krelmatrix

Wow, and I thought I was the only one!

I voted Ticon - they have consistently kicked my ass since I first got into them in the summer of 2001, and none of their releases have ever let me down. Shiva Chandra? The guy is like my cat - puts out more shit than I can keep track of.

Ticon - Rip it Up

Ticon The Orphants album is good, but it doesn't have that "Wow" factor for me.

Several listens later.... I like it even more, if that was possible. There is only one song that I don't like ("In Stereo"). There are 4 tracks that make me completely mess my pants ("Kids of the '80s", "U Make Me Wanna Drink More", "Poem for Granny" and "Rip it Up"). The rest are still fucking excellent - at the very least. Not exactly bad - 8 out of 9 tracks (not counting the Prologue) have me jumping around the apartment. I let my flatmate borrow it, and he's on the 2nd straight listen now. Every 30 seconds, I keep hearing him start laughing maniacally or scream "What the hell was that?!" I think he's actually ordering his own copy now. The revolution will be live!!

I voted Nitrox because it had the only track from them I ever played - I forget exactly which one, but there was one track on that album I was playing a lot in 2001. The rest of the album wasn't bad either. I remember Equator being listenable, but I think it went in the pile as soon as the next CD arrived. Other than that, Etnica blows goats, IMO. Their early stuff was always my least favorite of the old-skool days. I remember everybody being all hyped about Alien Protein, but it always just bored the fuck out of me. I never understood the excitement. Now, their Pleaidians work - that was decent stuff. Crop Circles weren't too bad either.

KIIIIILLLLLAAAAAGGGGHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!! The stuff going on in the high end in that sample is OK, but that bassline.....sounds vaguely familiar. Like I've heard it somwhere before..... I really wonder sometimes if Raja Ram sends artists some superkillaggrh pre-set package with all of the killlar TIPWorld basslines (all ONE of them) as soon as they sign with the label. I think I actually saw a synth once that had the "TIPWorld" button on it. It caused a hole to open up and feces to spew forth all over the thing.

Considering how TIPWorld milks every artist they can for a collaboration with Alien "couldn't produce a song alone to save his life" Project, I'm sure we can expect to see an Alien Sandman CD in the next year. But I have high hopes for the Sandman material. I heard some samples about 3 years back when he was shopping around his "Alternative" album and they were really great.

The ds webstore has the album for €6.99, but it is 320kbps mp3s if you can live with that (functionally just as good as .wav for listening & DJing). www.mpdqx.com (follow link to Digital Structures home, then to their webstore) The album is also on Beatport, but it's more expensive. However, Beatport will have downloadable .wav files for all of their stock in the near future (or so they promise). Just don't expect it to be much cheaper than buying the CD. www.beatport.com (now just 320kbps mp3 files, but probably .wav in a month or so)

*double post*

In theory this is a great idea and would increase sales in eastern Europe as you suggested, but in practice this is extremely difficult for small labels that have sales in the range of 500-2500 CDs (as is the case with most psy/prog labels). A large label (Sony, BMG, EMI, etc) can handle this without much risk or difficulty. They can produce the CDs at a lower cost in the local markets, use distribution channels that operate in the local markets, etc. Their production & distribution costs *locally* are lower so they can charge less. I have no idea whether or not the larger labels actually lower their prices in reality (maybe you can shed some light?), but the flexibility is there. The risk is also lower. If - as was suggested - I got moni to ship me a cheap copy of the new Brittney Spears album from Romania instead of buying in a German store for more money, the loss is negligible since they will still sell hundreds of thousands or millions of copies in the more expensive markets. If 1000 people did the same, it would still be practically negligible. That's why you can see legitimate copies of pop music sold for €4-8 in Turkey like el brujo mentioned. Now apply this situation to a small label that produces maybe a couple thousand (generous figures for most psy releases) copies of a CD. For small runs of CDs, the production cost per CD is much more than a huge label printing several hundred thousand copies. Printing 500 CDs is much more expensive per CD than even printing 2000. Splitting production of a small number of CDs between several markets (for example 1500 to Western Europe, 500 to Eastern Europe, 500 South America) would raise the cost of production per CD substantially. This also triples the production work involved for the labels - instead of dealing with 1 production plant, you are dealing with 3. Instead of dealing with 1 distributor, you are dealing with 3. When there are 1 or 2 people running a label, this becomes very difficult. I know people who run labels and they barely have enough time to deal with a single production run as is. It also increases the risk of having a lot of money invested in 3 different places instead of just one. And this is assuming that there are even local distribution channels for psytrance - if not, then none of it even matters. Also remember that largely the record labels are not the ones setting the prices. They sell their CDs to the distributor for a specific price (often set by the distributor, although I assume there is some negotiation involved) that really just barely covers their operational & production costs. The distributor sells the CDs to the shops for an increased price that covers their operational costs. The shops sells the CDs to the consumers at an increased price to cover their costs. The label has little or no flexibility to charge less for their CDs - remember that they are receiving less than half of what you see in the shops. The problem is not the labels setting the prices too high. It's mostly due to a) the markup that the CD sees as it goes through 2 or 3 middlemen, and b ) the inflexibility of production costs due to the small nature of the market. Nobody is raking in the cash so it's not really possible for the labels (or really the distributors or shops) to do much about this. It's difficult, but not impossible to solve. If there was a local distribution company (so you weren't having to get your CDs from psyshop, for example), this would lower the markup at the distribution level. Another solution would be if there was a local "licensing-only" label that licensed and re-released the CDs to your local market. I'm not talking about a company like YSE that releases "best-of" compilations, but a label that licensed & re-released the *full* CDs from other labels. This isn't a new concept either. In the '90s, all of the Astral Projection CDs originally released in Israel on Trust In Trance were also licensed to UK labels like Transient or TIP. Nowadays, Vision Quest licenses & re-releases most Hommega releases in Japan. Why? It's cheaper (and easier) to license & release an album from another label than to be the label originally releasing it. The release will also not be an import and can be sold according to the local market prices. Either of these solutions involves somebody having the know-how, financial means and desire to start a company. And considering the levels of piracy in the places where the prices are a problem, I doubt there are many peole wanting to take the risk. Anyway, that's my long answer.

