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Electric Universe - Silence in Action


abasio

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Hi People. I'm not a regular poster here, but read often with interest. I've been watching this thread since it began and finally feel the need to contribute.

 

I love this release. Love it. Well most of it. I've been trying to work out why, and why so many of you don't. There are a few points I would mention...

 

Firstly I hate heavy metal, always have done. IMO there is no place for rock guitars in psytrance, so I hate tracks 6 and 8. Awful, always skip them.

 

Tracks 1 and 3 I imagine are great on the dancefloor. However personally I love tracks 2, 5, 9 & 10. I find them original, inspiring, something different to the norm.

 

Many of you have compared this release to Cosmic Experience. That is a good CD, I have it, but this is far more diverse I find. The tracks on C.E are more repetetive, and I find it hard to distinguish one track from the other. No danger of that on Silence In Action!

 

But what's the difference? Well, I'm not a hardcore psytrance freak. At least not compared to most of you here! When I listen to it, it's usually on my headphones at night before going to bed, or on my walkman going to work, rather than in a club. I'm not drugged up to the eyeballs, and haven't been on that many occasions. Maybe I hear something different, maybe I'm expecting something different. Perhaps the obscure psychedelic edge that you guys seem to crave is lost on me - I guess it's all relative. For me, I do find it reasonably psychedelic and twisted. Track 2, Tune Up, sends me dilerious every time, as the layers build up and the synths grind. I would love to hear that in a club environment.

 

Maybe Electric Universe are aiming for a slightly different market, perhaps it appeals to me because it is just a touch more accessible. But that doesn't mean they have sold out - accessible is different from commercial.

 

Not a lot more I can add, otherwise I'll be rambling. But to finish, this is my equal favourite release of the year, along with Filteria. Thanks for listening, don't shoot me down!

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Nice with a heavily debated release :) Here's my two cents.

 

The most vivid image in my mind of the psychedelic trance festivals I’ve attended is approaching mainstage on a sunny afternoon with a pocket full of money, no commitments whatsoever, and a mainstage ahead of me that seems to jump with every beat. Parts of Silence In Action could very well be the OST to that movie.

 

When opening track Mind Of God takes off at 1:39 any objections that this is of the shelf psytrance can’t reach me – I’ll be too busy dancing my ass off. Track 5 Super Position belongs to the same category, with EU’s self titled track 7, Solar Storm, and Future Excursions trying the same only less accomplished. Thus, the above reference to my experiences from psychedelic trance festivals. This music has a *huge* crowd and is easily able to keep a party going.

 

Having said that I have several issues with Boris Blenn’s take on psytrance this time around. One major objection is his choice of samples that are simply too cheesy for my ears. Even the amazing opener is haunted by an annoying sample and only makes a homerun because of its’ relentless energy. Tune Up is not this lucky which is a shame since I enjoy large parts of it. But I just can’t see past the sample and so constantly I'm waiting for the next sample section to combat. One sample even ends ”Listen to the white noise in your ears ... it fades away” and then the voice fades away with a delay effect!! Could I ask for something a little more challenging!? Or some UV-pants, at least.

 

Moreover, many of the tracks doesn’t identify themselves strongly enough which makes a full listen of SIA tiresome after a number of listens. Well, track 6 Science and track 8 The Bomb certainly identifies themselves, but the identifying factor being guitar leads I’d rather have had them fade in grey. If you like guitars, on the other hand, these could be your favourite tracks. The guitar sections aside they work pretty well.

 

Summarizing, I’m sure a lot of newcomers will appreciate SIA for its’ energy and danceability. And fans of full-on in general should appreciate at least a couple of tracks here. Overall, though, I’ve heard full on executed more challenging and interesting. In this direction try Altöm, Phi, Slum, Quadra, Hydrophonic, Alien Project, early Astrix ...

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  • 4 weeks later...

