rino

Croatia is where it's @, in case you've been snoozing under a tree for a while. Nice going though, will check it out, no doubt!

I don't see any possible reason why anybody would like to track down the lyrics of a tracks which almost single handedly killed all credibility one of the old school's greatest heroes had...? Oh well, the mysteries of mankind... Anyways, is there anybody else out there who missess this guy's style? I mean, in my book, Man With No Name's music has one of the largest longstanding factors as far as old psy trance stuff goes. His tunes are still regularly spinned at my place.

Aesome topic! My absolute 5 picks of 'those' days would be: #1) DJ's At Work- Balloon (el globo) (full Mix) #2) Captain Jack- Captain Jack #3) Whigfield- Saturday night #4) Music Instructor- Hymn #5) Scatman John- Scatman The list looks kinda embarassing now, don't it? It used to rock my boat many a' times, I tell you!

There's an actual discogs review for this one. In plain english as well. Must be a new thang, writting 'em in that language. Other than that, V/A Goa Tel Aviv is loaded with old school israeli classics, most of which are must owns, so if your collection lacks some tunes which made our grin larger back in the day, get it. V/A Survival of the trippest is cool, but the only reason why it gains points in coolness is because the other releases you listed are atrocious, and that counts in the music, front and back sleeve, barcode and the CD surface... It has some great tracks courtesy of the old masters off High Society Records, so if you know what kind of sound they delivered, odds are you'll like it. Anyways, don't miss out on the Tel Aviv compilation!

System failure: cyclic redundancy check.

Nice concept and it all seems like quite a rewarding initiative. I think I will gladly be a part of it. But please, keep in mind one thing: the mere fact you print 300 copies of a CD does not (never did, never will) automatically imply that your release will be a highly sought after collector item in a few months. Maybe no one succeeds in getting more than 3 quid for it on eBay. Can you guarantee otherwise and use that as a bulletproof justification of the price? I have vinyls which never were distributed in more than 50 copies, and don't know anybody willing to pay a beer to get hold of 'em. Likewise, this very scene has highly sought after collector gems which were printed in thousands of copies, and I would be very surprised if any one of your forthcoming releases ever managed to make them run for their money... So, once again, very nice you're trying out something different and original, but the quantity does not validate, imply or justify anything, and I do mean anything. Anyways, good news! Hope to hear some music soon!

I remember buying a mint copy of Flying Rhino Records' V/A compilation First Flight for 38 euro, but I never regretted it though. It still sends shivers down my spine. As for 12" items, my copy of Jesus Loves The Acid cost me waaaaaaay too much to write it down here. In recent times, the only over priced vinyl I bought was Jared Wilson's soon to be classic 12"! And I am very far from being sorry, my guess is that in a few years it will cost triple of what I payed.

speedy joachin spieet is where Liebing picked up his tricks at, IMHO. Naturally, both of 'em took heed when mr. Hawtin decided to take matter into his own hands.

Awesone CD cover, phenomenal title, and the artist roster is much better and, at first sight, eye appealing than the one presented on V/A Freshly Cut Tomato. Will purchase, unless I forget. Keep 'em coming!

Although I am by definition a fan of electronic music that emphasizes energy and driving relentless power, I detest with an intensity of a thousand trail blazing meteors everything that qualifies as jumpstyle, hardstyle, hardcore, gabber, speedcore, terrorcore, hard house, hard trance, or nitzohonot. In no way do I intend disrespect to any given fan of any of the aforementioned sub-genres, as I myself have in the past had a fair share of experiences with some of this stuff, but the initial infatuation and fascination never lasted for more than four weeks. My honest opinion is that these styles are fun exclusively if you visit a party once a year that you know before hand will play only this music. The tunes are mostly childish, with Fisher Price "my first sythesizer" cheese fest melodies, at best. The kind of energy this music portrays is clearly visible at parties where it's played: drunken guys aimlessly jumping up and down desperatly trying to grab hold of a girl to make out with... I hope things have changed, though, as the few times I've attended parties playing this music on amphetamines, I actually had a good time. But I could never visit events of the kind more than once a year if my intention would be to have a real blast.

Dzog Chen is too good to be true. The other Astrancer tracks are too weak in comparison, making me reluctant to believe they come from the same producer's studio.

Nope. Both are ridiculously lame when compared to either their take on BPC's Antidote, or the aforementioned Cerealogy. As for their unreleased tracks, Monkey Business and the remix of Time Dilation, which I heavily need in some adequate quality, are much closer to the overall intensity and psychedelic wizardry of Cerealogy. BTW Aeros, you made me pay more attention to the track, and I have to say I completely changed perspective. The producers really manisfest a knack for detail throughout, and there are no real epic or larger than life climaxes per se, but the track maintains focus and keeps itself together for well over 10 minutes. Great feat!

