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Colin OOOD

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Posts posted by Colin OOOD

    Opinion : Psytrance hippies are the worst lot

    in General Psytrance

    Posted

    You are saying that you can respect someones opinion without respecting the opinion itself?

    This statement is true, I think. Respect does not necessarily mean 'agree with'. Opinions can be powerful motivating forces behind the most heinous of crimes and bad behaviour and thus demand respect in the sense that they deserve particular attention and consideration - "this opinion has the power to cause harm so be bloody careful" - but an opinion itself does not necessarily deserve any respect in the sense of 'esteem'. For similar reasons, deliberately ridiculing a ridiculous idea or belief does not necessarily mean ridiculing the person who holds it, although if they strongly identify with or have invested themselves in that idea they may disagree :) More fool them, I say.

    • Like 2

    Opinion : Psytrance hippies are the worst lot

    in General Psytrance

    Posted

    i dont get it.

    i might, but meh. seems odd to make fun of someones poor grammar in this manner..

    but thats fine.

    I wasn't making fun of your grammar. "Sometimes I have make pictures" is a saying from Ye Olde Days of this forum, and I use it to reply to something that I'm not sure is being said seriously or not :) Sarcasm doesn't always come across in text :)

     

    There was no insult intended, although if what I said is an insult in your culture (excepting its religious aspects) then I will do my best to respect that more in future when speaking to you. (/s)

    Opinion : Psytrance hippies are the worst lot

    in General Psytrance

    Posted

    Example, this guy. Wicked dreads, and a nice mindset to boot. very fitting.

    The older I get and the less involvement I have with the scene, the freer I feel to voice my true opinion about things, and about people's actions and words. I have fewer attachments than I once had, and value my own integrity more. There is a conflict here because I know I can sometimes be opinionated and obstinate, and I know I have a way of putting things that can be very cutting, and I know that can make people feel like I don't appreciate them as a whole when I'm only actually disagreeing with their opinion.

     

    Please do not mistake my part in this discussion for a lack of appreciation and gratitude for the fact that you enjoy the music I and my friends make, and for the kind things you've said..

    • Like 1

    Opinion : Psytrance hippies are the worst lot

    in General Psytrance

    Posted

    Actually it's a sign of empathy - of being able to put yourself in another person's place and understand why they feel the way they do when you take their cultural symbols and completely ignore them.

     

    Empathy is good. Having it stops us being exploitative psychopaths. I can understand why some Rastafarians might look down on me because I have dreads. In fact, that's never happened to me because my dreadlocks are longer than those of most Rastafarians, which indicates that I have a commitment to them similar to their own, for all that the actual reasons I have them might be different. This shared degree of commitment is something that, in my limited experience, most Rastafarians can respect.

    • Like 2

    Opinion : Psytrance hippies are the worst lot

    in General Psytrance

    Posted

    :D

     

    I find many things people do to be rude &/or insensitive... but the list is simply too great to worry about. While I would prefer people to understand all of the religious aspects of Hinduism/Buddhism/Jainism when dressing with various symbols associated with those faiths, it's not a real issue for me. As long as they aren't harming anyone, I really don't mind.

     

    There are so many wonderful aspects to all of the different cultures on this planet, that it would be sad for people not to be able to fully experience them all.

     

    I lived for many, many years all over Japan. And one thing I loved about the Japanese culture was their ability to absorb nice aspects of other cultures into their own. It's as if they see something that just works better, and they will adopt it over time. I have a lot of respect for that system.

    It's not a huge issue for me either; I don't walk around all day getting angry about this stuff, partly because life is too short and partly because I know I'm as unwittingly guilty of it as many people because many of the things thus appropriated have been integrated into my own culture since before I was born, and I don't have as much control over my cultural conditioning as I might like.

     

    But if we're going to have a discussion about it the for sure there's gonna be a lot to say.

