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krelmatrix

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Everything posted by krelmatrix

  1. Sticking with the Live 93 theme, I'd have to say that Plateau and Valley are my favorites. This is one case where I am not ashamed to admit that my taste in Orb tracks is most likely very related to the drug experiences I've had with these particular ones. I caught the Orb live only once - I forget the year, but it was somewhere around '98 or so...forget which tour it was. I was expecting some sort of complete stoner vibe in the concert (somewhere around 2000 people present), but they managed to transform the songs into extremely danceable material, and really had the crowd moving for a good portion of the show. I remember jamming out to a song at one point and suddenly realizing that it was a semi-uptempo version of Plateau. Absolutely wonderful. Now you've motivated me - I think I'm going to listen to Live 93 and Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld tonight.
  2. That's the one for me. This album was my first real electronic love - months before I discovered goa. Adventures from Beyond the Ultraworld is probably my second. I barely remember somebody (my parents, maybe) buying the tape for my sister as a Christmas present shortly after it came out, and hearing it christmas morning in 1991 while we were opening our gifts with the family. Strangely, that was also the same year when we started making it a family tradition to get stumbling drunk on Christmas day....coincidence?? A friend of mine gave me a copy of Orb on Kompakt (arrrr!), and it was actually pretty good. Nothing compared to the lushness of the old stuff, but I'd probably pick up a copy if I ran across it in the store with a few spare euros in my pocket. But I only listened to it once, so it's not a very deep impression. I heard him play a DJ set in Austin back in 1995 - I think he might have been touring as a DJ with Meat Beat Manifesto (it's a bit hazy that far back) and playing sets before and after they were on stage. He wasn't a great DJ (played some cool trippy drum & bass, though), but the majority of the crowd were there to hear him. A group of 5 or 6 of us went behind the venue afterwards and smoked Dr. LX up. I remember some really fucked-up guy (no, it wasn't me ) who was just standing there in reverence for a few minutes, then finally got up enough courage to ask Alex if he could touch his hands, with the most awestruck look on his face. Creepy! The guy probably found the roach from the joint on the ground afterwards and kept it preserved in a jar somewhere for all of eternity. His own personal Abba turd.
  3. Exactly. Suntrip was voted best label here on Psynews, right? I wonder how many total sales Psynews members accounted for.....100? 150? 200? Holy shit, somebody call TIPWorld and Chemical Crew right now and tell them about the shocking sales figures so they can stop selling their horrible-selling full-on albums and harnass the truly awesome buying power that inevitebly comes with being voted the the best label on the mighty psynews.org!!! Anyways, it's simple....50 or 100 or even 500 people bitching on forums about wanting to hear more old-skool goa stuff doesn't translate into the sales figures that would be necessary to support a lot of labels releasing the style. The majority of the "psytrance" DJs out there are spinning full-on/dark/forest/psy-prog.....not old-skool sounds. I doubt the tiny psy-trance market could support a large number of labels releasing true goa sounds (whether they be new labels or established labels switching to the style). Why hasn't Tranceform Records released anything since 2004? Why haven't other new goa labels popped up? Because the demand is small. Internet forums - especially psynews - don't have a huge correlation with the market demand. Don't be deceived into thinking that. Regarding this Transwave new album issue - it's been almost 10 years since their last album. Both Dado & Christof have been producing completely different music for years. How anybody could expect them to pick up where they left off so long ago is just beyond me. I am personally looking forward to hearing what the two of them produce together. Not because I expect them to return to their old sound that I loved so much (I've got the old albums for that), but because I know that their two heads working together have turned out some really cool sounds in the past and have the potential to do so now - whatever style it might be. Sure, maybe the album will suck. Then I won't buy it. End of story. €15 I'll spend elsewhere. But these guys used to produce magic together, so I am interested to see what they can do together now, even if it doesn't sound a thing like their old material. And about the name...it's the stupidest fucking thing for people to get their panties in a wad that I've ever heard. I don't hear people complaining that Electrypnose released both an uptempo and downtempo album under the same name. I don't hear people bitching about Human Blue planning to do the same thing. I've heard a lot of artists that have completely different styles under the same name. Who cares? Does it somehow tarnish the old albums if they produce something under the same name 10 years later that completely blows? No. Listen to it before you buy it, and you'll be safe. That's my afternoon rant.
