mars

Artist: Crossing Mind Date: 2010-02-18 By: draeke Interview posted here with permission of the artist. 1) Can you tell us a bit about your main musical influences? My major influences were at first Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis and some Trip-Hop like Massive Attack, Archive, Portishead. I like strange ambient tracks but i always need some melodies, an emotive vibe within the music. I entered the world of goa trance with some piece of Earth Nation, Astral Projection, Etnica, Praña, Man With No Name, MFG, Transwave, Total Eclipse, Platipus Records artists, Blue Room Released artists and some others. It was only later on that I discovered Sphongle, Infected Mushroom, X-Dream, Jaia, Asura, Deedrah & Juno Reactor among other but I have always loved the low tempo tracks at end of each Trance album. I love the groove, the melodies and the atmosphere of those end tracks usually found in albums. 2) What was your goal when you were creating music? My secret dream was to release the ultimate low-tempo piece of music with all ingredients of a good goa hit, like a trip, with some beautiful psychedelic melody, big evolutions of sound and with some small ambient breaks in the music. Something unique, well built, rich but not repetitive so not to be boring for the listener. (This ideas were used also for my mid tempo tracks). My favorite low tempo track is: Tandu - New Aura; this masterpiece from Trip Through Sound was my objective for a long time, very groovy and melodic but also very trancey and with a beautiful introduction with a bass that sounded and had the vibes of a TB303. 3) What about the up-tempo tracks? I'm not very comfortable with high tempo, first of all because I'm not Mozart or a robot to find and play melodies at 150 bpm and that's because I play all the melodies, the bass, the arpeggios and the synth riffs live. 4) Did you produce your music with VST or with real Hardware? I use hardware synthesizers and I record them within Cubase on MIDI. I only used MIDI at the beginning and just after a long time I started to use some audio instruments together with MIDI in Cubase. So, everything I created up to year 2002 was just MIDI, the pure old-school way. The only down-side of this is that is not so easy if you want to remix your own tracks. For drums or strange FX sounds, I used individual samples or sometimes some loops. 4 or 5 of my tracks (iridium zone, cyclotron, liquid life, darkness, trans'up) were converted from midi only in Cubase to multi-tracks audio projects in the program called Acid, but it's a hard work to do... 5) Which are your favorite synthesizers and what was your setup when making goa tracks? My favorite synthesizers are the Microwave 2 and the Waldorf XT (but I like a lot also the Pulse and the MicroQ). I also used Clavia Nordlead 1 and the Roland JP8000 plus some software samplers. A bit later on I started to use some VST but I don't like much how they sound or work as I prefer real instruments with many buttons and to tweak all together with Cubase in MIDI at the end. Nowadays I could produce a goa track only with the "orange" Waldorf Microwave XT, Cubase on Windows and a soft sampler for Drum Loops and FX. For example, the track "Remembering Natalia" (2007) and "Happy Living" were produced only with Microwave 2, Cubase and some VST Plug-ins (delays, reverb, Absynth, Halion, Kontakt). In the years 2000-2003, I used a creamware audio card, that is like a virtual studio in your computer to mix and record all your external synths, like a modular studio in your computer. I didn't want to use a digital or analog hard mixer becasue I wanted to save all parameters of a project on the computer so to be able to recall them anytime. 6) When did you learn to play music? I learned music on piano and some arranger-synthesizer when i was 14-16 years old. After a long break, I bought a Roland mc-303 and I started to discovered electronic music in 1994. With the money from my first job in 1998 I decided to buy some synthesizer and make music but just like a hobby and because I love machines, technologies and analog sounds , I never made any money with my music and therefore after 2004 I decide to stop making music for long time and sold a lot of my synthesizer, but sometimes the "virus" comes back, like in 2007 when I restarted to produce some low-tempo music. But now I wish to restart to produce some music because I discovered that I have some fans )). 7) Have you ever performed live? Are you interested in doing so now? In 1998, I had a proper live set (an illegal party in the forest behind Cannes) and there I played my first trance tracks (Blind and Outland), it was an interesting experience. But I had to move too many instruments from my studio for this live, like a big analog mixer that was very heavy and required a long time to be properly installed, especially when you don't sleep and you have to play at 6:00 am . In 2001, I participated to a small private party for my friends and again I performed live, this experience was better (I played Cyclotron, Trans'up, and Iridium Zone), and to answer your final question... yes, I'm interested in performing live. 8) Have you tried to release anything? In 2000, I went to London, with my first audio CD to find a label, I tried Dragonfly Records and another, can't remember exactly which one, maybe Matsuri Productions or Flying Rhino Records. but it was a deception... nothing happened. 9) Did you produce other kind of music? I tried to produce some house music like the track "Sweet Dawn", but it was my own interpretation of house music.. I tried to create some psytrance because a friend of mine, Cosmo Chaos produces it (i think he still does) but I'm not very interested by this kind of music (too noisy, less melodies, too boring). And finally I also tried to create something similar to trip-hop: tracks like "Mist of Love" but it then became "Darkness" when a friend put his song/vocals on it (I re-arranged the track so that it was possible to sing on it). So at the end there is goa and trance, and yes, it's the only kind of electronic music (for dance and mind) I like, mid-tempo and low-tempo (110 - 140 bpm). 10) Tell us something about your private life, and do you go to goa parties? Actually, I'm 36 years old, I live in Nice and I'm working for services for retailers and retail banking. I am a specialist in the maintenance of computer hardware for stores and this led me to move a lot for my job between Marseille and Menton. No, i don't go to Goa parties. because in south of France, there has never been a place for it... I think. Salut! Stephane, Crossing Mind

