travbrad1001

One of my favorite long songs (and favorite period) is Atom Heart Mother Suite, by Pink Floyd. Not trance obviously, but still psychedelic. It clocks in at nearly 24 minutes btw

It was really hard deciding which order to put them in, especially the trance list. There were so many good albums this year. You know it's been a good year when an album like Tethrahedron doesn't even make my top5 TRANCE ---------------- 1;Talpa;When the Somberness Becomes a Game;SunDance Records 2;Tamlin;Spectrogram;Faerie Dragon Records 3;Kino Oko;Alphabetically Divided Highway;Tribal Vision 4;Mandalavandalz;King Of The Bad Trips;6-Dimension Sound 5;Haltya;Book of Nature;Exogenic Records CHILL/AMBIENT ---------------- 1;Satumnaisuus;Kaleidoskopedelia;Oletustila Records 2;Evan Marc and Steve Hillage;Dreamtime Submersible;Somnia 3;VA;Ease Division 3;Spiral Trax 4;Distant System;Spiral Empire;Celestial Dragon Records 5;Minilogue;Animals;Cocoon Recordings

It has some tracks on it that have never been released before (plus a lot of stuff no one has heard anyway) so it qualifies. The idea is to vote for the best release of 2008, not necessarily music that was made in 2008 (as long as it's not just a compilation of old tracks that have been heard before). I guess for label just put "self-released". Now I have a question for you guys; would Kettel - Myam James 1 be considered ambient/chill? Or is it IDM? It would be in my top5 if it's considered ambient/chill.

This. Many tracks come close, but nothing can quite match it

I think Psyknights are underrated. They made one of the best albums of the past few years IMO, and I haven't really heard anything else like it. Also, Satumnaisuus. I discovered them recently from this forum, and it's some of the best chill I've EVER heard. It has some really cool sounds and is very psychedelic compared to a lot of chillout stuff. If anyone knows of some more good Finnish chill, let me know

Same here. A lot of the really good releases seem to get reviewed here. I usually check out the samples available on psyshop/saiko too. I know I'm probably missing out on some stuff, but between psynews and samples I find a good amount of killargh psy (as much as I have time to listen to anyway)

IFO, but Tetrahedron is still a great album. Hard to stack up against one of the all-time classics though.

I never say "old school" or "new school", because it doesn't really make a difference IMO. When people make new goa music I just call it "goa", even if it has some new elements in it. I think the spirit of the music is what matters, not it's age/technology. I think we get too hung up on genre labels too. A lot of music combines elements from different genres/subgenres, so it's impossible to pigeon-hole them into one specific genre. Genres are a helpful way of describing music to someone who hasn't heard it before, but I don't take them too seriously beyond that. Even then, I think detailed descriptions (like you see in psynews reviews) are much more helpful than just saying "full-on" or "goa" or "darkpsy" P.S. On my iPod, I just have everything under "Trance", whether it's goa, full-on, darkpsy, suomi, etc

They have a couple good tracks, but a lot of crap IMO. Most of it is just far too cheesy. That's generally the case with guitars in psy.. There are a few decent psy tunes with acoustic guitar though (Pistolero by Juno Reactor or Bust a Move by IM are the obvious ones). I think distorted guitar could work, but most songs use really generic/simplistic melodies. Sitar in psy music suffers from the same problem.

Unstable Elements – Technical Illusions has a melody (starts at 2:10) that is very similar to the melody in Nystagmus -Tommy is Dead. It sounds like they even have the same synthesizer/effects. Pretty weird considering one is trance and one is chill.

Yeah, thanks for all of the links. I find it really fascinating looking at how genres formed/evolved. It's amazing how goaish (is that a word ) some of those tracks from the early 90s sounded. If you played that E-Rection song and asked what genre it was, I'd say "goa" without a second thought. Even the stuff from 1990/1991 was already beginning to form that distinctive goa sound. Who would have thought the scene would be so "big" only a few years later (okay our scene isn't THAT big, but there are tons of artists producing psytrance). I also find it interesting from the technology perspective. It's amazing how much the sound has developed in the last 15-20 years (for better or worse). I can't even being to imagine the type of stuff we may be hearing in another 15-20 years. Okay it may not be as big as the difference between pre-goa and modern psytrance, but I still think we have some innovation and development of sound to go through.

:lol:

