Paul Eye

Been tying up some loose ends these past few weeks, which means that now I've finally finished all Tomb Raider games (excluding the newest Shadow Of The Tomb Raider of course). These were the ones still unfinished: Angel Of Darkness: The absolutely worst of them all. The controls are absolutely horrible, the level design just plain sucks, the enemy AI is dumb as a rock, the story is just crap. And that new playable character Kurtis Trent is a hopeless failure, and the rather obvious sexual tension they tried to create between him and Lara is just plain ridiculous. Anniversary: People don't seem to like this one too much, but I found it enjoyable and a nice interpretation of the first TR game. Sure, the controls are a bit odd and the combat auto-aiming is somewhat wonky when you have too many targets at once but that wasn't nearly as bad as in AOD. And yes, the last level is a bit of a torturefest with some really tricky and too tightly timed sequences; there's one particular timed grapple jump sequence that lots of people have troubles with, I finally made it after over 10 years (yeah, I last played this when it came out in 2007 and never made that particular jump no matter what I tried). Underworld: Got stuck in the Mexico level 10 years ago because of my arachnophobia and some nasty huge spiders (I was completely unable to continue back then). Apparently enough hours in Skyrim (and The WItcher 3 and Kingdoms of Amalur to some extent) have desensitized me a bit so this wasn't so bad after all. A bit too short to my tastes (finished it in about 12 hours) and the story was a bit meh, but at least it brought some closure to what started in Legend (and the Natla part in Anniversary). And then for some nostalgia: A friend of mine got a Super Nintendo a while ago. Now we're replaying all the Donkey Kong Country games , 2 player co-op of course (it's been 20 years since my last time with these games) I'm trying to find a copy of Yoshi's Island (for a reasonable price) to play after the DKC project is over.

These are good candidates too: You get the picture

Yeah All this polished floating space goa fluff is starting to get on my nerves. The Dragon Twins track just oozes with raw and dirty power and energy. And yes, I've seen what this track does on a dancefloor a few times this summer Maybe not the absolute epitome but I really want to see/hear people making more goa like this. The more relentless the better.

I'll just leave this here:

But then again, this is how you ruin a beautiful track ("Fields Of Ard Skellige" from The Witcher 3)

Not really sure what i'd want, but this is a very nice track

Mostly vegetarian, as in: I eat eggs and cheese and the occasional chicken and fish, the even more occasional red meat, and pork practically never.

So we had our traditional little goa trance party again last weekend. I played some rather murky and mindfucky oldschool goa/psy on the second night. The last half hour or so is a bit of a mess as I improvised the entire set, and I started to get all too tired towards the end of the set. Oh well, these things happen every now and then Tracklist: Intro mix: Xenomorph - Hidden track from the Qlippoth album Montauk P - About Montauk Dragon Twins - (Entwined) Organic Noise - Spastic Elastic Prana - Boundless (Black Cat Mix) Bass Chakra - Mycetozoa (304046 Mix) Process - X-1 Lumen - The Vwroodha Semsis & Marc Van Der Vlugt - Basso Profundo Zodiac Youth - Still On Earth Infected Mushroom - Blue Muppet Hux Flux - Elixir Metal Spark - Smells Electric Metal Spark - Sonic Feet Systembusters - Skuffed Process & Slide - Creepy Crawly ECT - Mr. Jolly (Lives Next Door) Triquetra - Headphone Zombie ManMadeMan & Tristan - Julz Slug - Slugfest Joujouka - Ama No Kawa not online anymore, keeping the post here in any case

Gorm - Höller Om Böller Too bad it's only an mp3 release but still better than nothing :)

Probably old news for some, but I stumbled upon this kinda by accident Any other recommendations for purely instrumental/electronic metal like this?