    • Like 1

    Opinion : Psytrance hippies are the worst lot

    in General Psytrance

    Posted

    I know that what I'm about to do will make you feel deeply uncomfortable because it remind you of that time when my ancestors killed all your ancestors and stole from them everything of value they could find. It will also remind you that my house is built on the land where all your ancestors have been buried for thousands of years, and that it's much harder for you to get a job than it is for me because of your ancestry. I don't have to do it but I will because I like the way it looks, and it's fun for me to do it.

     

    I know all that, but I'm going to do it anyway, because I 'respect' you.

    Opinion : Psytrance hippies are the worst lot

    in General Psytrance

    Posted

    So, essentially, you're against poseurs who, for example, wear a bindi without understanding the significance of it... but wearing one while understanding the significance is fine.

     

    So it's not cultural appropriation, it's simply being a shallow poseur that is the problem.

    Properly understanding the significance will mean understanding how it will make someone of that culture feel when they see a bindi (or feathered head-dress etc) worn or used in a manner inappropriate or even directly contrary to its purpose in the culture from which it comes. If you understand that by reducing something of great cultural significance to a mere fashion item you will upset people of that culture, but you do it nonetheless, you're being pretty arrogant and insensitive IMO.

     

    Posers are an entirely separate problem! :D

    • Like 1

    Opinion : Psytrance hippies are the worst lot

    in General Psytrance

    Posted

    If cultural appropriation is wrong, than Japanese men wearing suits is wrong. After all, the suit is part of European culture.

    Incorrect IMO. The suit is part of business culture, which is pan-national and as much a part of Japanese culture as it is European.

    Listening to classical music by non-Europeans would also be wrong if this nonsense of cultural appropriation were something.

    Not at all, IMO. Music is intended to be listened to and enjoyed by all who are able to do so. I cannot imagine any composer or listener being upset because someone of a different culture enjoyed listening to music written in their country.

    The very idea that you are restricted in the type of sounds, foods, clothing, manners, language, and art because of the culture you came from is absurd.

    The idea that you should respect those from whom you take without asking is not quite so absurd, to me.

    Let's get rid of this ridiculousness, and not worry about sharing culture.

    Sharing starts with something being freely offered for the use of another. The kind of cultural appropriation the article talks about, and which has been discussed elsewhere starts with something being taken, not given. These cultures aren't being 'shared'; their trappings are being used whilst their actual cultural meaning is being ignored, dismissed and discarded. The 'sharing' of the actual culture around eg. bindis would involve Western women wearing them in the same situations as women from the culture in which the bindi originated. That isn't happening; the bindi has been appropriated by Western culture and its original cultural significance dismissed as unimportant, and the disrespectful nature of its use in the eyes of those for whom it is still a living part of their culture deemed irrelevant. Imagine the furore if fashionable clothing shops started selling military campaign ribbons and medals as fashion accessories. Cultural appropriation such as this is an indicator of a lack of fundamental respect towards the basic humanity and cultural sensibilities of those whose culture is being reduced to a commodity ripe for exploitation.
    • Like 3

    Opinion : Psytrance hippies are the worst lot

    in General Psytrance

    Posted

    $0.02 - Apologies if this seems too hard; of course there are exceptions and you can't generalise about all psy fans or all artists or all events or all labels, but nonetheless this is a trend I've noticed, certainly over the last 10 years or so.

     

    It seems to me that psytrance fans are more prone than other people to believing in unfounded conspiracy theories such as chemtrails or "flat Earth", or to trust charlatans and con-men like Wolfe, Icke or Jones, and if this is actually true I think I might know why.

    As we can see from a quick glance at Facebook, committed fans of and participants in today's psytrance scene often believe that psytrance represents a vision for a way of being human that transcends our current paradigm:

    • peace, one-ness and unity,
    • sustainable,
    • non-hierarchical,
    • resource-based,
    • innovative.

