Genre Help

[Guest bugbread]

Ok, first: this IS NOT intended to be a discussion of "is minimal music psytrance or not". I just want some definitions or examples of stuff that fits the following terms:

 

Psytrance

Progressive

Full-On

Morning

Nitzhonot

 

I know that I listen to a good chunk of some of this (Big time into Hallucinogen, Infected, Juno, etc.) I know that they're goa, but is there a difference between goa and psytrance? Basically, what kinds of groups or tracks are representative examples of these?

 

Please, I'd really like to get a better ida of these terms, so don't bicker about definitions of things you don't like, just give me examples of bands you like and what genres they are.

[Guest Akira]

I only have a limited knowledge but what I've been able to work out so far..

 

Some people call it psytrance, some people call it goa. Some people say that goa is dead. From what I can gather psytrance is more aggressive sounding and darker than goa. Compare 1300 mics - salvia divinorum to x-dream - do you believe and you'll hear the difference. Another possibility is that there is no difference between the two and the only reason people call psytrance goa nowdays is to rile up old goaheads. I don't know, sorry if I've confused you.

 

Psytrance is the main genre and all the others you mentioned are subgenres (morning, minimal etc).

 

Full On is exactly that, full on. Listen to Toi Doi for an example.

 

Morning trance is slower and a lot softer sounding (easier on your head after being blasted into outer space for the past 6 hours), something like xerox - in my brain is an example of this.

 

Hope this helps

[Guest amphitere]

evrybody's got different ideas but i think most people who have been into this music for a while would agree that

 

goa-trance is pretty dead. there is a certain connotation to the word that is associated with eastern, oriental philosophy that is also a pretty defining characteristic of the early goa-trance. i think very few artist still pursue this image in their music - best example for goa-trance is probabley astral projection,

 

psy-trance for me is a much broader term, that can be used for most stuff that is covered on this site, but a good representative is probably gms which is nothing but psy-trance,

 

i think full-on is pretty self-explanatory,

 

minimal is a less layered, more techno influenced type of [psy-trance] with a strong baseline around which cool sounds and percussions are built. example: noma,

 

progressive i have my own idea but i cannot really describe it nor can i think of an artist really...a lot of flying rhino stuff had a progressive feel to it i thought. dominic lamb plays great progressive in his set,

 

morning is completely subjective. some people like really melodic music (i think cool outdoors), others prefer minimal (easier to digest when you are fucked and brain is spaced out in the morning),

 

nitzhonot for me is another word for crap, that's the only subjective statement i hve made here. example: final fantasy

[Guest amphitere]

sorry, just one more thing:

more often than not, you cannot categorize an artist into one sub-genre, there is a lot of overlapping in electronic music...

 

artists change too:

as akira says it above, the "our own happiness" album by x-dream is pretty goa, but "radio" is not anymore. and the new album coming out soon is much more techno-influenced like the delta. same thing with etnica

 

a lot of the old big-names are going housey and clubby these days too: mark allen, tsuyoshi , etc..

[Guest bugbread]

Thanks. So where would the following be (it's OK for them to overlap)

 

Hallucinogen

Infected Mushroom - Classical Mushroom era

Juno

SUN Project

Jorg

Ubar Tmar

Pleadians

Uni

 

Just trying to figure out what to call the stuff I like stuff that I'm impartial to, and "oh, yeah, THAT kind of music" (I already know what I don't like is called).

[Guest bugbread]

Ooh, don't even start me with Tsuyoshi. First goa party I ever went to was at this miniscule club in Fukuoka, Tsuyoshi headlining. Awesome, powerful goa. Then I don't know what happened to him. I couldn't even listen to his set after the outdoor Shpongle last year. If I want to listen to hard house...hell, I can't finish the sentence, because I wouldn't want to listen to hard house.

[Guest Mike D]

I was so excited about seeing suzuki Easter Sunday here earlier this year and I lost it!! He was playing stuff like NRG, Hard house, Acid Techno and the distance to goa mix by MWNN! Got me really annoyed, no goa or psy whatsoever!

here is my opiniion on these gorups and please don't get angry, but feel free to correct me:

Hallucinogen (Definite psy trance)

Infected Mushroom - Classical Mushroom era (Psytrance, maybe a little bit goa))

Juno (dunno, only have stuff on compilations, goa to psy

SUN Project (psytrance, with a tendency to minimal)

Jorg - (Psytrance)

Ubar Tmar (not to sure...)

Pleadians (Goa)

Uni (dunno)

[Tatsu]

i don't know about the difference of goa and psy but i think it is also a regional difference of using the word. here in bern (switzerland) all people say goa and nobody says psytrance. there are of course the subgenres but parties are labeled "goa-parties" and nearly never psytrance parties. no matter what sound is played.

[Guest bugbread]

That's a HUGE problem in Japan. People say saiketora (As in saikederiku toransu) and goa for everything. I can understand that minimal is a subset of psytrance, but calling Atmos goa just confuses everything so much that it's hard to sort out what a DJ plays unless you pay the fee and go to the party.