I love Electric Universe and was happy to get this release. There are some tracks on here which fall way below his standard (you know which ones they are) and some that are very good. Mind of God is a really great track in the EU tradition. THe bomb...not so much. However, I think it will be very interesting to see what he comes up with on his next album. His collabo with Space Tribe I though was quite good.

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  • 3 weeks later...

this is the kind of fullon you don't listen everyday imo, if you really want extase, or it's a been a while you listened to goa, you are in a super happy mood,

this album will satisfy you,

but it's not background music,

it's overloaded, allthough I like their new fullon sound so appreciate the album...

still well done,

the vs with space tribe worked out even better imo :)

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After 6 months I haven't listened to this one probably since I reviewed it. It's not a bad CD (apart from 2 tracks) but it's not good enough to make me want to listen to it. & those 2 crap crap CRAAAAP tracks make this quite avoidable.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Teenage music. Total disappointment.

when someone says somthing like this I realize all the air of dissapointment has been eccentric and superificial.

I loved meteor. I think it's one of the best they've made.

 

I think i'm gonna buy one. I bet it kicks butt. ;)

-_-

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not bad imo,

they invented an awesome fullon (melodie) in 2004 and now push it to the end and use over and over that it has lost his magic,

but it's normal evolution I guess,

next album will be more subtle, otherwise is the same as the earlier.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

6. Science

Starts of very soft and slow (really disconnected from the track before it) and the beat starts of slower (and Nicer) but gradually gets faster and faster until it drops into a 145BPM. A much better baseline actually sounds pretyy cool but OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!!!!!! Electric guitars :(:(:(:( they sound absolutely awful. Not used well at all and I was so relieved when they stopped but DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN they start up again and become an integral part of a bloody awful track. I've heard electric guitars used pretty well in some tracks but I'm afraid that boy this ain't one of them. Apart from the guitars (which admitedly get a little better right at the end) it's actually quite good but they totally ruin it.

:rolleyes: my god .... I read the whole trhead , most of all the sections about guitars

and about the fact that using them in goa/psy/whatever is just for a teen audience ...

 

Maybe we are just made different. Everyone has its own tastes , and

luckily people are different.

 

I discovered Electric Universe after S.U.N. Project, because I was speaking with

a guru-dj who, stunned by my exaltation with guitars mixed with

trance music , gave me the mp3 of Science.

 

I love love love love this song. It's perfect, adrenalinic to the maximum,

exagerated, it makes me jump until my head crashes into the ceiling ...

 

and now of course I've to buy the whole cd :lol:

 

The thing I don't understand of your review is this : what do you mean

with "Not used well at all " ?

I think that , provided that you do like the style electric guitars + 4/4 kick,

the guitars in these track are used extremely well .

I think the production of Science is very good : it starts with floating

bass/synth, than enters the bassline, stops with some guitar refrain, begins

to grow and .... explodes !!!!

 

It's pure fun.

 

I dont' see anything wrong in using a track like that when a party

reaches the climax, maybe playing that in the last half-hour,

just before introducing

the 303 progressive conclusion of the night :lol:

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The first four tunes are excellent: upbeat, fun, groovy and melodic. Certainly among the best full on tunes released in 2006. But from track 5 and onward the album lacks variation and there are two tunes featuring electric guitars which in my book is always unlistenable.

 

3/5

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I saw Electric Universe live saturday in Switzerland and it was very good live act but...please guys, dont put guitar riffs (the same riffs from 10 years now..) on the best moments of the tracks, especially when beautiful melody kiks in :-( The people seemed to enjoy it a lot so I think it's a matter of tastes.

 

A part from that, the music was hypnotic, I liked it.

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Not sure what kind of crack are you high on here in this topic but this album sounds like a typical Boris Blenn Goa/Full-On fusion that actually sounds very nice to my ears. Surely would drive me up the wall in a party in the morning. Sometimes i just can't understand the goaholics here.

Borris Blenn sell-out? How many copies do you think did he expect to sell in this lousy scene?