    However an examination of these ideas as they apply to the actual mechanics of the psy scene reveals something different:

    • Israel, one of the major centres of the global psytrance scene and home to a disproportionate number of well-known acts is only peaceful and "in oneness" if you ignore its ingrained, systemic anti-Arab racism and apartheid resulting from the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews which accompanied its establishment and the brutal, decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories which followed, which is supported by many (but not all) Israeli psytrance artists and promoters and at the very least ignored by those who go there to play;
    • psy parties in remote locations often irrevocably change the character of the location and the local inhabitants (eg. Goa) and rely on unsustainable fuels and transport to occur at all, and sometimes leave an incredible mess - they are anything but sustainable, let alone carbon-neutral;
    • the psy scene is based on a hierarchy at the top of which are a very small number of headlining acts who get the vast lion's share of remuneration and bookings whilst lower-order acts are not paid properly, if at all - that is if they even get booked (the 1% rules psytrance as it does everywhere else, and in the UK is often accompanied by pre-existing family wealth, just as in politics and industry);
    • psytrance events and labels operate using exactly the same high-capitalist bad behaviour that we criticise everywhere else, for example the relentless spamming of release information on Facebook; the non-payment of royalties and withholding of accounting information; SUN and Ozora getting each other's Facebook pages taken down and copywriting each other's names, and Boom doing deals with Coca Cola, not to mention the exploitation of all but 1% of artists and DJs;
    • like any other event, large psytrance events are necessarily organised to maximise ticket sales and other income in the first instance, with efficient and equitable resource use less of a priority;
    • headlining acts often seem to use the same presets and templates leading to a homogeneity of sound and difficulty in determining who wrote a track from listening to it, and large festival lineups seem to change very little from year to year.

    For some people, then, being a committed psytrance fan would therefore appear to involve firmly believing that things are different to how they actually are. This wilful denial of evidence erodes one's ability to discern truth from fiction in general, and leads to a susceptibility to manipulation by false authority and charlatans of all kinds.

    • Like 7

    Happy 15th birthday Psynews!

    in General Psytrance

    Posted

    Aloha Colin! Thank you for all of your brilliant tracks over the years.

     

    Also, GZ Psynews. I've lurked in your reviews for years and years, 15 years of lurking was long enough. It was time to contribute, at least with some sardonic comments.

    Thankyou! My collaborators share in your kind words :) And well done for stepping out of the shadows.

    • Like 1

    Psynews Contest: the results

    in General Psytrance

    Posted

    btw, maybe not suited for this thread, perhaps in the music production forum -

    Im genuinely interested on how you and your collab with Goa Travellers worked.

     

    Did you use the same software and hardware, did you swap midis, waves, how did the process work?

    Was it done thru emails, were you guys in the same studio together, who did what, etc.

     

    Why Im so curious is that for the latter part of 2015 I begun taking music production more seriously, and really think I can make something happen soon; release wise, and Im working on a collaboration right now - it would be a very interesting topic for me to read, and Im sure, to others aswell who might be interested in how the process of collaborating works.

    Also Im very open for anyone to share their collab stories, in that very same thread Im now hoping one of you will create :)

    Charles-Andre came to stay with me for a week to take some music production tuition from me. He's a synth collector with some knowledge of sequencing but not much experience actually writing trance, so he really wanted to experience the process of writing a track from start to finish, and the tuition consisted of us writing a track together with me explaining what I was doing at every step, and why. It was interesting that when he was looking for a tutor he gave some examples of the kind of music he wanted to write, and gave OOOD - 'Silence' as a reference! Just happens to be a track I pretty much wrote on my own, so it was a good fit.

     

    Before he arrived here I set him some homework: to get a clear idea in his head of what he wanted the track to be like, and to gather together examples of sounds and tracks that inspired him, as well as to do some field recording to gather original sonic ingredients that we would use. Although I did all the driving in the studio, I tried to make it as collaborative a track as I could, and as well as turning to him first for ideas to progress the track, almost every idea I had went past him first for approval before we used it.

    • Like 2

    Psynews Contest: the results

    in General Psytrance

    Posted

    Awesome! Thanks so much to everyone who listened to and/or voted for our track :) Congratulations to the other winners and commiserations to everyone who didn't get on the lineup, I know how you feel :P Keep going!

     

    Whilst I don't come on here much these days, I was a very early member here and this place was my home for a few years. It's good to be able to give something back.

    • Like 1
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