Dolmot

Last posted here in February 2021, WTF? Unfortunately, I still had some issues with inspiration and all that, but at least I have a formidable "incoming" pile here. (Definitely not received today.) Let's check it while I add it to my Discogs collection too... Median Project – Another Galaxy Various – Suntopia Afgin – Eternal Freedom Battle of the Future Buddhas – Songs from a Forgotten Memory Tim Schuldt – Retrospecter Filteria – Live with the Lag Carbon Based Lifeforms – Stochastic Saafi Brothers – Make Pictures with the Sound Kuba – Relative to the Sun Pitch Black – Mixes + Mavericks Gaudi – Sub Signals Vol.2 Various – Goagilde (Norway's Got Goatrance) Proxeeus – Perversion And Insanity Stereo Dwarf – Echoes of Existence Globular – A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Globular – Magnitudes of Order Globular – Holobiont Globular – Entangled Everything Globular + Geoglyph – Messages from the Resonator That was the nearest CD batch. There are probably a few others, some vinyl releases, less related genres and so on lying somewhere. Let's see if I list those later...

Would have been nice but last winter and spring were a complete train wreck in so many ways. Too much stress and uncertainty to plan any trips. I already missed one rare event which was postponed twice from 2020. When it finally happened this summer, I couldn't make it. Bummer. I only managed to fix my vacation days (and some of my plans) a week or two ago. Now I'm mostly decompressing at home and visiting a few local events later. We can hope that 2023 is finally the real year of travelling with less of this nonsense and chaos. Anyway, good luck and sunny days to everyone who is going already this year.

It's a tricky question but how about Eat Static - Contact (Eat Static Remix). I find assorted weirdness there.

Phew, it's already late in here. If someone manages to spot this while BF is still on, some quick tips: Globular has five CD albums available as a bundle for a nice price on this page: https://globular.bandcamp.com/album/a-self-fulfilling-prophecy Dubmission's Sub Signals 2 (selected by Gaudi) can be pre-ordered on LP now: https://gaudimusic.bandcamp.com/album/sub-signals-vol-2 I had to skip the latter, though, because tax+shipping for UK->EU is pretty high, and there's a chance that I'd end up paying the tax twice. Let's hope that they manage to find a European partner as hinted in the newsletter. Australia, New Zealand, UK and USA already have one, hence you should get better shipping+tax rates there. Good night. I should go and grab some local early bird deals tomorrow morning, but it's either that or sleep. Decisions...

Another Bandcamp Friday coming soon, possibly the last one for 2022. A few of the previous ones have been complete trainwrecks for me with very little time or brain power to think about anything. Now the worst might be over, but I'm still a bit out of ideas. Do you have any? The earlier rant about every single offer arriving simultaneously during work hours on Friday still stands, BTW. I even have a gaming night then, thus I won't be listening through everyone's catalogues at midnight. Sorry.

Within the last few weeks: Androcell – Chronicle (4CD) Total Eclipse – Bordeaux Live 1997 (3CD) Blue Planet Corporation – Aquaquest (2CD) Virtuart – Drehkar (1CD) Globular – Holobiont (2LP) I only had limited time and/or interest for finding and listening to music in 2021, but I hope I manage to revive that hobby, among others.

Bandcamp Friday, this week (November 5th). Any fresh tips? I sometimes get kind of frustrated when labels start carpet-bombing me with campaign emails exactly on Friday afternoon. I often have other things to do then. How do I pre-listen to 50 offered albums in one evening? Could at least someone remind me a bit earlier, please?

I just checked the link and right now there seems to be a small selection of compilations there. Let's see what happens next. It's a tricky situation. The previous version was a treasure trove for an oldschool rave collector, but hardly for anyone else. Let's face it - next to no one would probably need 234 old rave compilations (many of them double albums) nor pay any really serious money for digital copies of them, but for about 200 euros/dollars the whole bundle was an impressive collection for archival purposes and in case that you wanted to check random bits from there. However, if the original licensing deals had expired: Maybe the artists don't see a penny of it. Then again, "a penny" would be the right ballpark estimate per track if you split the sum (minus fees, the label's share, taxes etc.) between, let's say, 4000 tracks in the bundle. And then, trying to re-negotiate the deals with everyone who had appeared on those albums over several decades would be a monumental task. I happen to know how tedious it can be to track down and to negotiate the licences even for a single track today with so many possible rightholders in different regions etc. Then just imagine the effort vs gain for thousands of them if it's basically just a tiny amount of oldschool hoarders who might ever buy this bundle (or parts of it). So, is anyone going to make a lot of money from this? It would be awfully nice if the compilations with very little market value today would be just uploaded gradually to archive.org as public domain or offered as pay-what-you-want-for-charity or whatever, but even that would require a permission from everyone individually. In any case, such huge collections with diverse authors and little demand are largely stuck in a limbo. It's hard to see any way out from there that would be both realistic and legal. I was kind of tempted to buy the whole shebang for the aforementioned reasons (basically packratting and occasional nostalgia/research) but never did because my hard disks are a disaster area and cannot handle hundreds of gigabytes with extra backups - which you always need with online stores that may vanish without a trace.