That's actually kinda funny, as Proxeeus and JaraLuca said the same thing :D But yeah, I picked your tracks as they were already over my usual 150BPM threshold. They're played at about 20BPM over tempo (compared to over +30 for the 2 last goa tracks) :)

You know, sometimes you need to step out of your comfort zone and do something absolutely silly :D This happened last weekend when I played at a wedding party. Goa trance played at tempos up to 180 BPM. Go at it with an open mind. Tracklist: Hallucinogen - Mi-Loony-Um! Screw Loose - From Fear To Eternity Hypnoxock - Rare Planet Agneton - Jurassic Attack Agneton - Wizards From The Future (Afterlife Remix) Total Eclipse - Virtual Terminal Energised JBC Arkadii - Unreal World Cybernetika - Unknown Entity Qiujan - Light Truth Qiujan - New Era JaraLuca - Solaris Proxeeus - Tekeli-Li JaraLuca - Fata Morgana Rage Against The Machine - Killing In The Name

Sure there can be warmup anything, and if you ask me, goa can be about anything :) Thanks for enjoying it in any case :D

After a bit of a disaster in 2017, I returned to Kosmos Festival again this year, but this time on the Vortex (main) stage. I played an early Friday evening set, so naturally some warmup Goa trance was in order Tracklist: Prana - Miko (Edit) Transwave - My Dear Medical Assurance Jaïa - Brainstorm (Live Mix) Cosmic Dimension - Another Species Nova Fractal - The Wheel Of Time Morphic Resonance - Chronos (Hypnoxock Remix) Talpa - The Moon (Chromosome Remix) MFG - When We Dream Liquid Flow - Chaotic GoaTree - Black Star Of The Death Zirrex - Born Of Osiris Profetia - Chaos Theory not online anymore, keeping the post here in any case

Yeah, that was my main concern. Both those albums are psychedelia (played) with real instruments and synths, but I wouldn't call either of them any form of "trance". Would you add Ott & The All-Seeing I to that category, based on the downtempo/psydub aspect and that they play Ott's music live with a band? I'd probably rather add something (early) by Star Sounds Orchestra to the Natural Trance category, but even that might be pushing it a bit :) Or maybe something with a more obvious trance vibe from the "organic" section at Ektoplazm: http://www.ektoplazm.com/style/organic

Same with the Kataphasis album. No trance in there.

Why on Earth do you have Ozric Tentacles in the Protogoa section? Yes, they influenced some artists but are psychedelic/space rock down to the core. The Monkey Puzzle album doesn't belong in the Natural Trance section, it's more like a downtempo/rock hybrid (no traces of "trance" in any way). Also, Ethereal - Anima Mundi belongs to the New School section, not Old School. And of course all this nitpicking is us wanting to make this guide even better :)

Midsummer in Finland is always a magical event, and this year was no exception. I played an hour long downtempo set on saturday-sunday night on the alternative stage at this year's Solstitium midsummer celebration. I enjoyed playing, and looking at the people there, they absolutely loved it Tracklist: Globular - Popping Out Eat Static - Lo-Ride Sloucher Barby - Arena OX7GEN feat. Nathan Thomas - Ebb & Flow Aural Planet - Liquid Incense Temple Hedz - Dimensions Direct Connection - Ram (Vlastur Remix) Bluetech - Worthy Globular - Kaleidoscope Tribe Escape Into - Purpose not online anymore, keeping the post here in any case

That's a 2016 release.

On a side note, it's kinda funny how basically all psytrance with Michele Adamson singing is crap, and all downtempo with her singing is great :DD (with perhaps a few exceptions)

Okay, different interpretations of cheese. The singing doesn't bother me at all :)

They're also responsible for the best non-cheese fullon track ever made (I might have posted this before somewhere but I absolutely adore this one)

This: Not bad if you ask me. Keeps enough of the elements and atmosphere of the original, and doesn't turn into a cheesefest at any point :)

There's definitely something wrong if you can hear a difference between 2 lossless formats. The audio data in a FLAC is bitwise 100% identical to the WAV it was encoded from.

18 years old me would probably have disliked Cryptic Crunch back in 1999. 37 years old me thinks it's a fantastic album. RIP dude, I remember I had a briefly strange encounter with him on some Finnish festival some years ago... Yeah, Hux Flux doesn't get much better than this (and yes, I prefer this over the original version). Or this: Illuminus is nice too, btw