Extracts are now online !!

Why not, we're still searching some tracks:) But for the moment, we have a very solid backbone for that compil, including one track from a Suntrip pillar, and one from a well--well known artist. ...but you'll know soon enough. Let's talk about Energy Waves for the moment.

Wow...my...wow, come on, this is an incredible EP we have here!!!! Pure Hallucinogenic vibes all along. Exhilarating, mindbending, boundless, from outer space, and beyond. The kind of music you hear under psychedelics...except you're not on psychedelics! My favs are Astral Body and DNA, but it's close. Respects to Artha who travelled to the extent of demented psychedelia...and came back with souvenirs! If the whole album is going to be like that, that's a wonderful, WONDERFUL year 2010 for Goatrance!

For the first remark, I definitely don't want to fall in the trap of defining the style of each release...if we can interface with discogs next year, ok why not. Else, no. For the second remark, I expressed (on the other thread) that I had one month to do that system and I made it as simple as possible. There will be lots of lessons to learn after this session and a whole lot of room for improvement

Indeed. Sorry the subtitle of the original thread wasn't correctly updated. I added one week to vote for those who were also misguided. >> RUSH, YOU HAVE UNTIL MARCH 7th TO VOTE !!! <<

You can buy the original painting if you want. Margot's phone/email are on the contact section of her website: http://margotschaefer.com

"The Energy Wave is a disturbance, that propagates through space and time, usually with transference of positive energy!" Do you remember that quote? Well, Laides and Gentlemen, we're proud to present our forthcoming compilation: "Energy Waves" / SUNCD18 No more mysteries, here's the tracklisting: 1 Mindsphere - The Awakening 2 Astrancer - Inhabitants of the Sun (Gnostic Theory) 3 KhetzaL - Indian Attic (E-Mantra's Tellurian Remix) 4 Somnesia vs PharaOm - God's Tears 5 Liquid Flow - Reformation 6 Astrancer - Athanaton 7 Antares - Eureka 8 RA - Time Current (Silver Remix) 9 Space Elves - Anjuna Beach We already said how full of emotions and sunshine we wanted this compilation to be. We wanted a journey! Well, I think we managed thanks to these wonderful artists who delivered the most exquisite and trippy music. - Mindsphere opens the compilation with a pure atmospheric track growing to downtempo, - Astrancer delivers two stellar tracks full of light and energy, - E-Mantra remixed a Khetzal classic in his own twirling way, - Somnesia & PharaOm are 2 brilant talents who joined forces to show you newer horizons, - Liquid Flow hits the headlines again after his brillant album with a straight acidic track, - Antares shows how much he improved with an progigious ethereal piece of music, - RA swore it was a Time Current Remix, but that's a totally new jewel to us... - Space Elves are finishing on a euphoric touch along the lines of California Sunshine. Release date is foreseen on the 26th of March. ...but that's only the begining: some evil forces are at work as we're talking...TBC!

