Dolmot

Kind of! I think the track started circulating in 2009 - 2010 as "Chomolungma". At some point it was called "Chomolungma (Aiana)" and it was available on SoundCloud. Then it evolved quite heavily and was first released on Goa Beach Volume 22 CD in 2014 (I think), then in the Collected Downtempo digital release in 2016. But that released version is quite different from the minimalistic, bass-driven promo, hence my question regarding the "original version". If they consider the later Aiana incarnation the definitive version then so be it, but I still prefer the more mystical one and I was a bit disappointed when it didn't make it on the albums.

Kind of! I know! Tell me! Of course! I have it! Correct! To be honest, I didn't even know! But then again, I'm a music collector. Tell me! Actually, not yet! Well, no, but tell me anyway! Cool! My wallet weeps even without that but cool anyway! In fact, I listened to a good chunk of it today at work. Here we go again, I guess! But has anyone released the original version of Chomolungma yet? It moves people around, even if they're sitting!

Originals or re-releases? Where? Separately? How much?

Lost and found. That was enlightening. Let's see if part 2 answers some unanswered questions!

Whee, that's a long time! I clearly remember browsing TRiP for tips in the 90s, supported by the fairly decent school internet and the not-so-decent dial-up at home. The transition to goatrance.free.fr happened when I was moving around myself so I probably almost missed it. Where were the "what is goa trance" and travel articles first released? Those were the very short wikipedia of the genre/culture back then. Also quite fascinating that Filteria was among the first reviewers in 2000. For some reason I only created an account on Psynews in 2009, although I was definitely browsing regularly for years. Nothing important enough to add? I think the discussion was also a bit...noisy back then. Of course, the music changed too over the years. There were times when I didn't find it interesting enough to follow that closely, but there have also been some very positive developments. You can still spot interesting pieces of...psy news here. And all kinds of randomness. Thanks, everyone.

Indeed. I think I downloaded it almost brand new from...Audiogalaxy? Soulseek? Anyway, that was also the time when I started to get quite disillusioned with the direction psytrance was taking, thus I was buying a lot of house instead. That set was possibly the place where I learnt about Jeff Bennett and started collecting his releases. I still have those. We were spinning those and a lot of similar sound at the club room back then. Good stuff, good times. And yes, I still have that ancient mp3 copy of the set too and it's somewhere on the playlist. Very smooth and non-distracting music for getting some work done. Right now I'm not listening to anything, but I've been browsing a lot of old and new disco releases recently. About time to place another order, I think...

I don't know either but hey, thanks for bringing that up and happy new year 2002!

Gah, I haven't posted in this thread in a year or so! I should have, but somehow there has always been something more urgent to do, or maybe I was just out of energy afterwards. Anyway, to fix that even by a little bit, I picked some semi-random stuff from the "incoming" piles. (Sorting of the record shelves has been postponed too many times as well.) There's no very coherent theme in this selection, other than all being somehow noteworthy or fascinating. There's some repetition from earlier posts - even mine. Maybe some 2019 highlights? Maybe crowd pleasers? Maybe some showing off too, who knows? Far from being a "today" listing but whatever... And because we're search engine, vision impaired and collector friendly here, a brief listing and comments: Bluetech ‎– Holotrope, "only" the signed, limited CD. I didn't feel like ordering the vinyl version from the US due to ridiculous shipping costs, customs and taxes. Sky Technology ‎– Rainbow Spirit, of course. Closest to "today" in this batch, partially because our postal system has been a trainwreck recently. Greg Hunter ‎– μTantra Elysium ‎– Live... & Beyond Liquid Sound Design - Collected Digital Works (Part I), boxes that some weirdo in the UK keeps churning out, taking my monies in the process. K.U.R.O. & Charm ‎– Japanese Vibrations Analog Visions, hey, DAT released something too this year! There were some excellent, rare mixes on AV. Bluetech ‎– Liquid Geometries In Dub, came with a signed poster, conveniently from the UK as an LSD release so this was painless enough to get. Youth & Gaudi ‎– Astronaut Alchemists, what is this even doing here? It's a 2018 release and I listed it in January. Well, maybe it just fills the grid or something. But as it was brought up, let me mention that there still seem to be a few copies available from LSD. Don't be a muppet and pay 50€ on discogs. Solar Fields ‎– Leaving Home Solar Fields ‎– Extended, Sidereal reissues from this year. These two in particular are really special for me. Remember the early-mid 00s when this relatively new label "Ultimae" was really on a roll? These were inre 017 and 018, and times were good. I simply had to get the special coloured vinyl versions, which surprisingly aren't prohibitively expensive yet. You can still get them if you really want... Crop Circles ‎– Tetrahedron, the legendary lost album which was possibly the spark that started DAT Records. This one is quite special to me too for reasons, thus I got the splatter edition. (Should I take photos of all these fancy-coloured discs? They're kinda neat...) Globular ‎– Entangled Everything, the kickstarted vinyl version, signed. The recent collaboration album campaign was successful too, whee! Let's see how screwed I'll be with the delivery if those goons really manage to finish the brexit. Seriously, guys, don't wreck one of my main routes for getting great releases, old and new. And that's it. Now I'll pack that stuff again, clean the rest of the table, and maybe rip a few pending discs. There are some orders to place too. Special thanks to several members here who have been involved with these releases. Let's see what 2020 brings.