  4. Wise words, old man. Now if only somebody would hold down the fucking people who whine constantly about the "old days" and tatoo this line in the back of their eyelids in glowing fluorescent ink, the world (or at least psy/goa/music-in-general) scene would be a much happier place! *slightly off-topic* Is this net-label of yours that you mentioned up & running yet? I assume the style will be along the lines of what you are into nowadays (Skazi-riffic killarg stuff, of course), so I'd be interested to check it out. Are you going to sell through beatport and the like, or use your own interface?
  5. Yeah, I get those fucking spam emails from him too! At least the god-damned viagra spams are funny sometimes. How many times does he have to repeat himself before he'll realize that he has already made his point and nobody really gives a shit? Even though I don't like their music taste, my friends that are into the superkillargh dark deathtrance are a lot less annoying and arrogant than the people who are still bitter that old-skool goa went out of fashion years ago. Get over it. Wow, I don't hear the same tunes at parties that I did 10 years ago. HOW THE FUCK CAN I GO ON LIVING?!?!?!?! PS - When you go form your utopian frozen-in-1995 scene, leave radi with us, motherfuckers! At least he's funny sometimes!
  6. Purple & Lunar - Subtle Thrust I hadn't heard that track in years, but my flatmate is playing it on his stereo right now. I forgot what a fucking amazing track that one is. It's so unique, so groovy and so emotional. Damned near perfect track. (reminding myself to put it in my CD case for the next gig)
  7. From a business standpoint, it would be absolutely stupid for them to state the price in the contract. Prices are never stable for so many years, and it would be a horrible pain in the butt to get agreement with each and every label (1000+ at this point, I would assume) if they have to change the price for some reason (which they already did awhile back, but all in $$ currency). However, I have managed a contract with another store similar to Beatport that did have the price stated explicitly, so it's not out of the question that they could do such a thing. The smart thing to do (even if it can lead to this random price-increase BS) is to have a single line in the conditions of the agreement stating "Beatport will set the prices." Very few labels are going to refuse to sign a contract for that reason, and it gives them much less work to do in the case they do want to up the price for whatever reason.
  8. Actually, I just saw the following, which EP posted earlier in this topic..... If what he is saying is true and it is indeed written in the contract that the labels have to give permission (ie, contract addendum) to change prices, then there might be legal problems with this price increase after all. I'll be interested to hear Slater's response to him.
  9. Yep....it's more obvious now, but still utter crap, IMO.
  10. It's only some countries that see the higher prices. For example, in Germany I'm seeing the €€ prices, but it sounds like people in Sweden and Poland are still seeing the $$ prices, while the UK customers get theirs in pounds sterling. Rather bullshit, if you ask me. Depending on the legalities of the specific contract between Beatport and the labels, Beatport might not have any legal responsibility to notify the labels of any pricing changes. I looked through a few contracts I had sitting around for other digital stores (unfortunately, I couldn't find the Beatport one, not that the conditions can be mentioned specifically anyways) and the conditions vary. In a couple contracts, the prices are stated explicitly as a part of the contract. IE, the store would have to have the label sign an addendum to the contact if they wanted to change prices. In others, it is stated explicitly that the store will set the prices. So they can make the price whatever they want, and they don't either have to get permission from the label or even notify them of the raised prices. My guess is that Beatport has the latter sort of clause in their contract, so they can raise or lower the prices at will without giving their label partners *any* notification. Otherwise, they are setting themselves up for potential legal problems and breach of contract accusations from some labels. But I think they are smarter than that. (there are also contracts with no mention of price, but that's a legal grey area that would probably go in favor of the store if it came to it) As EP mentioned, it's all on a percentage basis, so both Beatport and the labels get some of the extra. As long as the labels technically own the recordings, the artists have no say on the pricing on Beatport, and neither the label nor Beatport have any legal necessity to inform or get permission from the artists of price changes (unless there happens to be some strange clause in the artist-label contract giving the artist some say in pricing of digital distribution of their tracks, but I wouldn't ever expect to see that). It's all between Beatport and the labels. Time will tell. But if they remain within the bounds of their contract with the labels, it really doesn't matter if the labels are pleased. If the labels are upset about the price increases, chances are all they can do is cancel the contract with Beatport. But I'm sure that few if any labels would bother to do that since they will still sell more with Beatport than any other stores. I'm personally pissed about the pricing changes since I'm based in Germany, and my prices are now in Euros (€1 = $1.28 or so). So my prices have gone up by almost 30%. Were it an across-the-board price increase for all customers (which they did a year or so ago), I would grumble but deal with it. However, since this price increase only seems to affect certain few countries (not even all countries that use the different currencies), I'm going to shop elsewhere where it's less expensive. Or, thanks to bubbles...... The other solution.