Yay! I just got confirmation that my pre-order copy of the CD was shipped today!

It's all in the funk, methinks. One of the main things I like about VoC is the element of funk in the music - especially in the low-end (which does seem to be the thing that bugs you about it the most). You forget, the first time we met, I was playing a rather funky set of breaks, so I gravitate more towards that general feel in tunes, whether it be funky 128bpm deep/tech-house or jumping 145bpm psychedelic trance. BTW, nice metaphors in the review. "Im just getting too fucking old, at 25 my nutsack is already as wrinkled as the late Walter Matthaus face. " I may have to get you to write my obituary if I die an untimely death.

Yeah, they just mailed me back and told me to do the paypal thing. Comes from the same source (credit card) anyways, so it's all cool. It gets shipped on the 26th of November, so I'm hoping it arrives at my family's address in the states before I do in December.

Old tracks. I've had them from Soulseek for months.

The original was certainly a trend-setter (and for good reason), but this remix - or at least the sample - doesn't do a damn thing for me. Kind of generic. It's funny you wrote this topic today since my flatmate was playing a mix yesterday that had "Reload" (the original version) in it. Brought back some good old memories of when I was still a hardcore full-on freak.

Wow, people have to spend a few seconds to ignore non-review comments to actually get to the comments on the album? The poor babies! Are peoeple really that lazy? And anyways, aside from perhaps the Eskimo review thread (which I still don't understand why it was even posted in the reviews section), I really don't see many review topics being "drowned" in unrelated comments to the point that it's difficult to find comments on the release. People are making a big deal out of a non-problem. Cripes - this isn't isratrance, for god's sake.

The samples from this sounded fantastic! But I tried to pre-order a copy and the entire ordering system was fucked for me. Let's hope it somehow gets to my mailbox by sometime in early-December.

Yeah, this is my whole point exactly! A couple people bitching (perhaps out of more personal reasons, eh?) doesn't justify trying to change a system that seems to work fine for the vast majority of users. There's always people who are going to complain about something. That doesn't mean that it's suddenly a huge problem! It's like overhauling the entire public transit system in a city because a couple people who live out in the boondocks complain that it takes too long for them to get home. uh oh... <looks down> <covers up offical "moni fan club" shirt>

I'll agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly, but you have to admit that sometimes (IMO in this case) it's a bit superfluous.

Exactly. As we used to say in Texas... "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." People are bringing up a bunch of "what if's" as arguments to fix a nonexistent problem. I certainly don't see any problems with the system of reviews as it stands now. There are reviews and the occasional discussion. Wow - what a novel idea! Discussing the release?!?!?! As long as people keep it civil (which is almost always the case aside from a few minor spats), I don't see a problem. But then again, I'm just an easy-going guy like that and simply ignore the shit I don't want to read.

I don't see any problem whatsoever with a few people saying "hey, nice review!". Why the hell is that considered "spam" anyways? When somebody has put a lot of work into writing a detailed review, public compliments are a nice and deserved thing for them to receive (especially in the VoC review where it was moni's first detailed review and I think people would like to encourage her to write more). It's always been allowed on (for example) isratrance and I don't think I've once seen a review thread get eaten up by hundreds of comments about the reviews and nobody talking about the CD in question. Do we really want to be more strictly moderated than isratrance?!?!?!??! And why are comments such as these being referred to as "spam"? Spam would be if the artist came in and posted all of their upcoming dates & releases in the review thread. Spam would be if somebody came in and started slamming the artist unnecessarily (ie, "Skazi sucks!"). Spam would be if another artist posted "check out my stuff, it sounds like this!" Somebody posting a nice public compliment to the reviewer, while perhaps not necessarily directly on the topic of the review itself, isn't something that will bring the thread off its main topic (unless somebody bitches about it, starting an argument ). If anything, it will encourage people to put more effort into what they write in the future. Never underestimate the power of public backstroking.

Holy fucking shit, this CD rocks the casbah! When I complain about 99.9% of modern psytrance lacking creativity and having no soul, this CD is that 0.1% that I am not talking about. This is exactly where I would have loved to have seen goa/psy go had it not been sidetracked by the full-on virus. It's swirly, melodic, layered, playful - everything that turned me onto this music in the first place (and mostly disappeared a few years back). And the basslines....THE BASSLINES! These guys know how to pile energy and funk into the low end like nobody else. These basslines are actually active and energetic, unlike the rolling or chainsaw variety you hear in most other stuff out there nowadays. Needless to say, I'm impressed. PS - nice review moni!

yeah, I know - but I was feeling lazy and didn't want to change out of my house pants, so I just sent my flatmate after a bottle. Oh the coincidence. The Orphants album arrived yesterday morning and I'm enjoying it now. I think I like the Ticon album better, but this is still fantastic, especially "House for My Spouse".

No! I'm already finished. I figured it would be more confusing to have similar avatars when we post a lot in the same thread. Just remember - I'm the psychedelic one. Cheap & crappy! 2004 Cerre Vocate Soave from Italy. Cost €3 for the bottle. Never trust an early-20s German student to buy your wine for you. I gave him €3.50 for a reason! Anyways, this album must be one of the best ever - traveller admitted to liking it and Simon isn't even involved!