Chis

The new Casimir's Blake album is released! Casimir's Blake explores the fathoms of the deepest spacial sectors, places many wouldn't dare. His journey was initially laden with Global Communication-eqsue downbeat ambiences (on Kahvi Records 2009 LP release Casimir Corona and Mono211 Records 2010 LP release The Silence In Fragile Space). The pace picked up this February with the explosive 5-tracker Ejecta Nebula EP on Kahvi, revealing a far more energetic, techno-infused side to Casimir's story. Casimir's new 2010 LP is packed with even greater diversity: eclectic exploration of space epic maximalism. An amalgam of progressive techno, melodic electronics, maximalism and psychedelic Moraz-esque solos. Casimir's Blake is available at bandcamp in FLAC and other lossless formats. Join the new space-race now! All the tracks are previewable in full, as many times as you wish, from Bandcamp or SoundCloud. Thanks for listening!

Looking to join the space race? UNN Braun Casimir taking it's third flight to the cosmos... Ladies and gents, I realise this is the place for psy-trance, but I reckon some of you may find this of interest. I've just had a release on Kahvi records, a well-known and long-standing netlabel. Psy and goa are some of my many influences, and I like to think I put that across in my tunes without going for the usual generic interlocking goa arps, or full-on basslines. This is different, but still psychedelic. No minimal here! Nik at Kahvi has been very kind enough to release my newest piece, an EP entitled Ejecta Nebula. It's certainly more beat-centric than my previous outings, but also more melodic, and represents where I've been taking my composing over the last years. These are tracks that, like Corona and Silence, date back to 2007-2008, but are ideas I felt deserved completing and releasing. So here they are. Ejecta Nebula is 5 tracks and about 16 minutes, and available for free over at Kahvi: http://www.kahvi.org/releases.php?release_number=284 I hope some of you enjoy it. -CasiB.

Ahh fantastic! That's great news Digi, I'll be picking this one up. Synsun should definitely get back to basics, and guitar.

Is this remastered again from MP3s, or from the ORIGINAL tracks? I suspect, either way, likely it's much worth purchasing compared to We Are The World. I think they finally lost all sense of taste on that one...

I caned Dreamforce back in 2007, I remember having a great January playing Unreal Tournament 2004 and blasting Villa Ghee People a lot (GREAT build up on that track!). Two and a half years! I'm definitely looking forward to this.

Thanks for the replies guys.

If you're having a go at mastering your own tracks, I highly recommend trying "Density" across your mixdowns: http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/ Bootsie makes a lot of great plugins, THAT ARE FREE, and Density is designed to fatten up mixes (it's not designed for single tracks, instrument compression etc). Strap it on a plugin chain with some of Bootsie's EQ, and his Nasty "limiter", and you have a pretty good free mastering setup. It's helped me make my mixes sound a bit thicker, punchier.

Hello psynews I've lurked around on this forum for years, usually being critical about psy genres... well allow me to prove that I'm not always just a critical sod. I do not produce psy trance. I don't produce straight techno, nor dub. I think what I produce has elements of all these things. I like to go in my own direction and take ideas from a few genres like this, because that's just how my sound has formed. I doubt I'll ever try making true psy, or goa, but a few of the tracks I've made have taken elements from these genres, and I feel that psynews is a more appropriate place to post about this than the raft of minimal techno / IDM forums that are out there. So please find a few tracks here for your perusal: http://soundcloud.com/casimirs-blake ... including my newest piece "Separation At Aquilis". It's kinda an attempt to give dub techno a f*cking good kick up its complaceant arse, and is not the dull mid-tempo pish that certain "high-profile" dub techno producers put out... I'm even considering upping the BPM a bit more. Drums are a healthy mix of 808, 909, MFB and other sounds; and apart from one sound on "Edge of Venatici", all sounds are created by myself, with hardware synths - mostly Waldorf and Novation. I've gained a healthy appreciation for DIY sampling lately, and I recommend trying it! I'd appreciate your comments. If you're interested in hearing more, Kahvi Records have released Casimir Corona which is an epic longform ambient piece, and also somewhat psychedelic. Not minimal! Cheers, -CasiB.

Better than the CPC cover, actually. Do you have a Deviant Art page, Frix?

I usually complain about dark psy, but CPC's "Double Bouble" has such a unique atmosphere, and - shock horror - occasionally some nicely dark melodies, and it a whole lot more than pummeling full-on basslines and endless sound effects (Isentropic, you're fired!). So on this album it sounds like CPC has gone for a more generic kinda melodic full-on psy style. And ends up sounding like a thousand other artists in a similar vein. Not bad, but there's no edge or uniqueness any more. Shame.

I broadly with Jon here, but perhaps he's overrated this a tad. Another slight disappointment from Suntrip. Sorry guys, you have the goa sound in your albums, but the spirit IS lacking. Afgin has bags of talent, no mistake, but few of these tracks have standout melodies like those on the first track. Always the usual goa arpeggios though, and they grow so tiresome after a while. Back to Tamlin and Agneton again for me!

What he said. That's a track that doesn't spend 7 minutes building, because it doesn't need to. It just brings on tons of good lead melodies, one after the other, straight away. I get so bloody bored with goa and psy that thinks a 6~ minute buildup of generic arpeggios is required before "a big payoff". A shame that a lot of this album still follows that old "rule".