[Guest bugbread]

Speaking of Tsuyoshi: the problem is, he doesn't even pick good stuff within those genres! I hate hard house but love NRG (yeah, I know, paradox) and Acid, but his NRG is the worst! Just try comparing him to Yoji. Even if you don't like Yoji, you have to admit he spins better stuff than Tsuyoshi. ut since everyone around here grew up on Tsuyoshi, and he used to be important in the scene, he's invited to every party!

[Guest Elysium Project]

Well I can only say that if it wasen't for Tsuyoshi Japan would not even be on the land map of trance...... He is the no.1 most important artist/DJ from Japan and he has done very hard work for Japan so please do not whine about him. Instead be happy that he still push Japan forward.....

[Guest Elysium Project]

bugbread the funny thing about genres is that the bands you just mentioned and for that matter all other bands are both goa, psy,progressive, full on and morning bands.

 

I never put genres on the bands because most bands are influenced by other bands and have elements of other genres in the music.

 

Take Juno Reactor they ahave done full on tracks, very progressive tribal tracks and beautiful morning tracks. So what do you call their genre?? I don not categorise them. To me they are Juno Reactor.. period.. The same goes with all other music...If is should have a name it should be electronic dance music.

 

I do not understand people's obsession with genres... music is music.

[Guest amphitere]

you remember tsuyoshi was late for his set at the gathering? he had too much k and arrived 10 minutes late...that's how much he cares about the trance scene.

 

if tsuyoshi likes his coke and house music it's fine with me. he has been in the trance scene for long enough to get bored and has given enough contribution. he just should stick to house parties and not come to trance parties anymore.

 

back to your artists:

old juno is pure goa (beyond the infinite, bible of dreams), shango is something else, i would say experimental as there is so much variety withinn the album

 

uni is psytrance but has a certain goa feel to it i think because of the instruments..

 

and i think old hallucingen is goa (ie. lsd)

[Guest psydancer]

u want goa ? listen to shiva shidapu

[Guest Goazzz!!]

Come on guyzz, show some respect to Tsuyoshi!!!! this man was playing goa trance in all over the world when the rest of the Japanese were listening to rock and roll!!!! (no offense)!!!

 

 

Respect!!!!

[Guest Slidingtrancer]

I think most people consider something like Dimension 5 or the old Doof goa and things like Psysex psytrance. I can see a valid argument in that, but it doesn't exactly broaden your scope on music. Putting everything in places just makes way for elitism and only listening to whats in your 'group'.

 

Well there IS an argument in the broader sense, but not if you examine it. Infected mushroom's first album i'd call goa ( it was intense all through, layers floating around, melodic) but the second album was more of a hybrid. The last on is more psytrance, so you can see the old group IM evolve from purely goa to something more psytrance. But it's all psychedelic and good, so WHY bother to put it in boxes?

 

'We're innit for the music'- Supergrass

[Guest bugbread]

Sorry, the desire wasn't to put everything in categories so much (I don't really care about genres), but to get an idea of what reviewers and such mean when they say an album is full of "morning tracks" or is progressive. I have no problem with things that don't fit in genres (Shpongle fits in none that I know of, or many many at once). I just wanted to know where the bands I like fall in everyone's classification so that I can better understand everyone's comments.

 

As for Tsuyoshi, like I said, the first time I saw him he was amazing. But being historically important does not mean being currently important. Pink Floyd is incredibly seminal, but can anybody here say that the stuff after The Final Cut is worth listening to? I wouldn't want Pink Floyd to headline every psych rock concert in the UK playing only new material because they helped develop the genre. What's important at a party is not what a DJ used to play, but what he is playing. Tsuyoshi was very valuable, and I feel very indebted to him, but frankly, he doesn't belong in psy parties in his current state.

[Guest Elysium Project]

Again this is only your opinion bugbread. Maybe someone else think he belong as a DJ in a psy party...... To me it really does not matter if the DJ is not 100% true to psy/goa as long as he can create a journey that I like to travel along with...

[Guest amphitere]

elysium project, have you really heard tsuyoshi play recently? there is a limit to what you can play at trance parties, we are not talking about not 100%psy/goa, we are talking about a true 100%NOTpsy. i went to a house party the other day where tsuyoshi played, he was very good, he is an amazing dj, people loved it.

 

but i do not approve that solstice/vision quest keep using him as an attraction for all the candy ravers who dont come for the music but only for drugs and only know one name in dance music, thereby ruining the party for the people who come for the music. and tsuyoshi should stop going to trance parties, he is just doing this for the money and his nose now, not for the love of music.

[Guest Eshanti Brahman]

am I the only one who thinks that goa is passè in the larger psychedelic trance scene. Man,Goa for me is Astral Projection,Transwave,MFG and the old sound.

All that we listen to her...minimal maksimal.....morning-trance....ambient....full on....everything is psychedelic trance but I think Goa was a certain sound .

 

Anyone agree?

