fluorosis

That was the same ratio of good to bad back in the 90's. People simply have rose-coloured glasses and think that the past was always better, and forget that they are cherry-picking their favorite tracks from an entire year of goa-psy that was "meh" quality. I can honestly propose 10-20 tracks from the entire 90's and then decide that the 90's were better... What is missing? Music. No one dares take a risk anymore. We have managed to recreate mainstream society within the rave scenes. We reward conformity, punish eccentricism, etc. Everything is about some Big-Assed-Mafia-Festivals and their copy-paste lineups that are all based upon obvious sycophantry and court intrigue. But what is mostly missing from ALLLLLLLLL of electronica? Music. People study "electronic music production techniques" and I'm pretty sure that there are University courses for this new field. What is missing? Music. Am I referring to Music Theory? No, although you WOULD think that it would be useful for our thousands upon thousands of producers to be able to communicate effectively with trained musicians. Am I obliquely implying that the trance musical public is musically ignorant (aka, went from Pop or Rock directly into Trance, and thus have never left shallow-cool-kid superficial musical concepts behind, which is why most people think of Skazi or Infected Mushroom when you say "guitars in trance"... what if Segovia or Sabicas were to be a trance producer?) Yes, I suppose that I am insinuating that we are an ignorant scene who gets what we deserve, LOL. What do we want to do about it? How many damned posts must I read in which someone seeks something that copies 90's music ("is there anything that sounds like X-Dream or Etnica etc?") The very idea of asking for copies of greatness ignores what made that music great in the first place: it's originality was certainly part of it. We are basically glorifying the idea that it's possible to a achieve a formula that isn't formulaic. Sorry mate! It doesn't work like that. Death to the formulas. See those funny black and white keys on that keyboard? Those are "notes". Despite the Biggest Names Ever insisting that technology has rendered "notes" redudant, I can assure you that not only are they ever-relevant, but that there is an order and structure to how these notes are connected to each other! This structure is obvious to any serious musician or MUSICAL composer who has studied their relationship. Believe it or not, any semi-competent musician or composer from NON-ELECTRONICA can tell in 1 second if you know what you are doing with those "notes" and the sad fact is, most producers are NOT even semi-competent at MUSIC, but they still proffer this idea of technology or a plugin being able to fix that. I hold out hope for the fusions achieved when actual musicians start playing with technology and making it a tool in service to music. What we currently have is music in service to technology. We need to up our musical game a bit.

and one could argue that Manuel is in some kind of trance state... "duende"... it's a 4am "you had to be there" kinda thing...

yes