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Can anyone recommend some ambient/downtempo psy to me? What I currently have is Younger Brother A Flock of Bleeps and Inifinity Project's Mystical Experiences. I like them both, but A Flock of Bleeps is so incredible to me. I also have Are You Shpongled and Tales of the Inexpressible. I really like pieces that have more of an Eastern type influence and lots of pyschedelic sounds. I'm not really looking for something like true ambient that often sounds too unstructured. I like something that actually has a nice beat, mellow melodies and upbeat but still nicely psychedelic without the relentless psychedelic driving energy and melodies of Goa. I also have some of the Future Sound of London albums, but they aren't quite the style I'm looking for. Can you guys help me out?

I've not listened to Hypnorhythm EP, but the more I listen to Helium the more I become convinced that this is one of the most beautifully produced albums in the history of electronic music. On a side note, I am more blown away and amazed each time I listen to Prana Cyclone and Geomantik. These styles of psychedelic trance are truly amazing.

Little did I know when I purchased this cheaply from saikosounds.com about two years ago just how in demand it was going to become. Hell, I didn't even know one thing about psy at that point. I bought it, listened to one track and put the thing on the back shelf. I came into my own with psy and was amazed to find I had one of the seminal psy releases just waiting for me to discover it.

Awwwwwwww, damn!!!!!! I haven't left Vancouver for a year and six months except for one quick weekend trip. The only time I plan on leaving for the next six months is for a trip to Seattle next weekend that I can't avoid. Talk about bad timing for me! I hope to see lots of cool pictures!

Hey bud! It's great to see someone from the neighbourhood! I'm a relative newcomer to the site myself and a real newbie to the whole psy scene. I'm coming over from the glory days of 1997 to 2000 mainstream trance. Old skool Goa caught my ear and I find I can't get enough of it. I'm a transplant from Mississippi, but for the last 5 years I've hung my hat in the West End of Vancouver. Tofino can be wikkid fun. I was over there a few years ago and spent some quality time at the Wickaninnish Inn listening to the surf crash outside the balcony doors while I went to sleep. Goa DJ? You'll have to tell me more sometime. I don't know anyone who listens to psy. All my friends think I'm crazy. I have gone to Organix at Club 23 West a few times, but that's not quite what I'm looking for. I think I'm alone in an island of people obsessed with West Coast house and hip hop.

December 2004. A real newcomer. Although I had purchased a few psy CDs about a year and a half ago, I didn't like them and they lay unlistened to on my music shelf. I don't know what triggered it, but I decided to pull them out and start to give them a new listen. One of them just happened to be Pleiadians IFO and that was all she wrote! Now I've been exploring old skool Goa with all the enthusiasm of a giddy school girl. I think I rather like this psychedelic trance and Goa.

I voted mostly, but that could just be a phase. I'm kind of new to this whole psy thing. But as far as music, I almost exclusively listen to electronica of one sort or another.

Thanks for the replies guys. With a little searching I found that most of the earlier ones have been reviewed on this website. As an aside, I think the cover artwork for the Tantrace series albums are stunning.

I've been having a lot of fun exploring the suggestions you guys left me in my "Help with Goa" thread. One of the purchases I made was Tantrance's Volume 2. It's the first Goa compilation I've laid my hands on, and I'm so glad I made the purchase. As a newbie I'm really excited with the tracklisting. My question is this: Are all the albums in the Tantrance series on par with each other in terms of excellence, or were they hit and miss? Any outstanding recommendations from this series?

Dancesafe and Bluelight are neither for nor against drugs. You will find the forums frequented by law enforcement officers, parents, teenagers, drug users and non users alike. The aim of websites such as these is harm reduction: the belief that there is no safe drug usage but only safer drug usage. Sites like these are designed for the express purpose of providing unbiased drug education. The "war on drugs" in the United States and Canada is not working. Most drug education is propaganda that in some cases, such as that of MDMA, is based on faulty research or outright lies. Where is the confidence to believe any of it when things such as Ricaurte's faulty studies are exposed? Do you really believe any scientist who is being funded by the US government to research illicit substances is going to turn out any 'evidence' that is contra to the US' current stance on drugs? I am not for or against drugs in any particular sense. However, since drug use is growing and here to stay, I think it's much better to give sound information than some tired old rhetoric of 'drugs are bad....mmmmmmkay?' A generation of people, many of our parents included, shroomed and tripped their way through the 60's and 70's and are alive and well today.