Tell him a fraction of Croatia is DYING for more, morE, moRE, mORE, MORE!!! He kicks so much ass so uncompromisingly hard, without resorting to that nonsense scharnz thingy. Awesome! Powerful techno all the way!

STOOOOOOOOOOOOP!!!!!!! Argh, I just remembered Regis' Necklace Of Bites 2xLP, which is damn monotonous, dry, rotten, repetetive, ugly, disgusting, repugnant, brutally supreme - in brief: best techno release of '08. Also, Glenn Wilson's track Northern Rise is quite probably my pick for track of the year. It's from '07, but I just recently got around to hearing it. It has those shuffled melody stabs, which are awesome. I also forgot Oscar Mulero's Take Seven 12", which only gets better as it progressess.

Since I barely ever listen to any downtempo and/or ambient, as usual I only make one, exclusive, all including list: 1;Crop Circles;Tetrahedron;DAT Records 2;Tutankhamon 9000;Lost in luxor;Space Boogie Productions 3;Jikkenteki;Flights of infinity;PAR-2 Productions 4;M.E.E.O.;Highlight me please;Demon Tea Recordings 5;O.O.O.D.;Fourthought;Phar Psyde Records

Albums: Petar Dundov- Escapements (Music Man Reocrds) James Ruskin- The dash (Tresor) X-102- Rediscovers the rings of Saturn (Tresor) Robert Hood- Fabric 39 (Fabric London) Kenny Larkin- Keys, strings, tambourines (Planet E) 12": Kalon- Born again (Sandwell District) Silent Servant- The blood of our king (Sandwell District) Function- Anticipation (Sandwell District) Surgeon/Regis/Female- The end of living, the start of survival (Downwards) V/A Essex Rascals (Theory Recordings) Joey Beltram- Shaking trees (Harthouse Mannheim) The Advent & Industrialyzer- Sumer Brise/Country Fox (Kombination Research) Go Hiyama- Crispy bites EP (Dynamic Reflection) Glenn Wilson- Phoenix EP (Compund)

Yeah I got that too... I'm referring to the "Tetrahedron" album and all. Plus another load of gritty & banging underground techno 12"... Can't be bothered to list them though. Jared Wilson's Drug Related Stories is one worth mentioning, for sure. Already considered an item to hunt down with all forces. Beh, I'm too good at it

Hello to all, and may I start with wishing you all the best in the forthcoming year. I just wanted to share my general joy and appreciation of how 2008 went down, psy trance wise that is. I didn't give it much thought before today, but now I clearly see that last year just may be the finest year in this genre since 1999. In retrospective, this was a fantastic year for virtually everyone who is in some way involved in the scene. Suntrip Records hit it on the nail with three releases in one year, one of which saw the resurrection of old school veteran Ra. While it wasn't all peaches and cream, the news of Filteria and Merr0w having new material in the chamber ready to unload should have the diligent Suntrippers back to some four to the floor madness. The newly born Cronomi Records gave us a taste of greater things yet to come, while Phototropic Records finally brought us the long awaited (and long time over due) albums by Filipe Santos, and shed light on Agneton, a very interesting and let's say, daring producer. Despite the fact my taste barely ever gets associated with the proggy psy side of things, the return of Atmos and Vibrasphere made me take notice as well. Like them or not, but these are mile stone artists doing what they do best. Moving on to even bigger things, the collective known as O.O.O.D. released their fourth album and proved that they still keep it wet behind their ears, while simultaneously one of their members lent a hand in the second Voice Of Cod album, which I have not yet listened to. As if that wasn't enough, they brought back to life the uber classic debut album "aLive" as a free downloadable release in its full glory via the ektoplazm website. Speaking of which, the free sophmore output by Jikkenteki brings more smiles to one's face than having the entire Buster Keaton DVD collection on your bed room shelf. Furthermore, the aforementioned site ran by Basilisk is getting more and more recognition as time goes by, counting heaps of clicks by internet users world wide and providing its services to upcoming artists, enabling them to get their music out there. The downtempo department did not yawn for twelve month either. In fact, very interesting twists and turns were taken by artists Tyler Smith and Richard Rutter, with their metamorphosis and rebirths as Distant System and Orbit Constructions, respectively. Even though their catalogue doesn't really impress me, the re-release of the vast majority of Ultimae Records back catalogue is a wet dream come true to many upon many chilled out music afficionados. Speaking of wet dreams becoming reality, the advent of "Tetrahedron", the long lost and venerated album by the legendary old school super group, Crop Circles, has finally seen the light of day, and made countless old school heads toss their KFC chicken wings six feet up in the air. Another one of old school heroes, Chi A.D. has risen from the dead, and released one brand new album and the ever green "Earth crossing", both in lossless quality through his own website. The underground realms of Sweden brought us the super raw and gritty album by none other than Ka-Sol, while M.E.E.O.'s album made heads spin with his entertaining, witty and benevolent take on modern psy trance, while suomi fans rejoiced mainly due to new albums released by Texas Faggott and their relatively less known side project, Mandalavandalz. And with two fantastic various artists compilations, "No possible soundz vol. 3" and "Mixed by Sharaku", both courtesy of the Japan based 6-Dimension Sound label, the simply beautiful throughout "Spectrogram" album by new comer Tamlin, and the insanely hard hitting "Lost in luxor" by Tutankhamon 9000, my guess is that the sometimes repetitive and recently unimaginative finnish sound has been given a dosage of fresh air! We also had some former heroes and production masters of the past take a complete u-turn and pursue a different path, namely Extrawelt (more known as Midimiliz and Spirallianz to the psy crowd) and Minilogue (formerly the prog-psy super duo Son Kite); both projects released slick and subtle albums on Sven Vath's power house of a label, Cocoon Records. And last but not least, Marcus C. Michael returned to form with the third The Delta album, but this time around without his ex-studio partners. Ticon, to joy of some and dissapointment of many, underwent a complete makeover, and brought to life (if anything) an interesting, mainly in relation to their previous output, sound on their "[2am]" album. Whether you appreciate or not- it's up to you. I do not know if I skipped anything of greater importance, but reading through my own post, I have this hunch that we just experienced a year which could have easily reinstalled the faith in the genre to any non believer or hater, regardless of where you're at. To end with a good note, with so many promising acts to come and so many releases just waiting to hit stores, I can hardly assume that 2009 will let down. So, have a good one y'all!