It did, a few hours ago... https://shponglemusic.bandcamp.com/album/shpongle-remixed-by-cosmic-trigger Not sure either. Nice picks for tracks to remix, but IMO the problem is that the originals were so smoothly flowing and iconic to begin with that turning them into a jumble of glitch-dubstep-whatever-mashing doesn't really add much value. I find myself listening to the original parts, which are still in there, but currently I feel that I'd prefer them in their original context anyway. In some places the production and mastering are impressive sound-wise. The price itself isn't that bad either for a 2xLP, compared to the earlier ultra-special editions of classic albums. However, with shipping it would be over 41€ and because Bandcamp's tax and IOSS status is still annoyingly unclear, I might be hit by 12-ish euros of customs and fees, pushing the grand total to 54€ or so. That's already steep for an album I'd be unlikely to play much, either physically or digitally. Worth it for sheer collecting or just in case if I happened to learn to like it more later? Not sure indeed. Well, no ticking red counters there at the time of writing...

Sad if true. It has been a long journey. I think I even bought my first vinyls from there in the early 00s. One of them was Are You Shpongled. It was cheap (by today's standards) and hadn't moved off the shelves particularly fast because vinyl DJing was fading out. Times were changing and now they're changing again. Coincidentally, just yesterday I ended up on the label/distributor page of Saikosounds on Discogs. That one I only visited for the 2 min samples, though. Probably never ordered a thing due to the possibility of customs fees and hassle. Apologies for wasting their bandwidth for years.

I believe Bandcamp Friday was cancelled/paused for a few months this summer, but now it's up again for the rest of the year, 1st Friday of every month. One of those is just behind the corner. To get started, 20% off in LSD and Dragonfly Bandcamp stores with code lsdfamily20.

I like to refer to this thread because it's related and I did some research there... The relationship between "proper" goa trance tracks and the genre name can be possibly seen like the chicken-egg problem. Can you produce real goa trance if there's no such genre? Can there be a genre if there are no tracks? In fact, if you read the wikipedia article for chicken and egg, it says, among other viewpoints: But which one is the chicken or the egg in this "genre or track" comparison? Well, I think we can agree that there were tracks laid by the proto-goa genre and tracks totally inspired by the Goa party scene before the genre name was acknowledged. For the obvious Goa (place) infuence, see Goa EP and Carlo Andrea Raggi's Goahead alias. Were they goa tracks or does that require crunchier synth lines? Who knows. Where did those appear first? At least The Infinity Project, Eat Static and Dimension 5 were releasing already in 1991, and ultimately their style progressed right into the core of what we call goa trance. When did they "cross the line"? In there, opinions probably differ. Or like the Discogs 'Vinyl Only' Goa tracks list description says, "One man's Trance is the other man's Techno and my Hard Trance is your Goa Trance. Not much you can do with style debates and obscure releases will have style changed sometime." Or acid trance classics like Hardfloor's Acperience? Would it be totally goa trance if released, in an alternate universe, on the B side of some Green Nuns 12" in 1995? I think it's a fun topic to discuss as long as you take it as light musings only and don't expect to reach any hard facts or conclusions.

Bah, I just check the 12" promo sheets.

Bandcamp Friday is starting again, I reckon. Any tips? I've been too busy with other stuff. (For example, tracking stray shipments from previous orders...)

My order is in. I still have to double- and triple-check to believe it. Let's just hope that it arrives safely too. Very nice reissue in its simplicity, by the way. In some threads I've been lamenting the recent extra fancy bundles which cost an arm and a leg, don't show the original artwork properly, and sometimes don't even fit into a normal shelf. This one seems to deliver the original release and some extra tracks, no frills. £24.99 is/was a fair price too. 1150 copies? Could have been more because price-wise this was well within the reach of an average fan. Let's see how long they last. (Edit: apparently gone already in some 20 minutes. Wow. )