:47 after the sample again. Just fucking awesome! This type of acid is just so badass and to use it as a climax melody is genious. Track is pretty smooth until a 6:00 we get a melody that's set to sound more like a typical synth piano. It gives the track great character and shows Filipe was quite certain of his melodic skills as it doesn't come off as cheesy to me. These two tracks are SuperB and maybe the best he ever did. Shame about the brickwalled sound because musically this is a total killer(aarghhh).

I always have to start by saying, I really wish it would have been the exact track list from the 2007 untold stories but as it goes, all of the wav files for them were lost and only this live version existed! Even with this album, there's still a bunch of unreleased goodies that will probably never see the proper light of day. What else? It's an album of Filipes golden age, when metaphysical was still up and running. You know, that 2006-2007 style of goa(can I even say that?). It's a great album full of in your face style lush goa with heavily oriental melodies and atmospheres that can transport anyone in the middle of the saharan desert or indian jungles... You get the idea. The only downside is the overbearing similarity of the tracks, but even then it is not a deal breaker. Filipe always had an issue with having everything sounding the same, repeating formulas and ideas, but with his earlier works, the crazy melodies and just a general more eccentric style of using said ideas overcame that. Unique style like no other I must admit. If you didn't fancy the Amithaba albums, which are highly repetitious as well, I'd say give this one a shot regardless, it is still quite different. And I'll add Richpa did a great job on the cover, it's a perfect fit, though maybe I'd have changed the font

Please do elaborate.

I also fall in to the group of not liking IM at all, not even the earlier works. Toi Doi too is a weird style I couldn't get into, though there are a couple of tracks that rock my boat like Nuage D'encens. Same goes for Sandman.

You're right, his albums aren't as clear as they should, but I still love them to bits. To be honest there's a ton of old school albums that don't sound very good anymore. I need to list a couple that I've found to be bad offenders in this regard.

Those are very good points. Obviously mastering is not the end of all and usually most albums are just fine. I think you are also right that the artist can ruin his own track but for example the compilation that track was on sounded pretty bad in every track(unfortunately). From just listening a lot you accustom to hearing changes that you can't relate to anything else than mastering. There are huge differences with old school tracks that are mastered by engineer X and engineer Y for example. Or you take one artist, 2 different releases 2 different masterers (or time periods) and you can hear major differences. Again for example I thought M-Run on Erta Ale sounded much better than on his artist album and one of them had an external masterer and the other did not or the Dimension 5 2013 releases sounded much better than the 2007 one and they had 6 years in between. I think mastering can make a huge change in the end product along with the original mix. But as Oopie mentioned I think we are generally way better off than what we were some years ago, I can't fault too many releases anymore for sounding bad. Which has been a great thing to witness, but I still like when things sound as good as they can.

Ufomatka would be a dreamy choice

Will there be CDr?

Well apparently it was posted on one of those sites just after being mentioned in psynews. So someone from there might be reading psynews.

Wonder how long until they go out of stock!

Haha that's crazy

Eh it's still a highly relevant and an interesting tangent. I think it's totally crazy I didn't even think of people mastering for festivals or parties, but I guess that's because my music consumption is home listening 100% Personally I listen to so much music that I do notice the differences(Unless it's a trashy audio system, but then everything sounds equally shit regardless), it is a massive change whether a track is flat, sharp, bloomy, soft or whatever you want to throw in here. You don't even have to get technical about it, just the way it sounds is enough. And as said, newer equipment get more and more revealing as the years go by. On parties people will pay even less attention to these things because everything is loud regardless and the sound systems already colour the music pretty heavily(There's a saying everything sounds great in a party). At least to me, mastering can make and break a track as I automatically gravitate toward things that sound more enticing and pleasing rather than boring and flat and the production has a huge impact on how the bass sounds, how sharp or dull the highs are, how busy it sounds or how much breathing room the layers have. Homogeneity is also an issue I agree, not everything should sound the same, but for the sake of consistency for an album that's a different thing.. Now obviously people who do mostly notice these things are not the majority, but why does one have to always go for the lowest common denominator? This is why we have the loudness war in the first place. Musical quality is the most important one yes, but again if something sounds like it's been through hell like the tracks in my original post, then it doesn't matter, the tracks will be forgotten. a couple pages back I posted a comparison of D5 iron sun and it's remix, tell me you don't hear a difference with them. Or another album I find unfortunately lacking in audio department was M-Run, he had 2 tracks on Erta Alé mastered by Colin and they sounded much better than anything in the album. I still find the album brilliant in it's own right, musical-wise, but I do not go back to it as much as I'd want! And to note this is not directed at anyone in particular even if it might seem so, just talking general principles what kind of a change you can achieve just with how things sound.

You know, sometimes I wonder why new school doesn't use sounds like Etnica and Pleiadians did, little do I realize, there's plenty enough without them. This album is total insanity and a goa collection without it is not a complete one!

Spies - Notinism Absolutely an incredible dark industrial ambient with a psy flavour. http://www.discogs.com/Spies-Notinism/release/244133 Frost Raven is underrated for sure!

Well a thousand euros is a ton of money isn't it..

This EP sounds unfortunately very flat in the audio department but musically Reefer Madness has a wonderful climax at 4:17! Definitely a creeping surprise in a middle of an old school dj set if anyone dares to use it.

Yep, kinda sux it's an 85mm on a crop but whatever. I tested 55-250 stm today and ohmygod it's so GOOD! Autofocus is literally total silence and super fast, Image Stabilization is superB too. Completely worth the extra over the non-stm. Unfortunately it makes me REALLY want to replace the kit lens as the picture quality is much nicer! arhghrdh I'd be set for a long time with the 17-50mm 2.8 and 11-16 2.8 but that'd cost me literally a ton.

Well I didn't buy today but I got past month a lot of stuff. I've been saving up so I thought I'd spend something For my 600D I got cheap ebay knockoff 400x nd filter (probably 7 stop MAX), some lends hoods and the newer 55-250 STM tele lens + 50mm 1.8. Great lenses for the price, I just need to replace the 18-55 kit lens that came with the body, but I already spent over 300 euro for these two alone.. I'd love to get wider lens too but those things are so goddamn expensive. Crop sensor sucks for wide angle photography.

Not bad!