Well, too bad you can't chose. I can: Chris Liberator.

Techno Why? Just because... My own experiences have led me to think how it's a genre more inclined to emphasize energy and is eager to establish the "wild out" attitude when you're dancing to it. I also tend to be more inclined towards pure and uncut techno as often it doesn't pretend to be anything but party music, just a medium increasing your urge to dance. No mind expanding, contemplation inducing sound waves leading you to higher levels of existance. Jesus, I'm just trying to dance all night long, not meet Gandhi in the deepest realms of my cerebrum. Techno has that relentless and powerful drive which sweeps massess three feet above the ground. I just find techno more straight forward, primordial, if you want to call it that, very often stripped and mechanical, souless to those not willing to dive deeper into it, but regularly it has more substance and density under the surface, unlike a lot of psy which comes across as loaded and complex at first sight, but is actually quite shallow, trying to be more than it can objectively represent.

I pretend you're not even here. Just a fly resting on my monitor. As for the poll, my vote would always go to "I.F.O.", as it just refuses to get old or tiresome in my ears. "Tetrahedron", while being great, sounds uneven at places, and has the misfortune of including three remixes of tracks which are so magnificent in their original form that any attempt of alteration was unnecessary, and above all, predestined to sound inferior to the original versions. However, at places it's on the same level as Pleiadians debut. Tracks like Classic Process and Pentagon are marvellous.

Malevol3nt, I have a hunch you're taking the man seriously. How do you manage?

No schranz by Picotto. Schranz, by definitionm given to it by Sven Vath quite a few years ago, has very little to do, if anything at all, with the music output crafted by Mauro Picotto. Yes, I agree, some amazing tunes on BXR, but that doesn't make it schranz, naturally. I don't think the definition of schranz has changed; a decade ago tracks like Dandu Groove by Chris Liebing and Die Eigene Achse and The Chains Of Babylon by Johannes Heil were referred to as schranz. Today, staying true to the german definition, producers from that country are at the forefront of this style of techno. Names like Sven Wittekind, Viper XXL, Marco Remus, Frank Kvitta, Felix Krocher, Robert Natus, and naturally the brasilian Pet Duo, with their mentor DJ Rush, who resided in Berlin, close to where the scene is large!

Hey RTP, Mauro Picotto is not schranz by Darkarbiter's definition, and mine neither. Very few italian producers/DJs spin that kind of aggro techno, namely Andrea Leme and Jamal. Picotto is mainly representing the atrocious hardstyle stuff, which sounds like hard techno coupled with melodies created on a "Fisher Price - my first synthesizer" software... He has occasional excursions in the realm of techno, some of them being quite amazing, and I evoke the Taotek EP which he produced with Riccardo Ferri, and its title track, which did wonders on dance floors world wide a few years back.

Regardless of the way in which I look at life, and/or percieve weather exchanges some classics I always spin are: Lotus Omega- 100% revital free Technossomy- V.T.O.L. Prana- Scarab (Green Nuns Of The Revolution remix) Cosmosis- Gift of the gods Crop Circles- Antonomasia Zabra- Waterworld Elixir- Spiral 3 (Absolum remix) Stoop & Fidget- Mudless ...