As far as Full On goes nothing is better than EU. IMHO of course.

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1. Sometimes i just can't understand the goaholics here.

2. Borris Blenn sell-out? How many copies do you think did he expect to sell in this lousy scene?

3. As far as Full On goes nothing is better than EU. IMHO of course.

1. Goaholics have different taste, sometimes you have accept it without understanding.

2. It's not about sales, it's about gigs and bookings.

3. Agreed :)

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1. Goaholics have different taste, sometimes you have accept it without understanding.

I really want to read the Goaholics' reviews of the other full-on crap that released nowadays. It's light years behind this one.
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I really want to read the Goaholics' reviews of the other full-on crap that released nowadays. It's light years behind this one.

True but that's what makes this one so horrible. There is some good stuff there but it's just ruined by those guitars Posted Image

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There is some good stuff there but it's just ruined by those guitars Posted Image

Yesterday a friend gave me some mp3 by Dark Soho.

Maybe now I understand better your position.

Actually EU's use of guitars is really tooooooo straight ... Dark Soho use

guitars in a more smooth and fashioned way, and after listening

to Dark Soho, EU's Science may sound

just as a track for people high on drugs during a rave ...

Weeeeell, I carry on liking that song very much :rolleyes: ,

but I admit that it can

sound more childish than Dark Soho's productions

 

Waiting for the shipment of the cd ...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Not sure what kind of crack are you high on here in this topic but this album sounds like a typical Boris Blenn Goa/Full-On fusion that actually sounds very nice to my ears. Surely would drive me up the wall in a party in the morning. Sometimes i just can't understand the goaholics here.

Borris Blenn sell-out? How many copies do you think did he expect to sell in this lousy scene?

As far as Full On goes nothing is better than EU. IMHO of course.

not being fullon expert id say: +1

i likes EU's sound, sure this one is sort of harder version of cosmic experience and perhaps in SIA he used more the same sounds and techniques, but thats probably because people loved those sounds done on CE, thus he stayed on the same path. this album imo isnt bad, sure - i fucking hate those guitarr tracks, one of the lamest cliche of todays psytrance - guitarr :wacko: favourites - future excursions, electric universe. the rest of tracks arent bad either, except ofcourse guitar tracks, the self for me is partly ruined for that uber-cheesy voice sample <_<

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  • 4 weeks later...

Many of you have compared this release to Cosmic Experience. That is a good CD, I have it, but this is far more diverse I find. The tracks on C.E are more repetetive, and I find it hard to distinguish one track from the other. No danger of that on Silence In Action!

You're kidding, right? Or at least you must be confusing which is which?

 

 

IMO...

 

The good things about this album:

- It is very very well produced.

- It has a lot of pure full on energy and some catchy (yet heavily cliché) buildups and melodies, and i am convinced it works great on many dancefloors.

- Like some have already said, it is way better than most full on.

 

The bad things about this album:

- The electric guitars.

- The obvious and utter lazyness of re-using samples, sounds and rhythms over and over again...

 

I mean, seriously... To make my last point painfully obvious, try putting the album in winamp or whatever and quickly jumping to the following timecodes.

 

track #1: 1:00 = track #4, 1:06....

 

track #1, 1:40 = track #3, 1:57 = track #5, 1:20.....

 

These parts are Extremely similar. Completely interchangeable. Could easily be parts of the same track.

 

Why does he have to re-use more or less exactly the same sounds in so many tracks?? Is it THAT hard to tweak out a fresh sound from a synth?

Some synths sound like they are taken straight out of Cosmic experience without even chaning the oscillator waveform or anything (e.g. the lead that comes in at 0:53 in track #8)..

And that same guy talking about quamtum mechanics or whatever in two or three tracks (mind of god and multiverse)..

And pretty much exactly the same snare rhythm in two or three tracks (tune up and electric universe, for instance)..

And everyone already mentioned the electric guitars...........