Mpving to othe right forum: http://www.psynews.org/forums/index.php?/forum/4-lost-tracks/

C'mon, there are other great labels! IONO music releases mainly pearls, and there are other Goa labels. Nexus media is also great in its genre, to name a few.

+1

There you go: complete artwork here. The digital "pack" was also updated, so that this artwork is available to those purchasing the release from now on.

I'm helping Draeke to find the guy. Given the name he must be French, and from the south of France.

Super good indeed!

Well, back from the time we planned relasing it on iTunes, that's the only artwork we needed and got made, for free. When we finally released it 3 years later, I didn't want to bother Ukiro to find the files back and get rework. I'll ask him the original files, maybe I can work something out.

Added them + others submitted by email.

This error is solved guys, you can get back to Chrome or Safari!

Ahah!! BTW I added the releases you guys requested, except EP's, and except "Proton Kinoun - Apeiron" and "Freeform Human - Arnika" which were already present.

Yep, I'd like but it's difficult, we're connected 30 seconds per minute only (no wonder, our ISP was bought by another and we're migrated tomorrow).

It's written on the bestof sessions page. End of February. Why would I stone you? This is constructive, and serves the majority's interests. Another member pointed me at this API during december, while I had already coded a lot of the current system. I thought that was very convenient and easy to query. However I couldn't see a release search by music stle or release type (which I needed), so I was unsure to achieve what I wanted, and it was likely to become more undo/redo stuff for me. Now we have 1 year to test that, and that's not a hard retrofitting. Know however my app is written in JavaEE.

All propositions will be considered and hopefully implemented next year.

The best IONO for me were: Ovnimoon - Geometric Poetry Suntree - Inside Ritmo - Disharmonic Silence VA - Genetic Drift VA - Beat Generation 2

Sorry, it's EXTREMELY hard to gather all 2009 releases out there, they are scattered on hundreds of websites. Do you know how many Discogs contributors there are? Psynews is different: everytime I asked for help for anything here, even building such a list, I just ended up doing all myself. So I did what I could with the time I had. I knew some releases would be missing, that's why I asked people to inform me of discrepancies. But please Basilisk, make my life easier, prepare the list for me, in the specified format (1st post of the thread). I hope you're not saying they are ignored here. Such critic is easy when you just sit and check if what you're personnally interested in is missing. And you perfectly know what I answered a couple of week ago regarding free releases. We're on the verge of bad faith. Read above. Nowhere because never foreseen. I always said I would stick to what was done in the prevous years to have something working faster. This whole thing was developped in one month. And I have a wife and a job and a label. Also, live recordings are even harder to gather than free releases. I undesrtsand lives are interesting for you, so if you prepare the whole list for me, I might add it. But IMO we should go further and vote for the best lives seen, not limit to the recorded ones. You can't be serious. Don't you remember the problems we got with that in the past? Anyway, if you agree in front of everyone here that you'll agregate and correlate all written votes, contact members in case of mistakes or inaccuracies, and that you'll provide with the results and graphs as in the previous years, in maximum one month, then I'm ready to kill my system and let people type what they want.

For the moment, please use IE or FireFox, not Safari or Chrome. I'm working on that.

Answered above, answer yes. Please give me the labelname when you ask for a missing release. And also the month of release if available. Tour de Trance is from 2008. No section for EP's this year. But with the lengths becoming unrelated to the format soon, that will probabaly happen another year.