acid-brain

Just realised that I haven't spoken to anyone face-to-face in a week now. I work in software and the transition to working from home hasn't been too painful. Been listening to a select few goa artists who really help get into the zone, chief among them Darshan. It really does feel like living in the future, I wake up shower and have breakfast and then I sit at my desk for the rest of the working day producing some code, and corresponding with my colleagues over Slack and telepresence. Read the news once every few hours and try to come to terms with how suddenly this massive uncertainty has come over our society. In the evenings I drink some beer and whisky. Rinse and repeat.

Children of the Night is an incredible previously unreleased track. It's most of the elements that make UX great fashioned into a psytrance torpedo. From 4:35 it really takes off. I can't believe more people haven't talked about this track here.

Such a sweet album. Reading over the reviews again here I'm surprised that Neuroscanner doesn't get more love, the last 3 minutes of the that track are a highlight of the album. Agreed that Darshan creates a unique atmosphere. So deep that it just sucks you in. Also, my favourite track here is Sun Probe. All the sounds layer on top of the bassline perfectly and it's the grooviest one.

Very underrated album. It's trippy and diverse

My request to goa producers is: make whatever music you want to make, and ignore people moaning on some forum! However there's always room for constructive tips like @recursion loop gave

It doesn't change your opinion on the track at all though does it? In my mind In The Mouth of Madness borrows some great ideas from that track but adds a lot of its own and turns the whole thing into a torpedo that's tighter, more intense and better produced than any source material

Why?

I wasn't sure at first, originally I thought the title track was even better, but now I believe that you're right. What a magnificent track that is influenced by old-school goa masters but actually exceeds them. It transitions seamlessly between moods, building momentum and intensity before dissipating it all in a moment of complte madness. The 303 that comes in at 1:30 is absolutely ripping and already makes this better than the Cydonia track it's based on. When you get to the ending with the hysterical laughter and pitching downwards effect it's spinetingling as you wonder WTF just hit you. At some point you transitioned into a deranged world without even realising it. Phenomenal.

I had no idea that Darshan were making prog house before goa (there's a nice 303 that comes in around 3:00 though): What other goa artists made music in different genres?

WE ARE STARSTUFF WHICH HAS TAKEN ITS DESTINY INTO ITS OWN HANDS

MFG already invented it

Best suggestion in the thread

Definitely one of the very best releases of last year, big props to this artist for not compromising his classic sound.

Really interesting premise in this thread, and cool to see all those quotes gathered in one place which you do notice when you read old reviews from the early noughties. About oldschool goa aging like fine wine - from the perspective of more novice ears that only discovered goa around 2010, I often found those comments about certain albums sounding "dated" to be confusing. My perception of what sounds "dated" and not doesn't match up with reviewers back at the time. Juno Reactor, X-Dream, Astral Projection can have a sound which feels very dated to me (not necessarily in a bad way!). Other artists from the late 90s can still sound shockingly fresh: Koxbox, Sandman, Pigs in Space for example. I can't particularly highlight what features of the music create those effects though; just a function of the scenes and production you've been exposed to?

Dzog Chen is an absolute masterpiece! You didn't miss anything on pages 2 and 3, it was just hilarious ridiculousness.

Wow, it sounds like listening to a really great track underwater. Also, the label's response to pd_'s review of that album on Discogs is hilarious.

This album is a real grower. My favourite is Spiral Dive.

Or the sample in Simply Blue which is a police report about a drunken and disorderly neighbour!

To be fair, I think that during every 1200 Mics track... I think that's the idea!

Great recommendations judging from the ones that I've seen already. I'll definitely watch the whole set, apart from perhaps Begotten, which doesn't look like much fun. Based on your recommendation and that of a friend I saw Antibirth this week. It was great, just a shame that it had all the elements of becoming an AMAZING film but didn't quite hold together in the end. I mean, part of reason why I love this 'genre' is that the films don't necessarily hold together on a plot-level but manifest strong subconscious themes, however Antibirth also got tangled up in its subconscious symbolism, squandering the psychologically scarring power which its forebears (Rosemary's Baby and Jacob's Ladder) have. However I wouldn't be surprised if director Danny Perez comes up with a classic of the genre in 4-5 years time.

I don't understand how the intention of the artist can define whether something is commercial or not. For a start, we can't fully know the intentions of the artist. Some become commercially successfully without meaning to. I think it's qualities of the music itself that define whether something is commercial: such things as unchallenging rhythms, cliched melodies, overproduction, etc.

Some might find this too generic but I love the sound design from 3:30 onwards:

Magic Frequencies is astonishingly good, swirling analogue melodic layers dancing and warping in and out of each other, neither predominantly light or dark; an abrupt and spine-tingling pitch-bending ending.

Such gorgeous production on this one.

Listening to this again the similarities with peak oldschool Etnica struck me, especially in the arrangements and peripheral sounds. Amazing goa album, one of the very best released in the last 10 years in my opinion. It's full of bouncy, funky energy, keeps catching you by surprise, and above all is a lot of fun to listen to.