Rotwang

I'm sure I'll manage somehow.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay! 3000 posts!

I would like to add to the calls for a longer voting period - there are still a lot of 2007 albums that I haven't got round to buying yet, and I usually have to own an album for at least a month before I have a reliable idea of how good it is. Anyway, my tentative top five (subject to change, though it's very unlikely that anything will be able to knock KDD off the top spot) are: Uptempo: Kindzadza - Waves from Inner Space - Osom Music - June Alien Mental - Mind Hack - Insomnia - November Dimension 5 - Transdimensional - Suntrip - June Braincell - Transformation of Reality - Glowing Flame - August Mr. Rogers - Ooze System - Geomagnetic.tv - December Chill: Khooman - Is a Flexible Liquid - Ajana - April Various - Oxycanta (Winter Blooms) - Ultimae - December Not been a good year for Darkpsy IMO - the genre has changed direction, with more artists incorporating the Horror Place-style bassline and the less organic noises used by people like Highko, Cosmo etc., and I don't think that many people are able to pull it off (with my choice for no.1 being an obvious exception).

Thanks. I vaguely recall reading that his ban was for an indefinite period, but I guess I got that wrong.

Were all the decent DJ names already taken or something?

One other thing - I notice that the review thread for Alien Project - Activation Portal has been butchered to the point that it no longer makes sense. I assume that my post and some (but not all) of the replies that follow it were deleted on the grounds that I referred to having only heard the samples on saikosounds; however I was merely pointing out an objective fact that the reviewer missed (namely that a melody he liked was not original). Any chance of restoring the missing posts?

Will Psytones get unbanned at some point?

This somehow passed me by completely - I expect I saw the cover on saikosounds and assumed it was cheesy fullon. It sounds good.

Oxycanta Winter Blooms It's great.

You should check out Androcell maybe, Efflorescence was one of the best albums of last year IMO. I also think that the Khooman album is very good.

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible I'd never heard of this band until my Mother bought me this CD for Christmas after reading a review in the Radio Times. It's actually pretty good.

Again I concur with the sentiments expressed above (especially Jon Cocco's marvelous post). Here's something I don't think has been mentioned so far: I love the fact that psytrance artists seem able to exploit the problems inherent in large speakers and club/ festival acoustics to good effect. A lot of music that sounds good when played on a home stereo or through headphones is ruined when one tries to play it to large groups of people, but psytrance uses a lot of noises that manage to actually sound better coming out of a huge rig.

+1

As far as I'm concerned, the best dance music out there is psytrance (note that I didn't write the converse!). I agree with all the points Ormion made, but they are all just a bonus for me.

I love they hippie/ fluoro stuff, especially on women. @Supergroover: I think it's a good thing that psy clothing has remained fairly constant - whereas people who keep up with current trends are destined to look at old photos of themselves with a sense of embarrassment, the hippies will still look as good as they always did.

Dark Nebula - Dark Nectar has a good bassline.

This is indeed a worthy followup to the first one. The Subgardens track is particularly good.

What is that?

Nice cover. What is it?

Good advice if you ask me. edit: Insomnia records, Trishula records and Noise Poison records are also good for that kind of thing.

Got this in the post today and I'm dead impressed after a couple of listens.

+1. Substrata is outstanding. I personally would not recommend Shenzhou to a Biosphere newcomer - I expect they would find it boring. Has anybody mentioned Global Communication's 76:14? Not all tracks are entirely beatless, but most are, and it's very good.