I love this forum. I love old skool goa, and I'm just discovering it for the first time in my life! What I appreciate most is the 'maturity' on this board. I can come here and read interesting and intellectual discussions about goa/psy and know that anytime I leave a serious questions that I receive helpful and courteous responses. Also, since I'm not part of any psy community and don't know any other people who listen to goa/psy it's a great way for me to feel a bit connected. The only problem now is that over the years I have spent so much time collecting mainstream trance and have hundreds of albums of Eurotrance, progressive house, dream trance, progressive trance, etc. Now that I've gotten a taste of psy I can't go back to listen to those much anymore! I find them too boring!!!! Psy/Goa tweaks with my mind in such amazing ways. Once a week I go to visit my family who lives about an hour away. I select two albums (one for the drive out and one for the return) and during that hour long drive I have the most fantastic mind trips as I listen to this incredible music!

C'mon. Lumping us with those thugs south of the 49th parallel. P.S. I think I can get by saying that; I'm one of 'em.

In a bidding war, I realise market value is really subjective and only really determined by how badly any number of people want any given album. However, what would be considered fair market value for most now-rare Goa releases that come up for grabs? Again I realise that it's really determined by your financial status and how badly you want something, but there has to be a point at which the price becomes ridiculous for the majority of people. For example, I saw Prana - Cyclone go for over $103.50 USD on ebay and then went to another legitimate and trustworthy website and saw the same thing for a fixed price of $28.99. I'm kind of confused. I see items going on Ebay for more money than you can purchase them from places such as Saikosounds and Psyshop. Are some of these items original releases versus re-releases and consequently of more value to collectors?

What?!?!? Canada doesn't even rate? Bastards!!!!!!

Basilisk, that is a very interesting response and one that I can highly respect. It also raises some very valid questions that have mirrored some of my own thoughts and experiences as I have watched my tastes in music evolve. I too have questioned where the pinnacle of maturity in electronica lies. Who collectively is deciding what is 'hot' and what is not? Based on my experiences with mainstream trance, aural maturity is often equated to a transition from highly melodic Dutch trance to harder trance to progressive trance/house until the progression has reached a point where you are left with nothing but thumping bass beats. In some cases, this manifests as an elitist technophile attitude where anything but minimal arrangements with nothing but a bass line and no melody is considered 'cheese'. This 'keeping up with the Joneses' for the sake of being on the cutting edge can be an easy trap into which to fall. I jumped on the bandwagon for awhile and began my own progression down that tuneless road until I realised that music should be listened to that makes the soul and spirit soar. From reading these forums, I seem to see a bit of the same thing happening in the psy scene. In my other thread, Seraph's brief history of the genre was really eye opening. It appears that there was a shift from Goa into 'full-on' and more minimal and progressive styles. Whether or not this represents what people see as maturity in the psy scene or just a natural evolution of the genre is unknown to me. I sometimes wonder what factor popular opinion has in musical tastes. There have been some albums that were purported to be masterpieces. I would listen to them and think they were crap. It was only after repeated listenings that they began to grow on me and I began to really appreciate them for what they were. Anyway, sorry to ramble. Music is fascinating to me. I grew up in a background where I had absolutely no exposure to secular music until I was 21. I was in a society largely closed to the outside world and in the absence of even radio and television my only exposure to music was vocal gospel hymns sung acapella. I wonder if the progression or evolution of music is in a sense cyclical. As little as a year ago, I was hard pressed to find the Dutch producer Armin Van Buuren's albums anywhere in the city of Vancouver. Now I am noticing on the shelves of music stores such as Virgin that there is a plethora of his productions and trance music in general from many different subgenres, including psy. This seems to fly in the face of the common mantra that "trance is dead."

When I first started listening to electronica in general, I would read music reviews that would extol the virtues of a certain artist or album. Sometimes a reviewer would state that the album in question was for the mature electronica listener. I never understood that statement at that time. Somehow over time I have begun to understand and without really being able to explain it, I also know when I hear something that is for the mature ear. Does this phenomenon also hold for psy/Goa as well? I'm particularly interested in Goa. Is Goa accessible to everyone regardless of their maturity with respect to the genre, or are there some artists or works that can only really be appreciated by the critical ear of the connossieur? The basis for my question is Pleiadians - I.F.O. Two years ago when I purchased this album, I gave it a whirl and disliked it. I thought it sounded like a bunch of jangled noises ran together with an irritating razor acid edge to it. Consequently I put it away. In the past year I have been moving more and more into the psy/goa arena in my musical tastes. A couple of weeks ago I pulled I.F.O. out and put it on my home stereo system. I was completely and absolutely blown away by the exquisite production value and beauty of this album. It is truly incredible. What changed? Did I? I would like to hear some discussion on this topic and also some examples of what would be considered fully accessible psy/Goa versus what albums/artists would be considered delicacies perhaps only to the more discerning, mature ear. Or is it just all subjective to the individual?