 

 

And also there's a point about the rhythms that's a bit harder to describe...

 

See, there's this basic rhythm/pattern that is very common in lots of music.. If the basic 4/4 kick is on beats 1 and 5, then the most basic version of the rhythm i'm talking about is the beats 1, 4 and 7... the lead melody in track #1 at 4:44 is an example. the lead melody in track #2 at 6:24 is another example... etc etc. This is also the basic "ragga" rhythm, which should be familiar to everyone.

 

There is something about this rhythm that is just fundamentally compelling to humans, for some reason.. You can move it around in different variations, like 1 3 6, 1 4 6, 2 4 7, etc, but the basic pattern - the relationship between the three "hits" - is the same in each case (the "distance" between the hits are 3, 3 and 2 however you move them around).. You can find more or less obvious variations of this pattern almost everywhere, expecially in "megahit" psytrance like 1200 mics and such.. I don't know why, but there's something about that rhythm that just "works"... And using it in a stylish way is often a safe bet if you want to create a nice flowing groove..

 

But sometimes it just goes too far, and i think silence in action is a very good example of this. The pattern is just too obvious throughout the album.. It's all over the place! I mean, using it is fine, hell, i use it quite often myself, but using it all the time as obviously as it is done on this album just feels lazy and cheap to me.

 

 

To summarize, i think Silence in Action has some very strong selling points, but in the end it feels like boris took a few of the most megahit-ish parts from cosmic experience and fed them into an algorithm that automatically generated 10 more tracks out of exactly the same building blocks and following exactly the same formula. Would be great if it was just a track or two, but a whole album full of it just feels repetitive, uninspired and lazy.

 

For me it's kind of a love-hate kinda thing....

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To summarize, i think Silence in Action has some very strong selling points, but in the end it feels like boris took a few of the most megahit-ish parts from cosmic experience and fed them into an algorithm that automatically generated 10 more tracks out of exactly the same building blocks and following exactly the same formula. Would be great if it was just a track or two, but a whole album full of it just feels repetitive, uninspired and lazy.

agree on that with you :)

except that i dont hate nor love this album, i just happen to like it :D

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  • 1 month later...

As if anyone is still reading this thread (although I've just read the whole thing) ...

 

Nice with a heavily debated release :) Here's my two cents.

 

The most vivid image in my mind of the psychedelic trance festivals I’ve attended is approaching mainstage on a sunny afternoon with a pocket full of money, no commitments whatsoever, and a mainstage ahead of me that seems to jump with every beat. Parts of Silence In Action could very well be the OST to that movie.

 

When opening track Mind Of God takes off at 1:39 any objections that this is of the shelf psytrance can’t reach me – I’ll be too busy dancing my ass off.

'Nuff said. I listened to this again tonight in the process of belatedly putting together my own 'Top 5 of the Year' playlist for a friend. Not that it's likely to make the cut -- in fact, it's more what I'd call a 'guilty pleasure'. But in the context mentioned above, the 'guilt' part gets zapped along with all the other extraneous bullshit, doesn't it? "Bloody good fullon, end of story" as that loony at Psyreviews put it in a review of the 'ESP' companion volume. And the fact that this here slugfest went on for 5 pages and almost a year says something for this release, at least -- it didn't just drop through the cracks along with all the other fullon shite out there.

 

As for all those Karma Police directives that "guitars don't belong in psytrance" ... EVERYTHING belongs in psytrance. And if 'The Bomb' gets dropped in Goa next season (unlikely), I'll be dancing my politically incorrect ass off with the rest of 'em. Anyway, enjoyed your review, abasio -- and love that little twirly thing you do. :posford:

 

By the way, this is my first post ever here, although I've gotten a lot of good tips & laffs from reading it over the past few years. Just so you lot know where this total newbie is coming from, likely contenders for those top 5 slots for '06 and early '07 include Filteria, Koxbox, Logic Bomb, OOOD, Penta, and Vibrasphere.

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