Paul Eye

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

If their upcoming material is anything like this, I'll be at least a bit interested

There's already a thread on this: https://www.psynews.org/forums/topic/74310-subconsciousmind-symphonies-of-life-ektoplazm/

I saw the words "Cybered" and "techtrance" and thought to myself, "oh nice, this should be good". Well, it wasn't, especially with a lineup like that. More like mind numbingly boring, and what's this silly attempt at creating yet another psy micro genre? "Psydeeptrance", yeah, that sounds just fantastic doesn't it?

Yeah, I've seen the full live 4 or 5 times since Ozora 2009, and it's been getting progressively worse every time, with Boom 2014 being not much more than a joke; you could clearly see that the musicians on stage had no fucking idea what the others were doing and over all the whole gig just sounded like shit. I remember Ben Watkins stating somewhere that he "doesn't believe in rehearsing". Well that was more than apparent there. I'll stick to listening to the albums instead.

For this year's 420 Gathering I asked a friend of mine to play a B2B set with me, this is what we ended up with: an epic set with a bit over 4 hours of mishmashed downtempo Oh, and this one was recorded live at the event. Tracklist: Iacchus - Legion Synesthesics - Malfunction Easily Embarrassed - The Old Ways Nibana - Andaran Athish'an Tentura - Vivid Shpongle - Star Shpongled Banner (Brothomstates Remix) Cardamohm - A Seed (4bstr4ck3r Remix) Argaman - Honey I'm Home KiloWatts - Azure Vlastur & Thos Grol - @ Sophia's Home NSE vs EMS - Anti Spiral Ozric Tentacles - Sploosh! (Youth & Simon's Hydrophonic Decimation) Supersillyus - Interabang (Radioactive Sandwich Remix) M.E.E.O. - Cooper In The Woods Tentura vs Zymosis - Unity Of Cultures Umberloid - Neon Tetra Slackbaba - Perverting Mankind Toires - Menara (Arketype Project Remix) Ott - Mr. Balloon Hands Globular - LUCA Unfolding Scion - Ride Easily Embarrassed - Sylphesizer Zymosis - Make A Wish Naturelement - The Clocks Went Back In Time Easily Embarrassed - Little Match Sister Shpongle - ...And The Day Turned To Fright (Eat Static Remix) Shulman - Invention Bluetech - Laika Kaya Project - Vijaya (Bluetech Remix) Kurbeats - Phony Pony Suduaya - Over The Edge Radioactive Sandwich - Bhagwan Slackbaba - From The Ashes Synesthesics - Raptore Nimba - Nimba (The Offering Of Rice) Shpongle - Around The World In A Tea Daze Shpongle - Flute Fruit

They're not exactly obvious (I didn't even know that).

Inappropriate melodies? Maybe not, but sleazy lyrics and porn samples? Not my cup of tea. If you're going to use porn samples at least do it well, like this:

I don't listen to much techno but the Digital Family compilations have always been nice

That's a 2018 release.

Assuming that this will turn official at some point in time: Downtempo 1. Shpongle - Codex VI (Twisted Records) 2. Eat Static - Last Ship To Paradise (Interchill Records) 3. Vataff Project - Solьmen (Fusion Embassy) 4. Carbon Based Lifeforms - Derelicts (Blood Music) 5. Narcose - Panda Eyes (Mystic Sound Records) 6. Zymosis - Insight (Sentimony Records) 7. VA - Ethneomystica Vol. 5 (Mystic Sound Records) 8. Mindsphere - Mental Triplex: Mindream (Suntrip Records) 9. Saluberrimae - Time Is A Flat Circle (Neogoa / Ae Records) Uptempo 1. GoaTree - Black Star Of The Death (Neogoa) 2. Morphic Resonance - Chromatic World Revisited (Neogoa) 3. VA - Fluorotronik (Tranceform Records) 4. Hypnoxock - Eurythmia (Goa Madness Records) 5. Gubbology - Anachronism (Troll N Roll Records) 6. K.O.B. - Identity Mash (Suntrip Records) 7. VA - Inti (Suntrip Records) 8. VA - Dimensional Gateway 5 (Neogoa) Yes, there aren't enough entries in either category, I didn't really get that much music last year :/ And kinda funny that in 2013 the then new Shpongle wouldn't have made my top 50, this time it's an undisputed first place

You can't really go wrong with Sinepearl https://sinepearl.bandcamp.com/

Fluorotronik isn't really a "reissue" as it wasn't actually released until last year.