Well, that's still something!

Whee, it's coming soon! Are you excited?

OK, good to know what my coworkers mean when they call me fucking sick.

Is that a compliment? I'm completely unable to tell these days...

Interesting. I ordered a copy on 14th, got a shipping notification on 16th, and received the parcel later that week, so that one went very smoothly. Did you get a tracking number? I thought these are generally sent registered.

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Project-DIY-Belgians-United/release/2416295 ? My country has its very own subgenre, of course.

Gah, I haven't posted a single line to this thread yet, even though random thoughts have crossed my mind all year. Somehow the whole winter was a bit exhausting with work, hobbies and assorted BS so trance as a whole fell lower on the list. The ZNA lineup definitely looked great, but eventually I ended up visiting another festival in Croatia with a large group of old friends. Shorter travel, easy accommodation, fewer things to arrange. Then I was already running out of vacation days so I couldn't fit in another full week trip abroad. The reported epidemic was apparently...rough for everyone affected. In 2017 I only got a mild food poisoning one day toward the end of the week, resulting in a customer return of that lunch and a day of lying down. If I was looking tired in some of the last meetings, that probably played a role. Maybe it also contributed a bit to my choice of a fancy-pants city festival this summer, although it definitely wasn't the deciding factor. Anyway, beside excellent line-ups, the ZNA location itself is indeed great, especially if you like long walks on the beach. Aaand...maybe Apsara next year? Who knows. It's not in the exact opposite end of Europe like Portugal. Just remember to post enough useful info to convince me.

I got back from the only trip abroad I have planned for this summer. Croatian mountains were majestic. Right after that I went to a club meeting at a summer cottage. Now I'm finally back home and trying to relax, although there's still some backlog and hassle with monies. (Protip: avoid Norwegian airline for a while. Their performance is very dodgy ATM.) It feels strangely quiet in here, compared to all the travel bustle. It's also raining so I'm not going anywhere. What next? Check the CDs that I ordered ages ago but in some cases never even opened? Do some dull, long overdue chores? Try to produce something artistic? Just sit here and stare blankly? Decisions, decisions...

This is getting silly now... (Or did it already several pages ago?) I remember that there were goa-flavoured .mods in the tracker scene in 1993-1994. The term "goa" as a genre was barely known back then. However, soft-synths were quite limited so there was plenty of sample ripping from hardware or commercial sources (which in turn were typically hardware-based). Where do you draw the line with "no external synths used"? One landmark was Propellerhead Software's ReBirth, which was released in December 1996 and made fully soft-synthetic classic goa sound quite easily achievable. I have some tracks from 1997, which indeed credit ReBirth as more or less the only sound source. And you could distribute ReBirth-sequenced files directly too. Those were definitely 100% PC. It's also known that Shiva Shidapu was releasing tracker music in 1997 and they were hardly the only ones. No idea about all their sound sources, though. I think I made some pure AdLib FM-synth tracks in the mid-90s. The manufacturer of the original card went bankrupt in 1992 so the hardware option was definitely there earlier than goa as a named genre existed. The sound capabilities were definitely limited, but a 303 is not a strict requirement for producing goa, right?

There was the short-lived D5 Records, presumably related to (some) Dimension 5 members. According to Discogs Dimension 5 page, "They thereafter stayed with D5 records for a while, but fell out due to musical differences; and Kerry and Nick started up their own label (Intastella) to release their music." Meanwhile, D5 records did have a D5 002 release but not by Dimension 5. It's only credited to Jon Bell, who hasn't been a Dimension 5 member in any way AFAIK. All other D5 Records releases appear to have some overlap with Dimension 5, though. So...is it 002 or maybe some other D5 Records release mislabelled?

Maybe! I will! (And I will if I like!)

Is there a late pledge option?