[Guest amphitere]

that's what i was trying to say...goa has a mystical/oriental connotation to it which is not just the same as "psychadelic". i would call very few artists goa these days. ra went for that sound i think. maybe the antidote album.

the goa sound is pretty dead. the goa vibe is still there, so a lot of people like to still call the music goa or call parties goa-parties. but noone really plays goa-trance anymore.

[Guest bugbread]

Yep. I'm also curious if Tsuyoshi plays the same stuff overseas that he does in Japan now. At the outdoor parties here, he plays pretty much pure hard house with a bit of NRG. No melodic OR minimal psytrance. Admittedly, it's just my opinion that he's bad, but...Hmm...How to put it...

 

Imagine Sven Vath playing immediately after Shpongle at a goa/psytrance party. It's really incongruous. HSven Vath may be a DJ you like, but he breaks the mood of the previous set entirely. There ceases to be a progression of sound from DJ to DJ. He's being called in to these shows by the sponsors because of his fame and previous contributions to the scene, but while I do believe he should play shows, I just think he's REALLY out of the psytrance arena now. At an "all-genre" show, he's great. But at a night of pure psytrance, putting him in the middle totally breaks the flow, not just for me, but for most people (witness the fact that at Solstice, when Shpongle ended and he started, almost the entire audience switched, with most of the people who liked Shpongle going away and most of the people who didn't like Shpongle coming in).

 

As for the candy ravers coming to shows because of him: That's no biggie by me. I have candy raver friends, I go to Happy Hardcore and Epic shows, etc. But it is dissapointing to see that moat of the people dancing in his sets are people chewing on their chupa-chups who just want an easy beat to dance to, and no psychedelic sounds to distract them.

[Guest Clargoa]

I think that it's just too complicated and confusing to try to categorize music that precisely. Like forget full-on...And it's also confusing to talk about morning trance and night(dark) trance because then some people will also say that those songs are israeli trance etc...it confuses people who don't know much about this kind of music. I guess I'm confusing you too but still...

 

So I'd only use these categories to keep it simple:

 

Goa for melodic stuff, old-skool sounds...like old Total Eclipse, Doof, Astral Projection, Man with No Name...some artists still do this kind of stuff.

 

Psy-trance for the harsher sound, more sound effects, still melodic though. Hallucinogen, Infected Mushroom(not Classical Mushroom though), Koxbox, Hux Flux...and you could also call most Hom-Mega artists psy-trance, I mean this newer Israeli sound, it's melodic but still has lots of sound effects. It's like a mix between commercial sounds and psy-trance. Also the Finnish and Australian trance goes under psy-trance.

 

Minimal for non-melodic stuff, like Ticon, Intact Instinct, Son Kite...you know better than me, I'm not so much into this sound(I understand it works better with herb though =). Not much melody, just heavy bass and sound effects. It's the beat and bass you're listening to most of the time.

 

Progressive/Epic trance is not psychedelic or it depends...but some psy-trance artists have been composing it lately so that's why it's also confusing people. So that's the more commercial trance stuff, x-cabs, sasha, thrillseekers, rank 1, oliver lieb etc...Some Israeli trance sounds a lot like this too.

 

I hope I didn't confuse you more...

[Guest Bugbread]

Not at all. In fact, that was a pretty awesome summation. Thanks!!

[Guest russ]

to Elysium Project,

 

I can understand your desire to show a bit of respect to Tsuyoshi, but I am afraid that everything said about him above is 100% true. This has nothing to do with respect for one's elders, keeping an open mind, etc. Tsuysohi simply destroys every trance party he plays at. At Solstice this year, people were literally running to escape the dance floor when he came on after Sphongle. And the year at solstice before was even worse. Dado built up a very positive energy on the dance floor, only to have the vibe totally destroyted by hours of monotonous acid techno (actually within a space of ten minutes the dance floor was transformed from a warm organic feel to pure club coldness--it wanted to make me vomit), before KoxBox came on to salvage things. this music simply does not go with outdoors and psychedelics. The large organizers such as Equinox/Solstice/VQ have used Tsuyoshi as a marketing gimmick to commercialize the scene. He has been invaluable for them in their quest to bring the masses out to the outdoor parties, and to make the outdoor parties a mainstream entertainment option. (VQ made WELL over 1 million dollars at their big party this year, to give you some idea of the scale involved over here.) And in this capacity, I would say he has done more to hurt the scene in the past three years than everything he contributed all the years previously with Matsuri etc. The outdoor parties here used to have a very psychedelic feel to them (i.e., one could take acid in a comfortable environment), but that has all changed. somewhere around the time tsuyoshi stopped dropping sid, stopped spinning psy, and started freebasing pharmeceutical amounts of coke which would kill most mortals, the kids did the same, and the outdoor parties became like one big nasty club--in other words, the place lost junkie kids went to wack their minds with speed/ice. Very, very nasty. I think it's totally cool he has gone into other forms of dance music (if i could spin like him, i would too--pystrance is very limiting when it comes to mixing); but what is not cool is the attitude: "i helped build it up, so i have every right to tear it down." he should just move on to the genre/people that fits his current supersize-ego and choice of drugs, and he should just leave trance parties the hell alone and stop torturing the people who used to respect him.