Dolmot

They're cute and they're cuddly and they're ready to please.

Track 4 of the upcoming album.

Did someone mention mastering?!

A pony?

Hey, a psychedelic production should be at least a little bit surreal.

Too soon!

The problem is that if you diverge even a slightest bit from a certain formula, people will come up with a new genre name for it, no longer accepting it as goa. In the 90s the music was varied, yet we happily called it just "goa" or "psychedelic", the terms being largely interchangeable. Nowadays anything like Psy-harmonics' 90s releases would be instantly labelled as "temperate highland trance with dry winters" (Cwb) in Köppen classification, not goa. And then the same people wonder why "all neogoa sounds the same". Now there's a riddle. Anyway, back on topic, the album is great. Even though I could possibly think of some better album released within the last 20 years, I still give this over three stars. It's going to get many more plays whenever I can handle the mayhem for 76 minutes. It has all the good bits that I've been missing for a long time.

Cole's law?

Caracas Or some other place close to the equator with a bit of elevation, if you want slightly lower murder rates too.

Have you tried the Macao Café series? 4 CDs of chillout from 2001-2004 with practically a full Etnica downtempo album hidden in there. I found a lot of it really enjoyable.

...assuming that someone (or ten someones) would actually pay 2k. Current max is 400e and the second highest ever £233.

By the way, is it just my flac copy or does the original release of Chromatic World skip slightly in a couple of places?

Released on the same day as Doom 4. COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT!

Got any?

Technossomy - Chug "Let's not start that flying saucer nonsense again." Refreshing.

Nervasystem & Aether - Distorted Waves of Om: "Analyse the following statement: Nothing is unthinkable to me for to think of nothing is not to think at all." Fractal Glider - Colonization: "How am I supposed to hallucinate with all these swirling colours distracting me?"

If your name is Ron, you win (or lose) spectacularly.

I still remember when Mr. Scruff, a collector with a taste both broad and deep and all around a great bloke, wrote something along the same lines: I recommend listening to his six hour sets at least once just to observe the huge diversity of music he plays while still keeping it all tied together one way or another. The real point worth understanding is that there are many ways to connect two tracks so that at least one major theme continues smoothly. That's what the audience really needs and a good DJ can do unlike the others. I've known DJs who absolutely insist on beatmatching ("or you're not really mixing") even if it requires 15% pitching, fucking up the whole track and throwing the key who-knows-where. Fortunately that's typically a short phase when they're so fascinated about learning this whole new skill that nothing else matters. Sure, it's a necessary skill for a dance DJ, but only a basic one. That alone won't take you far. I've also known DJs who aim at perfect beatmatching and harmonic mixing with a specific set of carefully pre-selected tracks. It's definitely as smooth as you can get, but they basically end up playing the same track for two hours with no changes or surprises whatsoever. I've known DJs who demand a 3+ hour slot because they "want to build the set gradually". Unfortunately, some of them never checked whether the audience really wants to listen to them for 3+ hours. In many cases there was so much outright filler that people simply left. Have a nice evening, gradually building your master set alone. But hey, those people obviously were oafs who couldn't appreciate the real art of mixing... Some make a big fuss about "reading the audience", yet in practice they still play largely the same set every time. To be honest, a well prepared set can work just fine, even better than spontaneous choices clashing horribly, but it still feels a bit wrong. Then I remember listening to a set of one famous DnB DJ. It began with "OMG OMG! MASSIVE HYPE! HANDS IN THE AIR! YEAH!", continued with "OMG OMG! MASSIVE HYPE! HANDS IN THE AIR! YEAH!", and so on. After half an hour my hands were already tired. After a full hour I started to feel pretty stupid about the whole situation. After two hours it was just ridiculous. Well, maybe not if you're high as a kite but it takes some serious drugs to survive that. If not, you really start to understand the concept of dynamics and why they matter. Then there's David Mancuso of The Loft, who simply played full tracks, from beginning to end, believing that a strong enough track can be played in its entirety without mixing as we know it. His parties were always fully booked. I've certainly made many times the mistake of mixing too much for its own sake. Later I've realised that the result was simply too busy. Often a simple crossfade between beatless two minute outros and intros is exactly what brings the needed dynamics to the set, instead of skipping those to find the old reliable 4/4 kicks to beatmatch like thousand times before and ten times in that set alone. Some genres need more active mixing. For example, in techno it's quite common that each single track is quite flat so that the DJ can mix them heavily, creating new music from its primitive parts. Classic goa is almost the opposite. If a track is already heavily layered, it probably doesn't need or cannot even take five more layers from another. It takes subtlety to introduce a small part of a new track so that it's there, prepared, but doesn't steal the attention yet. Knowing the tracks is crucial. Sometimes you can make a slow, gradual mix. Sometimes you need to switch the main components quickly with no real overlap between them because they don't benefit from each other at all. Still, having that one common theme between the tracks really helps, whatever it is. One thing people don't realise is the sheer amount of utter garbage that gets released. I've received my share of complaints for playing "crap music", but even that selection was a result of browsing through a hundred godawful samples per each track really bought and played. It's the same in every genre. One in a hundred is really fresh. The rest is forgettable or simply atrocious copy-paste me-too junk. Some DJs play it anyway just because they get paid for pushing certain new promos, regardless of their quality, or because they no longer care about anything in general. Meanwhile, I've been listening to a Mr. Scruff set this whole time without consciously noticing that there was a transition, even though he has gone through jazz, lounge, afrobeat and funk with five completely different tempos. And it all has soul. That guy really knows his shit.

Well, true...the word "hate" was never used. (Let's dig up a few thoroughly negative threads, shall we? ) https://www.psynews.org/forums/topic/67117-classic-tracks-that-you-think-are-nothing-special/?do=findComment&comment=1023543 https://www.psynews.org/forums/topic/68678-your-unpopular-opinion/page-3?do=findComment&comment=1037824

BTW, according to Global Sect's e-mails, The Mystery Of Crystal Worlds physical version wasn't fully printed in 2015 either. It was finished and shipped in 2016. I got my tracking number on 13 Jan. However, bonus wav and free mp3 downloads were both available on 25 Dec 2015 so I guess at least one legit and separately available digital version was out in 2015. There's a slight difference to last year's Radical Distortion case, where you could download the bonus files of a CD preorder in 2014 but no standalone version had been released yet. That's why I didn't include it in my 2014 list. Tricky.

There was a short track topic just a while ago, but thanks for semi-bumping as I forgot to post there. My favourite is (5:21). The whole album's average track length is notably small for this genre. Early TIP like is cool too.

Wouldn't that spoil the whole "nemo" thing? (Good idea, though.)

OK, I'll try it. My expectations are exactly zero so there's no risk of major disappointment, right? Right?