Hahah, almost 4 years since I posted this Consider this 99% abandoned by me. I do have that Shakta album though.

You mean this one? http://www.ektoplazm.com/free-music/kadasarva-steamagination

Some random few recommendations that might interest you (trying to stay within 93-98). Planet B.E.N. - Trippy Future Garden X-Dream - Radio (German artist / UK label) Morphem - Out Of Focus Xenomorph - Cassandra's Nightmare (German artist / UK label) Mittelstandskinder Ohne Strom - Bug The Delta - Scizoeffective S.U.N. Project - Drosophila S.U.N. Project - Macrophage Montauk P - Def=Lim (German artist / UK label) Noosphere - Radiated (German artist / UK label) Children Of Paradise - Urban Alien Of course there's more to the type of sound I at least think you're after, if you want to stray outside of Germany

The wonderful people at Kosmos Festival had a party for their 2017 artists and staff last weekend. I played some rather intense goa trance at midnight Tracklist: Triquetra - Renkinjutsu Omnivox - Gift Of Unsanity Filteria - Chaotic-Om (Morphic Resonance Remix) Pleiadians - Modulation X-Dream - Freak Hypnoxock - Mental Ascension GoaTree - No Time To Waste Proxeeus - Down The Six Thousand Steps (Unreleased Demo Version)

Yeah. I've seen far worse covers than that (no, it's not bad at all, a bit generic however). I like the colours and somehow it looks like it could have been released on Spirit Zone 15 years ago or so

I had a feeling this is the case

Is "Trance Goa" supposed to be 2 different styles, as in "Trance" and "Goa", or "Goa Trance" as one style?

Let's see, games played in the past ~year, after The Witcher trilogy... (with short comments). Rise of the Tomb Raider (20 year celebration edition) - fun, if you don't compare it to the original quintet. Limbo + Inside - disturbing, unnerving, occasionally irritatingly frustrating (both of them). Mad Max - one of the best optimized games I've played, and was good enough to satisfy my occasional craving for simple asskicking. Of course I did spend almost too much of my game time just driving around the landscape The Witness - did a rather good job of filling the hole left by The Talos Principle, even if the approach is quite different. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - was good fun, although the game world felt quite empty. The combat system is an absolute delight and for the first time maybe ever I actually enjoyed melee over ranged combat. With a sprinkle of magic. Minerva's Den - the only part of the BioShock series I hadn't played yet. Made me remember again that I don't really enjoy FPS games that much. Styx: Shards of Darkness - stealth games are usually my favourites, but this felt rather unfinished and rushed. I did enjoy the first game more than this one. Postal Redux - because sometimes you just need to switch off you brain and cause massive bloodbaths (in a game) :DD Submerged - because sometimes you need a game where basically nothing happens. Fortunately I didn't pay more than 2€ for this one. INFRA - this was an oddly satisfying puzzle game that I need to replay one of these days (I missed some things in th beginning). The Source engine is a bit meh for this approach, but hey, at least it was made by a Finnish game company The Turing Test - another puzzle game to satisfy this particular craving of mine. Runs on Unreal Engine 4 (and damn I wish INFRA would too). A bit too short, unfortunately. Archaica: The Path of Light - yet another puzzle game, but a completely different approach from the 2 previous ones. Enjoyed it, although it kinda just ended all of a sudden. Some really tricky puzzles in here. Enderal - a Skyrim total conversion mod that turns it into a completely different game. On many accounts even better than Skyrim. The only huge downside was the downright painful ending; without spoiling too much, the amount of quasi-philosophical bullshit at the end is absolutely mindboggling. Still, I managed to finish it twice this year. So...that was quite a list, and somehow I also managed to squeeze in quite a lot of gigs and some other music stuff during the year. Oh, and there's the Steam winter sale going on now. The new Life Is Strange is tempting me...