Dolmot

Well, I placed orders to Anjuna and Zion in January-February, even got quite genuine appearing promises of re-shipment from both, yet nothing has arrived from either label. I think there are some fundamental problems over there. I don't feel like blaming anyone in particular. Nevertheless, as the outcome is money paid but no items received, currently I cannot recommend direct orders from that corner of the earth, regardless of the reason.

Why not for them as well?

It has similarities to Chemical Trance...but differences too? Then again, many of their early tracks shared similar elements. Anyone got more free time to compare?

This whole "live" thing is a bit odd in many electronic genres. (Regarding terminology, it seems to stand for "a bloke playing his own music" and that alone without too many expectations of the technical implementation. You are allowed to dislike the fact but don't expect it to change any time soon. Every producer is a live act when it comes to party posters.) But isn't it actually somehow weird to expect that any knob-turning would be involved? I mean, nowadays probably more than 95% of trance etc. is produced with no real-time manipulation whatsoever taking place in the whole process. Why should producers start performing something they simply don't do? (Well, obviously for the entertainment value as suggested here several times, but please try to follow the original train of thought for a moment.) Isn't it like inviting an animator to a film festival and then expecting him to perform the film in real time using paper cutouts? OK, that may be a crap analogy but hopefully you get the point. I enjoy many pieces of electronic music because they're something "unreal", that is, hard or even impossible to perform live with any equipment, obviously excluding pre-recorded media. Unfortunately, when music sales are minuscule, the only way to get paid is getting on the road and performing, even if it's sort of unnatural considering the production methods. Didn't we have DJs for that part? In short, I have some sympathy for producers who are doing great job in the studio but then get pushed on the stage to fake a performance just because the crowd wants to see a "live" act. Heck, many of them don't even have any kind of DJ experience, let alone playing synths and such live. I have discussed with some fine studio artists who confessed that just having something playing for a whole hour was a real struggle, because that's not how producing works. The previously given description "when we got together as a band we already had between us a fair bit of experience with live electronic music" simply doesn't generalise particularly well.

Vocals and live gigs with guitars help a lot. That's what large crowds want to see, not a bloke behinds his laptop playing no-name tracks for 2 hours straight. (Some of those can be successful as well but it's less likely.) The guitar doesn't have to be plugged in anywhere as long as the act is entertaining. Ambition and willingness to turn it big also help. Some artists prefer keeping it at least somewhat underground or just don't care about popularity.

Carlos Siliceo of Sharigrama Torakka

As someone who does audio signal processing for a living, I could... Ah, nevermind. YOUR MOM IS GAY! CHECKMATE! Stay classy.

Visiting Australia and wondering why everything is upside down.

Listening right now...but is there a reason why this one is in 22 kHz?

Tristan - Face to Face?

Slinky Wizard - Sodom Like There's No Gomorrah Although only the title is memorable, not the track. Edit: GNotR - The Afterburner EP too.

Sounds accurate to me. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/moon-moon

Hey, the full artwork still has a bear - all black and brown, and covered with hair! But Richpa's crescent has been censored.

I got my hopes up primarily from the Shiva's India remix, which unfortunately didn't end up on the album. The original was a bit bland and corny par-teeh track like 1200 Mics tends to be, but AP managed to give it a beefy oldschool treatment. The contrast to the embarrassingly punchless handbag club trance they released around 2010 was striking. That was the point when I really started following them again. Well, maybe some of the very-soon-to-be-released album previews like Dunes of Gold too. Concerning the remix album, it was close but not quite as exciting. However, due to sound quality, I still haven't bought it and probably cannot bring myself to listen to it again. A shame. Maybe I'll get Mugen with the Suntrip release instead, because that was the other cool track of 2014. No idea whether it will sound better, but almost certainly it cannot be any worse.

You should have used that as the artwork.

I almost do that for a living... Unfortunately, the problem in general is a difficult one and far from being solved. If you ever hear someone claiming a "quick and simple solution", most likely at least one of the following applies: 1) They make strong assumptions on the input, such as strong mid/side separation. 2) The actual result is...less than perfect. 3) They're just lying through their teeth to make a sale. Even the cheapest playback systems may have a simple mid-filter, which sometimes works but obviously will fail miserably in many cases. Then there are slightly better attempts, which are used by some guys to make stuff like bootleg acapella discs and mixes. Often the standalone output sounds more like someone torturing a cat, but it's not so obvious after blending it into new music. Then there are professionals like Audionamix who work with major labels and Hollywood companies, but their products/services won't be free. So, it's a classic case of picking between fast, easy, cheap and good. If one could get those all for nontrivial signals, I'd be looking for a new job or at least a new topic...

Yep, 44 days, only tumbleweeds here. Not the best shipping 7e can buy.

Of course, especially when you even provided the key, making it unnecessary to check the previous releases. But I was positively surprised by the small extra layer of obfuscation. I was expecting just a normal listing with substitution so that was neat. And yeah, apart from the almost overdone faux Cyrillic, faux Greek has been done too. People will get it, but it feels a bit cheap like tattooing "ramen noodles" backwards in Chinese/Japanese in your arse for an exotic twist. However, I must confess I don't really read Greek or even Russian fluently. I only do some math. Meanwhile, I dislike treating umlaut as optional sprinkling which can be added or left off arbitrarily. It completely changes the phonetic value of letters, making the result almost nonsensical, you know. Don't do that in your Nordic release.

Well, if you are Filipe, sending messages to yourself and the need to see a doctor would make perfect sense.

I can recall Celtic/Keltik and Mad Contrabender/Mandylion from random eras. BooM! Records is fairly big and Dutch, but how many of their artists are local?

Hey, they have Armin van Buuren, Ferry Corsten, Marco V, Sander Kleinenberg AND Tiësto!

Hey, it's the risk that comes with a ) artistic licence b ) pointing out horned helmets in other people's artwork. I think someone submitted this with strictly accurate notation first. A fine mess ensued, including "artist name variations" and all... But we still love you. You're cool too.

LT TIS MTHUITLIIDS THF MLDISDSDS I'm confused! But it sounds promising. 2015 looks hectic. In fact, I'm already a few releases behind. Better shape up.

Reminds me of Eric Prydz, who cancelled a tour in 2008 but made it in 2014. Googling for Prydz and "fear of flying" will turn up a lot more on the matter.

I think it was in 2009 when I started making annual mixes to document what's happening in the scene. There's diverse stuff in those, some of it probably not even goa as defined by the OEMGSCC, but you can try your luck and maybe spot something interesting. Here's the 2014 edition: txt, mp3 (259 MB, 150 min). However, this isn't the thread to discuss the scene in general or mixes so let's do that somewhere else.