Another year of great music has gone by, and it's time to vote for your favorite albums/compilations of the year. There are only a few rules here: 1. The release must be from 2008. If you are unsure of the official release date, myself or other pysnewsers should be able to help you. 2. They must be albums/comps that are from the general psy scene, and the type of album you commonly see reviewed on psynews. Full-on, Goa, Dark, Forest, Progressive, Suomi, Electro-trance, Ambient, Chillout, etc. I probably missed a few, but I think you get the idea. 3. Older albums being re-released can be voted for if they include new elements, new mastering, etc. EPs are also allowed. The voting will be split into two general categories, chillout/ambient/downbeat and trance/upbeat. If you are unsure of which category the album falls under, just ask and I'm sure someone will be able to help. Please make 2 separate top5 lists for each of these general categories. If you only listen to trance, or only listen to chillout/ambient, then it's okay to just make one list. Check out last years thread for examples of how it should look. It should be formatted like this: CHILLOUT 1. Artist Name - Album Name - Label 2. Artist Name - Album Name - Label 3. Artist Name - Album Name - Label 4. Artist Name - Album Name - Label 5. Artist Name - Album Name - Label TRANCE 1. Artist Name - Album Name - Label 2. Artist Name - Album Name - Label 3. Artist Name - Album Name - Label 4. Artist Name - Album Name - Label 5. Artist Name - Album Name - Label If you don't know which label released the album, then just list Artist/Album and I will try to figure out which label it was on. You can also list more (or less) than 5 albums if you wish, but only the top5 will get points. You may edit your post as many times as you like, up until the deadline. The scoring will be the same as last year. Your #1 album of the year is worth 5points, #2 is worth 4pts, #3 is worth 3pts, #4 is worth 2pts, #5 is worth 1pt The deadline for getting your votes in is March 1st, and I'll try to get the votes counted up a few days after that. If there is a general consensus that more time is needed, I may extend the deadline. So start figuring out what your favorite albums are, the more votes we get the more accurate the results will be Also, thanks to moni for setting up last years thread. I basically just copied it

I have to agree it just feels like SOMETHING is missing here. The tracks aren't particularly bad, and they seem to have all the elements of a good goa track. Somehow they just fall flat though. Nothing really stands out to me or makes me say WOW. Again, this album isn't bad by any means, it's just sort of good/decent. Also, I must admit that I was never a huuuge Chi-AD fan, but I did/do enjoy the old stuff. I've only listened to it a couple times though, so maybe it will grow on me.

What can I say? I like simplicity. I'm just not really into the whole "blow your mind with colorful geometric shapes" thing. It's way overdone in the psy scene. The music should make you see that stuff, not the cover

I don't mind tallying up the votes again for 2008, at least for the album/artist stuff. I'm not sure I can wrap my brain around more factors than that, like the labels, countries, etc...That takes a lot of extra work figuring out that kind of stuff. I can start a new thread in a couple weeks once the year is up, if no one else was hoping to do it (if someone else wants to by all means go ahead) As I just mentioned in another thread, we should at least wait till the year is over though. This is a busy time of year and some of us are still catching up on all the releases from 2008. I think a similar deadline to last time would be good (March or April)

It's good to wait till a couple months after the year is over too I think. Not just to let it sink in, but some of us are still trying to catch up with all the music from this year

I definitely agree that was TF's best album by far (every single song is fantastic), but I still like the other albums. Okay maybe "great" was a bit much, but they were at least good IMO. I still can't think of anyone who's had more good albums. I think the new Mandalavandalz is really good actually, their best since the debut. It's not really "pure" suomi so much though. It has elements of more standard psytrance and even some borderline Drum and Bass influences. It's probably my favorite psytrance album of the year (along with Talpa, Haltya, and RA), for what it's worth. Thanks for the recommendations though, I was familiar with Troll Scientists, but I'll have to check out the other two.

My favorite chill album of the year, and also one of the best artwork: Pretty simple but effective. Sorta reminds me of the Total Eclipse covers: Here's a couple others I like: The Kino Oko one that was already posted is really nice too.

Mandalavandalz and Texas Faggot (although you probably won't agree if you don't like suomi) On the chill side, Bluetech and Future Sound of London I'm sure others have released more decent/good albums, but those are the artists who have released the most very good/great albums IMO

I'd have to deprive myself of Ramen noodles for a rather long time to come up with 100,000 EUR

IM and Hallucinogen are what got me into psytrance, so I'm forever grateful to them. However, I don't really listen to IM anymore. The first few albums are okay, they've just gotten old. Dancing with Kadafi is still great though, definitely IM's best song as far as lasting-appeal.

A lot of this is going to come down to personal taste/opinion basically. If there are certain styles of psy you don't like, you'll probably have a hard time seeing them as milestones. Plus, a lot of us only recently got into psy too (I discovered it around 2002), so I think it's hard to tell how groundbreaking some of the older stuff is. I mean to me Astral Projection or Etnica honestly don't sound that special (I await my ban ), but I'm sure it was amazing back when it was released. A lot of the psy I like now probably wouldn't even exist without those early innovators. Have to agree here (at least partially). I thought it was good, but certainly not great. Not only that, but the more I listened to it the less I liked it (usually not a sign of a groundbreaking album)

I really dig the Psyknights album "A Faint Light from the Dark" from a couple years ago. It's the most underrated thing from the past few years IMO. It's not really typical trance so maybe that's why, but I'm not really sure what I'd call it You seem to like a strange assortment of music though so you may like it. Hard to say though, as I really don't see any similarity between aphex twin, hallucinogen, electrypnose, and.....skazi Are you implying you want to lick skazi?

Well I don't know about you but I've had some spacey trips that were pretty amazing. Being in a psychedelic state tends to get me thinking/questioning the nature of the universe (why are we here, is there anyone else out there, etc) Plus the whole "theme" of psytrance just seems to go well with space/alien stuff, with all the strange otherworldly sounds, and heavy use of technology (synthesizers, computers, etc). I can't think of a more alien sounding genre of music really.