Walkabout

Hey, I like noises too. By 'anything like a melody/harmony' I mean tonal variation. It doesn't have to be melody or harmony in the conventional sense but can be timbres/textures, like darkpsy. But in darkpsy the artists tend to have their own style and play around with the sounds they use, whereas peak time full-on has been using the same buzzy electric sound for years. I can tell the difference between for example a Savage Scream and an Ocelot track, but I couldn't tell you the artists behind two night full-on tracks because they're all made to a certain standard. AFAIK people enjoy it because it's fast and energetic. And that's fine. I like fast stompy dance music. But if you don't have something to go with the energy, then it is sugar icing without cake. The party wasn't all bad. I was really grooving on the music played in the first few hours, which was dark, kinda tribalish progressive.

OK, something has long irked me about the music played at the peak of the night at psy parties, and I finally figured out what it is. There are no pitched sounds! For the past several years, it's been like this at night: almost always, tracks will have the same fast bass rhythm, and then some atonal riff played over it. There's nothing like a melody or harmony, and as a result, the tracks are almost identical to each other. I really don't get why this makes people scream on the dance floor... I thought nighttime was when the most stimulating psychedelic music should be played, and this is really, really conservative music. When it's actually musical full-on can be good (Voice of Cod), but too many artists are just replacing the busy melodic section of goa trance with a busy bassline. The arrangements are really lacking too... too many start-stops and rhythmic gimmicks, not enough flow from one part to another. It's all icing and no cake. And WTF is it with the remixes? They all seem to take a good track, strip out the subtlety and soul, and replace it with simpler, fatter, cleaner sound in the name of being 'modern'. Again, I don't see the point. Music made in the 1990s already sounds 'modern', and still sounds great over a rig. Has anyone ever not danced to a good track because the bass doesn't dominate the mix, or because it wasn't compressed within an inch of its life? I was enjoying my raw sugar cane and they refined it, colored it, and sold it back to me as pixie stix. This rant prompted by last night's party and a terrible, terrible remix of "Guardian Angel". I'd like to find constructive solutions to this, but I think the current paradigm of electric, atonal noises has to implode first. People have to stop adoring artists and DJs who fall back on this stock sound, and recognize that it's not psychedelic nor trance inducing. The best you can say is that it's rhythmic, but other genres are rhythmic too and use a wider palette of different sounds. OK I'm going to sleep now, we'll see if any of this makes sense in the next day. PS: Prana's "Cyclone" doesn't get enough love. Long flowing melodies, polyrhythms, organic ambience and real depth. More psytrance should have gone in that direction.

I like Laurent Garnier, Quench, Orbital and DJ Misjah a lot though they're more 'normal' techno & trance. The one by Trance Induction is excellent though, super trippy! I liked Mood Deluxe and Far Too Loud as well, but if I have one complaint it's that the sound is very 'shiny' and metallic. I'm looking for more organic, colorful, carnivalesque sounds. There should be some unusual arrangements, instruments or samples used, but it should also flow well from one part to another. That last part is what makes it tough. Here's some psychedelic stuff I'm into: Uptempo: Ozric Tentacles: Psychic Chasm Downtempo: FSOL: Brujo Midtempo: Red Back: Skatepark

Not too many releases on this label, but they're worth checking out: http://www.discogs.com/label/Atomic+Reactor

Atheist here too. I don't think that the universe has any particular meaning to it... existence precedes essence. With that said, non-rational, 'mystical' states of consciousness are as important to me as rational ones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkkk3Nbyqpc

I haven't sorted all these out yet but they seem cool. Of course I've seen Modulations before, but I thought I'd throw it in just in case http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH-isHOxV8E

So. I'm still on the lookout for superpsychedelic, extragoalicious music, which ain't necessarily goa trance but has the analog/oldskool sounds, some dancefloor energy, and a new twist I haven't heard before. 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s are all fine, as long as it surprises me... I'm after something that's hedonistic but different from the norm. Some of the records that really got to me over the last few years are Portion Control: Wellcome and Filthy White Guy, Senser: Schematic, Ozric Tentacles: The Yum Yum Tree, This Morn Omina: Le Serpent Blanc/Le Serpent Rouge, Masa: Why?, FSOL: By Any Other Name and From The Archives, and Giiwa's Musica Discordia. Which is all over the place stylistically but I feel there's a certain anything-goes psychedelic energy to them all. I can't quite put my finger on what it is. I also like Ray Castle, Ollie Olsen and a lot of the Australian stuff. Also Juno Reactor (although too commercial for me) had a great track, "Immaculate Crucifixion", on their last album that reminded me of old school proto-goa. If anyone can recommend something in the same vein, i.e., music that freaks people out without disappearing up its own intelligence, I would be most grateful!