About what I expected Mars, but then again "Rise Up To The Sun" on Merr0w's LP was my favourite piece despite being lambasted for various reasons. Why does a goa or psy track have to spend all of its 6-7-8 minutes building when something like this works jus as well spending 7 minutes "at the rise point", rather than "just rising". Filipe, I have the Agneton LP, and it's pretty good, shame Zelur Project had to come from MP3s

No Mars, you're just making an excuse for lazy composition skills. Few full-on releases do it because most of them are by "artists" re-using the same tired old VST presets. Talking broadly about modern goa - especially the type Suntrip release - there's absolutely no sense of progression within one goa-song unless there's some change. The argument you'd likely put forward is that trance is about repetition and tension, and gradual build-up. And it would be fair to say Suntrip artists achieve this to some extent in their music. But the mighty Nick Bugayev of Loose Id / Ultrabeat "fame" sent me some unreleased tracks that he had put together some years ago, and just like his works "Transmorgriphication" and "Cube", he uses subtle key changes to induce a truly euphoric effect. Compare an average goa piece from 8 minutes of build-up with no resolution (and I'd argue a LOT of Suntrip material suffers from this problem), to songs like this which do have a "payoff", and the effect is truly euphoric. You can find both tracks here: ftp://ftp.innerverse.com/ultrabeat-amplitude/ But I'd expect most of you to find them cheesy. God forbid people try and compose something unique in a genre that has too many damn rules...

CPC were the only dark-psy artist I found interesting, if only because they were so relentlessly punishing. I have to say, these samples aren't really holding up to that...

Any key changes, this time, guys? You know, actually changing the root of the bassline? I'm tempted not to bother with Suntrip any more, because the artists on them effortlessly copy the sound of goa but lack the spirit. And yet I keep buying them in the hopes to be proven wrong. Maybe this time?

Now, I should be really interested in this. Until they finally dropped the ball on their new album, and started following in Infected Mushroom's footsteps with stupid sounds, lack of decent melodies... SynSUN actually bothered to bring some decent composition abilities to the psy-trance table. Hence, shock HORROR, they'd actually use key changes, and the effect would be monstrously euphoric. Even Suntrip releases often don't have this effect. Trouble is, this re-release supposedly is from dodgy MP3s: http://www.discogs.com/SynSUN-Zelur-Project/release/1650558 What the hell, guys!?

Wormhole sounds glorious. This sounds just as melodic as his previous outings, neither less nor more chaotic, I'd say. Looking forward to this very much. Cover is very dodgy though, not particularly "inspiring" (though I'm glad it wasn't another fractal one, beautiful though they are).

This is the first time in years I've heard someone attempt to make something even vaguely unique and new in psytrance. Release and Somewhirl sound like truly "psychedelic" trips, to me. Very fast, multi-layered melodic trips. Some of the tracks are rather more stripped back though, like the opener - too many silly sound effects and not enough melodies. The Turrican cover is totally amazing, perfect, wonderful, and gives me more of a euphoria than any of the other tracks on the album. I would buy an album of Turrican covers like this immediately.

Simon, make another Hallucinogen album, please? Just get it over with and go full-on like most "masters" do, then we'll all stop hoping for the comeback we all want. Sorry, nope, he's too busy with dub, delay pedals, rock instrumentation, and Ott. Dub sounds just fine when it's out of a hot 70s analogue mixer, but not when it's the slick, pristine, over-produced pap found in these samples. *Goes and cranks up Twisted for the billionth time*

Thanks for the suggestion, but I could compare it to your own work. I recall hearing a sample of a song on your myspace from a while back that DID have key changes. Elaborate interlocking goa melodies that weren't just the usual arpeggios. A shame you guys took it down... Edit: Spacious Endeavors specifically. Anyway, IMHO 99% of commercially released psy/goa is inferior to most of what Ultrabeat released back at the start of the decade. Shame they disappeared. Symbiote, Loose Id, Mantis... great times, great music. And free. And lost to the depths of the internet.

Much as I like to support Suntrip, after this album, I'm wondering if I'll bother any more. Goa-heads will probably love this CD, but I find most of the tracks "generic". Still far preferable to the usual full-on stuff, don't get me wrong, but I'm getting tired of the usual "goa arpeggio" style melodies, especially when there are no key changes. Even Agneton doesn't go far enough... There are some nice melodies, for sure, Aerosis and Artifact303... but I've heard so much of this style of music where composers don't bother to change the root of the bassline. It gets boring...

I'd agree with all of Jon's suggestions.... except the utterly dire Dancing Galaxy, which is where AP suddenly forgot how to write decent goa melodies and turned more "generic". Liquid Sun is awesome, though, and doesn't suffer this problem. Jon forgot to mention Chi-A.D. - Earthcrossing though. Which deserves to be in that list. Edit: Ooh, I was irate when I posted that... Dancing Galaxy isn't horrible (don't go near the stuff that followed it), but it's a LOT less inspired than Trust In Trance.

Based on the samples I've heard, this sounds like one of the most unique psy releases in a while. Different style to Luomuhappo but just like those Finns, there's a lot of unique sounds here. Always a pleasure when a producer bothers to use something other than stock psy presets. Looking forward to getting it in the post... (The cover is completely awful though.)

This is now released. UK fans can get it for £7.99 at Amazon UK. Juno have it for £17.99 !!!