  11. Anybody know a US-based proxy I can go through?
  12. If you go through a proxy in the US, do you get the cheaper dollar prices?
  13. Whichever year....I knew it was sometime in the late-90s. Fortunately, there were few enough DJs in Texas at the time with diverse enough tastes that we didn't get any tracks ground into our heads over and over again at a particular event. Whatever the case, I remember hearing those tracks and thinking that they were completely different from everything I had been hearing for the last years. The bassline was much more in the forefront with the rest of the track following than most anything I had heard to that point. I didn't really like it at the time....or it sounded somehow strange to me. However, I remember when I started hearing some of the 3d vision stuff that had more of a melodic structure along with the huge basslines that it somehow clicked...especially that first Talamasca album. It almost seemed to combine that bass-dominated sound with what Ofer Dikovsky had done with the Pigs in Space and Delirious albums. IMO, the full-on sound hit its peak in 2000-2001, then got really boring and formulaic afterwards.
  14. I've always thought the same thing. I remember when the Microchip EP came out in '97 or so, with those massive basslines in "Coming Soon" and "Intercorporal Stimulator"....as far as I remember, those were the first tunes I heard with the really bass-driven sound (yes, even if it's not 16th note basslines) which is the signature of full-on nowadays. At the time, I thought it sounded kind of awkward, but it seemed to catch on. Gawd, I remember the nice days in '98-2001 when the full-on sound (I referred to it more as "cybertrance" at the time since I thought it had a very cyber metalllic sound to it) was still somewhat of a unique sound coming from some Frenchies and a couple Israeli guys named Ofer & Avi. The Tandu album, the Pigs in Space album and a couple of the Space Cat albums were absolutely brilliant. Same goes for a lot of the stuff that came out on 3d Vision in the early days. Then TIPWorld caught on and it seemed to become a fad sometime around 2001. That's a flash back - one of the first goa records I bought when I started DJing was from his Psychonauts project - the Olympus/Journey Into Time EP back in 1996. It was weird but cool. I'm guessing it was before his downfall into cheese. Ah, the days when the term "Israeli Trance" meant something special....there is still good music coming from the country (Domo/Ear Peaks kicks serious ass), but in '96-99 I was seriously digging most of the stuff coming from Israeli labels & Artists (crappy Nitzhonot stuff excluded). California Sunshine, MFG, Astral Projection, Power Source, Space Cat, Oforia....really fantastic stuff. I remember regularly playing sets of mostly Israeli melodic stuff for a year or two. Well, if you'd just clean the damned things once in awhile....
  15. This album fucking rocks! Possibly the biggest surprise for me this year. Not much more to say now.
  16. I'm sad to see Spiral Trax go, but I guess they hadn't been super-active in the last year. However, it was always quality over quantity with the label. My first Spiral Trax record: Human Blue - Stonehenge/Psychotix - SPIT003 Still love it. About the downloading issue - I don't think that it should be such a big factor anymore as it was when p2p first started getting big several years ago. The digital market is becoming profitable (although I never saw Spiral Trax tunes available in that format) and people are still buying CDs and vinyl. I agree that the the biggest problem is that the economics just don't work if there are such a neverending supply of new labels popping up for such a miniscule scene. Cosmophilia going under possibly hurt as well, I'm sure. Although I'm not sure if that is the culprit for Spiral Trax since AFAIK they had already switched to Two Hand Distribution awhile back. Also, very few people running labels have any fucking idea of business & economics...I'm not necessarily saying that Anti falls under this category, but every single shitty label taking a bit more from an already-small pool hurts all of the others. At least ACDC is still around - that seemed to be the more active side of Spiral Trax lately anyways.