Thanks khogg. I've had some really good luck with Amazon. It appears to be a bit of luck and where you search. I was watching some Prana albums on Ebay. Cyclone went for over $100 CDN. I figured if that was the going price for these types of albums, then my little exploration of older Goa was over. I then went over to Amazon and was able to find Prana's Cyclone and Geomantik for about $28.99 US. I bought both of them on the spot. After spending quite a while searching on Amazon, I was pleasantly surprised to find out how many of the older Goa albums are readily available at a reasonable price. I also have noticed that some of the recommendations in this thread are available at Saikosounds. Again, a big thanks to all you guys for being so helpful and enthusiastic. I have that same feeling of exploration and excitement I had when I first discovered the trance genre perhaps two and a half years ago. Before that time, I was never into music and didn't even own one CD or listen to the radio. When I started listening to trance, something clicked. It's now an all consuming passion and hobby that occupies a lot of my free time.

Wow! You guys have been amazing! This was absolutely the kind of information I was searching for. I've been researching and listening to sound clips all afternoon, and I'm seriously stoked. I can't thank you all enough. This music may be old hat to you guys, but I'm coming over from mainstream trance and progressive house, and it's blowing my mind. Back in the day I was into euphoric Dutch trance. I picked up Dimension 5 - Second Phaze and gave it a haphazard whirl and thought it was ho-hum. After listening to a few minutes of each track I put it away and let it sit for a year and a half. Now that I'm getting more into Goa, I pulled it out the other day, cranked up the volume on the Harman Kardon and sat there in amazement at how I could have passed it up before.

Is there any particular 'best' California Sunshine album? Also, does Astral Projection only have one Trust in Trance album? Is this the one on psyshop.com that is released in 1996 or is that a separate work? Chi-a.d. and Astral Projection are out of stock at places such as saikosounds.com and psyshop.com. Does this mean I'm shit out of luck or can they be ordered? Are there any other places to look?

As you fine people know, I'm an amateur dabbler in psytrance. I'm needing some help finding some albums with a particular sort of sound. I'm still pretty new to this, but I think it's Goa. My psytrance collection is small. I'm looking for more like the following: Dimension 5 - Second Phaze Pleiadians - I.F.O. Hallucinogen - Twisted Hallucinogen - Lone Deranger I've tried Man With No Name - Interstate Highway, but I find it a bit monotonous. I know Astral Projection is supposed to be great. I only have Ten and Amen. I'm not too impressed with Amen. I have all but the latest release from Infected Mushroom. I love the highly melodic works that don't have so much of a dominant bass line. I'm open to suggestions for older classics that are still available as well as newer releases. I've been reading a lot about Filteria - Sky Input, and from the samples it sounds dope. This will probably be my next purchase. In particular, I love my Dimension 5 album. By the way, I know it's probably an ignorant question, but for several months I've been trying to figure out what people mean when they talk about "full-on". I asked once before and someone told me that it means the same thing for psytrance as it does in regular English. I'm a native speaker of English, but I guess this is an expression or word that I've never really heard used before. I know what "full on" means, but I don't quite know what that means for psytrance. I hate to bother you guys with questions that may have been asked about a thousand times, but this is as close as I've ever come to any type of psytrance community. I'm an island unto myself.

Hahaha. Yea, you're right! My spouse purchased them for me. It was the perfect gift for me. I've got my eye on Filteria - Sky Input for my birthday - if I can wait that long.

I agree that Shpongle is amazing. When it comes to trance music, I listen to about every style there is out there and enjoy them all. I do have a few favourite albums that I keep returning to, and Are You Shpongled is one of them. Although I am not a newbie to psytrance, I have never delved that deep into the genre. I do have a few of the gold standard classics of the goa/psy genre. Lately it has been catching my attention more and more. I find good 'mainstream' trance to be emotive and moving, but there is an intellectual edge to psytrance that keeps drawing me back. I'm still finding what styles of psytrance are the most enjoyable, but so far much prefer the older goa sound.

Last night Santa brought me an amazing gift. My virgin ears are hearing The Infinity Project - Mystical Experiences and Younger Brother - A Flock of Bleeps for the first time. Sonic bliss. Just had to share. I wish a very merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate Christmas and to everyone a happy New Year!