I suspect one of the main issues would be that in reality, most releases are actually multi-format. Most vinyl releases are available as downloads, many as CDs too. I'd also say that the main topics of any release discussion (before/after) are: that the release is/was happening the music itself (+ maybe linking it to the artist's / label's other production etc.) So, there are very few releases that would be strictly vinyl-only and fairly few discussion points that would actually concern the vinyl format itself. If there's a vinyl+digital release, where would we put it? Directing digital buyers to a vinyl subforum would feel wrong. Splitting the discussion to two different places would be worse. What would we do in the vinyl forum topic? Discuss just the pressing while avoiding all references to the music? Meanwhile, it could be informative to have the formats listed in post tags. However, my realistic prediction is that even if that was requested/recommended, the success rate would be less than 10%. Copy-paste announce-bots won't do that, and "normal users" aren't consistent with their tag use either. I browse the forum almost exclusively through the "Activity" -button.

I just got an email and seems that there are new copies now...if you're fast? https://liquidsounddesignuk.bandcamp.com/album/youth-gaudi-astronaut-alchemists

Well, it's up now. Short version: 2LP, no bonus tracks as far as I can see, fancy box, edition of 2500, "no future coloured variants", £119 + shipping. Hmmh... https://shponglemusic.bandcamp.com/album/nothing-lasts-but-nothing-is-lost-remastered

Is Psysex meaningless trance music?

I definitely agree about the life-changing part. I may write a separate post about my life in the arse end of the world, where electronic music was typically incredibly difficult to get in the pre-internet days. Nevertheless, Prodigy found its way there and was present in almost everything I was doing back then, be it music, computers or something completely different. It was also the great unifier. By MftJG, everyone with even the slightest exposure to electronic music knew them. By TFotL, everyone under 60 did - also there in the middle of nowhere. Barely any other EDM act could match that. "The greatest" is not that easy a decision for me, but all things considered, it's definitely hard to name a better album than their 90s classics. They're just so goddamn solid musical adventures, whereas many other contenders have a whiff of recycling two or three ideas a few too many times. Many other albums from that era I listen mainly as a nostalgia trip but Prodigy because they're so enjoyable and awesome throughout. And they definitely managed to bring EDM on big stages, properly. Yes, music-wise (in the early days) it was just that one guy operating a sound system in a booth, but the show was nothing like a laptop-staring session. The rest of the guys really completed it. The name of their video collection "Electronic Punks" was spot on. Which brings me to the main point of this post... Mind you, I absolutely don't want to belittle Keith. He was with the crew for almost 30 years, really going for it at 100% power and delivering unforgettable performances. Still, I find it a bit strange when some major news outlets write headlines like "Keith Flint, Prodigy frontman, dead at 49" (CNN). Others refer to him more modestly or accurately as "vocalist" or "singer". Meanwhile, there are some tones hinting that now the group is gone when their "frontman" died. Yes, that's how it went with Motörhead and Lemmy, but in this case it sounds odd to me. After all, before TFotL, Keith was a dancer, strictly. That was his credit on Experience. I think that before Breathe and Firestarter, his vocal contribution comprised about four words spoken on "Fire". Maxim delivered the vocals on Poison (arguably their first track with their own, full vocals) and most of the hype on stage. By the time of TFotL, they had already released two massive albums, about 9 singles, 2 EPs and whatnot with barely any musical contribution from Keith. The rave scene found them "too mainstream/popular to be cool any more" already in 1992, when Keith was "just" a dancer. Even though all of them had their role, for me Liam was - and still is - the true brain and soul of Prodigy. It was his magic touch I heard on the albums. To be really honest, I was even quite disappointed when they picked up the new, vocals-heavy style. I wanted rave tracks, not songs. They, however, seemed to prefer stuff that was fun to scream on stage. In hindsight, it wasn't a bad move for their success nor even that unfitting (electronic punks and all that), yet I reserve the right to prefer their old output with instrumentals and occasional weird vocal samples. Well, times have changed. And the band, and the show too. Maybe in this century Keith really counted as the frontman. But I still remember vaguely one quote from a book, maybe "Adventures with the Voodoo Crew" (1997). They talked about one of their earlier US tours, where slightly clueless reporters were asking "so you're a band - who's the bassist?" Back then there was no bassist nor a singer - or if there was, it was Maxim. Now I wonder if the reporters who have only seen the post-TFotL days really understand how the group worked in the past. I don't know what happens next. Upcoming gigs have been cancelled so there's a bit of truth in the notion that the frontman is gone and the band cannot go on (at least for a while). Then again, that decision makes a lot of sense in a situation like this in any case. I'd say that without Liam there would be no Prodigy. Without Keith...I don't know. We'll see. Sharky left in 1990, Leeroy in 2000. Now there are zero dancers and no firestarter either. Their early live track "Death of the Prodigy Dancers" has taken a really grim turn.