  17. Lonestar - New Kicks Every single fucking time I hear this track....
  18. Keep in mind that there is a difference between using mixing as simply a tool to get from one track to the next, and mixing/layering multiple tracks together to make something cool & new. For the most basic beatmatching skill of going smoothly from one track to the next, it is definitely simple with house music since it is a very minimal beat-based structure. (it also takes a few hours to learn to do it with psytance) But to take it to the next level and really do something cool with the music in an original and artistic way....that's a whole different level of complexity and isn't easy to master at all. Goa/psytrance, on the other hand, was always about using the songs to create a longer journey, with mixing taking the back seat. Unfortunately, that focus is really lost nowadays for the most part, and the most important musical skill in crafting a psytrance set is keeping the same level of high intensity throughout. There is little room to create a real journey between multiple tracks since almost every damn track is at a peak. The "journey", at best, is predictable and linear. I think this is why a lot of DJs have "moved" to progressive styles over the years. Considering the extreme variance in progressive and the amount of variation you can get away with when actually playing for a dancefloor, proggy styles are really much more conducive for a DJ to create an interactive, dynamic musical story. I still enjoy playing psytrance, but I personally prefer progressive sets since I have a lot more musical freedom to really create something interesting (and danceable ). Sure there are! Dimitri Nakov, Emok, Peter Digital, etc... But these guys are exceptions...and most of the really skilled DJs in this scene don't spin what most people would consider psytrance anyways. But you don't have to have any real technical skills to make it nowadays in the psy scene. Just good connections, a label backing you (or be an artist booked to play "live PA" computer DJ sets), and a moderate sense for the dancefloor. Or at least a CD case full of killerz that you can pull out one after another. You hardly ever see psytrance DJs advance beyond a very rudimentary skill level (how many are still depending on beat counters?!). And most of the remarkably skilled DJs in this scene (talking more than just clean beatmatching) mastered the art on other styles of music.
  19. I know. I'm also a HUGE fan of Martinez.
  20. "Very nice" is a serious fucking understatement! He's currently releasing some of the most ingeneous unclassifiable music out there. I'd even venture to call some of it psychedelic. To keep it on topic....I'd like to hear FREq experiment more in that vein sometime. I think he'd do it well.
  21. I'll also add to the sentiments of disappointment. It's good and will absolutely rip dancelfoors apart - there is no doubt about that. But it's for the most part lacking that "wow factor" that the first album had. On the bright side, however.... That distorted breakdown in "Stone Shaker" is one of the positively sickest moments I've ever heard in progressive trance. I mean, WHAT IN HOLY FUCKING HELL IS THAT?!?! If FREq is going to go with the faster brain-twisters on this album, then this is what I'd expect to hear from him. Distorted as fucking hell, but 100% melodically coherent. Chaos meets beauty. It's like if Gibby Haynes was genetically crossed with Peter Gabriel, did a gargantuan line of PCP and spent a couple days in the studio to sort it all out and came up with this 1-minute breakdown. If I don't get to hear that on the alternative floor at Voov this year, I'm going to be seriously pissed off and will probably try to trigger the violent downfall of civilized society as soon as I get home. "Singularity Part 2" is also a definite winner. It's just so....damned....pleasant! I don't expect to be playing this in any psy/prog sets (perfect for a nice melodic proghouse set), but I get the feeling it's going to be in my playlist for the next year or two. Anyways, I know I'll be hearing all of the tracks on the dancefloor this summer, I know I'll be jumping up & down while they are playing waving my lighter in the air like a retarded schoolgirl, but that's exactly what these tracks are designed for. We've heard what FREq can do beyond the A+ dancefloor killerz formula (ie, AVATAR...why isn't this released in unmixed format???), and this album ain't it. FREq is IMO a sonic genius, but he needs to be kidnapped and trapped in a studio with producers like Habersham or Martinez or Shiloh so he'll finally see that he doesn't have to cater to the psy crowd.
  22. If you slow a Skazi 45rpm record down to 33rpm and play it backwards, it sounds remarkably like Elysium. Based on that, I've come to the conclusion that Kristian is actually the true brain behind Skazi, and Skazi is nothing more than a backwards remix project for old Elysium tracks. Asher Swissa & B-Bass are the Milli & Vanilli of the trance scene.
  23. Yep, it was supposedly ready to go, but the label didn't survive long enough, and the interest for psy-breaks had mostly waned by that point. I do think that a lot of the tracks have made it out over the years on various compilations and whatnot. Dragonfly managed to get several Digitalis tracks released on 12" and on the 2nd CD of the latest Shakta album. Based on the teaser track in that mix, though, the newer stuff rocks.
  24. I vaguely remember that Aether album awhile back - a friend of mine bought it and was freaking out for several months about it. I'll have to check out this JNR Hacksaw stuff. The thing that made me saddest about Matsuri going under was that there was another Digitalis album in the pipeline that was never going to be released. 3rd State was a masterpiece, and I think the followup would have been incredible. I'm glad he's still going, though. Welcome back Seb!
  25. KIIIILLLAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!! Would you be offended or honored if somebody called a Holm & Anderson song KIllargh?
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