You could always try nineties intelligent techno or tech-house. That's what I listen to when psy-trance isn't warm/melodious enough.

The desire to be weird drives me.

That album is hysterical. We had a thread about it in Music Promotion: http://www.psynews.org/forums/index.php?/topic/61795-dear-psytrance-you-are-not-safe/

Kris Kylven definitely used the most 'cyberpunk' themes... check out EON Project: Brain Filter album, Element Over Nature: Cyber Reality, Cyberkrist: Crossworld. Some others I could mention: Electric Universe - Online Information IM - Virtual Voyage Spies feat. Tim Schuldt - Living Entity Fractal Glider - Karmic Implications The Nam Shub Of Enki - Cube The Visitors - Tiny Little Engines TIP - Virtual Reality Is Here

What was the first EDM that you can remember hearing that made an impression on you? I'm curious what psy fans started off with. For me, it was hearing this when I was eleven: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa-YTlgPtKY And later, things like this: Clearly techno/house/trance inspired but I had no clue! It was just good music to me, although my gamer buddy tried to argue that "music made on a computer isn't really music". A couple of years later, I read in a magazine that this style of music was called Rave, or Techno (terminology was fuzzy then too!). I picked out a couple of 'best of rave' albums for Christmas 1993; utter cheeseball crap, but I was already hooked by then on the music I had heard in games. Eventually I branched out from game music and started to listen to UK techno artists like FSOL, Orbital and Aphex Twin, and that led me to EDM in all of its forms... If I hadn't picked up a controller back then, though, who knows what might have happened?

Not much cross-over here in the States, but there used to be an MTV program called "Amp" that played videos of different electronic artists, and a handful of those were psy/goa... I remember seeing videos for Dancing Galaxy, Feel The Universe, God Is God, Teleport, Rock Bitch, Boundless, and Ceiba's 1+1=1. Also MTV liked to use psy/goa for commercials and interstitial music in the late nineties. Juno Reactor has probably crossed over the most into the mainstream media... all those movie soundtracks! There's a great anime film, "Genius Party Beyond", that has about fifteen minutes of Juno Reactor music. Also, I was amused to see this: http://a1.l3-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/113/9c18fd5aef8422de04770e1b9e03644a/l.jpg

I'm here (thanks Richpa!) and have linked my soundcloud, twitter and blog. ^^

Pure prog trance w/o cheese, the way I like it.

India: The Definitive History by D.R. Sardesai I'm taking his course in a few weeks.

Needs moar cowbell.

Sure, here's a couple of her tracks: If you look around Utube you can find some footage of her DJ sets, which are more techno than this but still have a trancy feeling.

That was awkwardly phrased. By outside input I meant 'no collaboration'... she isn't part of a 'trance duo' like Analog Pussy, The Nommos, Sirius, ect.

Anakoluth's "Vaporizing Glares" has been my ultimate dark goa track for the past few years. http://www.discogs.com/Various-Mainspring-Motion/master/1907 There's also Xenomorph's last album from 2007: http://www.discogs.com/Xenomorph-Demagoguery-Of-The-Obscurants/release/1142548 although I like his compilation tracks much better than any of his albums. It's interesting that you mentioned D5, I actually find their music quite dark and sinister in places (Iron Sun, Ganymede, Beetlesnuff, and of course Temple Of Chaos) but the neo goa I've heard doesn't have that kind of atmosphere, even the stuff on Cronomi.

Oops: http://www.discogs.com/groups/topic/168381 That'll teach me to lurk moar. Anyway the track I was curious about was Hard Corps "Lucky Charm (The Music)". Pretty obscure stuff!

I don't think it's that bad, but I am a product of the Eighties. Lots of throaty-voiced singers back then. ;p Elysium, do you know what the new wave track that starts @ 25:15 here is? I want it so badly.