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I Dont Like Koxbox.


sneila

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I must get it off my conscience and admit that I don't really like Koxbox. The only track I can think of that stands out from them is the Point Of No Return Ionizer Remix. I admit their CDS releases are OK, but I don't think I've ever managed to listen to "Forever After" or "Dragon Tales" all the way through without losing focus/interest, despite many attempts.

 

I can say the same thing for Shpongle and Mayko in the downtempo zone. I've seriously tried listening to these 3 artists many times because they are so popular, but they have never grown on me. Some other artists like Hallucinogen are a mixed bag, some tracks excellent some I can't stand.

 

I realize that lots of you love these artists above all. I also realize there are some others that agree with me on these artists, so I'd like to understand why this division exists amongst some of us.

 

I'd like to explain my reasoning behind not liking Koxbox, but it would be hard for me to explain since I should have studied music psychology. So I will just say I don't find their tracks very rhythmic, melodic, hypnotic, or distinguished from one another. In essence I find them more like a psychedelic blur of standard sounds (as opposed to unique or interesting) that doesn't have many intelligent patterns or designs behind it. I consider groups like Encens a lot better and equally psychedelic, just to give you a comparison.

 

I only want to explain my reasoning, not say it's better or worse than anyone else's. I'm curious what your reasonings are, because this surely is important in understanding it. There's no need to flame or argue which is better, I only find it interesting how we enjoy the same "genres" of music yet can be so divided on specific releases.

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I can understand you don't like it but the sounds aren't standard and it's full of melodies just not the usual suspects, for me dragon tales is one of the most unique psytrance releases. Didn't liked it either in the beginning but after repeated listening this became my favorite album

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We all hear music differently, there's nothing wrong in not liking a high rated artist; if you however mix your taste very passionately to your ego, what could happen is that the disliking of a popular artist becomes sort of burden - as you try to make others like the same music you do, it irritates to see differing tastes. Almost all of us try to underline our unique taste to a certain degree (what music are you listening... topic!) but heh, as long as we tolerate other tastes it's no problem.

 

Find myself Koxbox to be truly in their own league, the attention to detail is of the highest degree I've heard, all music genres counted. None of their 90s stuff is simply programmed; so it might take longer to "get it".

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I must get it off my conscience and admit that I don't really like Koxbox. The only track I can think of that stands out from them is the Point Of No Return Ionizer Remix. I admit their CDS releases are OK, but I don't think I've ever managed to listen to "Forever After" or "Dragon Tales" all the way through without losing focus/interest, despite many attempts.

 

I can say the same thing for Shpongle and Mayko in the downtempo zone. I've seriously tried listening to these 3 artists many times because they are so popular, but they have never grown on me. Some other artists like Hallucinogen are a mixed bag, some tracks excellent some I can't stand.

couldn't agree more with all of the above. i don't get koxbox or shpongle either...

i guess you prefer Dimension 5 to Pleiadians too ;)

 

on the other side dragon tales does have one of the best psy albums covers ever :)

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Maybe you dont like your music too complex. I mean, i enjoy encens, but shpongle or koxbox are just in another league of complexity, maybe its not your type, thats all

 

i don't think it's about complexity. pleiadians or filteria are much more complex than koxbox, which i find rather minimalistic. there's a lot of different sounds in koxbox' music but not too much at once.

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Maybe you dont like your music too complex. I mean, i enjoy encens, but shpongle or koxbox are just in another league of complexity, maybe its not your type, thats all

 

Well no it's not about complexity. I love a lot of the Pleiadians and Toi Doi tracks, which I consider some of the more complex goa trance.

 

Here is some problems I identified after listening to some Koxbox and Shpongle:

 

1) They have boring synths: Electronic music relies heavily on having interesting synths thrown in there to make tracks or artists unique from one the rest. Koxbox sounds almost like I'm listening to standard, default sounds with no personality or uniqueness to them.

 

2) They don't use pads: Koxbox's music sounds minimalistic, as Padmapani said, because they don't use enough pads. They have no ambience or atmosphere in their tracks.

 

3) Main problem: their arrangement is not intelligent: Personally, I always listen to an entire track focusing on what changes. In fact, as I listen my main focus is always on whatever parts are changing, and viewing those in relation to all the other parts, always remembering what happened in the previous minutes of the track. So I expect a track to build or tell some story somehow, otherwise it's pointless. To me Shpongle completely fails here, along with the others: usually their tracks will just change randomly into something else with no sense behind it. Instruments come in and out, and then there's a stupid flute playing, but it never builds towards anything or works together to improve the track, it's just pointlessly wasting time. It's too RANDOM for me. It sounds like the track is an experiment of monkeys randomly playing with the mixer. It is not INTELLIGENT music (I think IDM is a misnomer since most IDM music lacks intelligent arrangement, which is the opposite of random arrangement).

 

Anyways, complexity is not the issue. There's nothing I love more than to hear extra layers of sound added in, deeper and deeper, AS LONG AS those sounds are added in an intelligent way and help build the track. The smallest sounds added can change the entire track in a positive way. Also, as was already said, these artists are NOT very complex in terms of the number of sounds played at once. It takes a lot of talent to overlap numerous sounds at once and make them sound good together. That's what most goa trance and downtempo music is. On the other hand, it takes a lot less talent to throw things without order, or things that simply don't enhance each other or the track altogether.

 

That's my current beliefs on it anyways, I'd like to hear someone else's who disagrees. What do you listen for in the music? What part of these artists do you find most appealing, that other artists aren't as good at? Etc.

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Only have Dragon Tales but I quite like the chaotic nature of the music, it puts me in mind of a thick, bubbling psychedelic mass and I find the whole thing very entrancing. Personally I quite enjoy stepping away from the general goa patterns you describe which can sometimes feel a little tedious to me(only a little).

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@sneila

 

I actually think the opposite about most of the things you said about Koxbox, firstly, I find their synths and FX the most unique sounding from that era and I don't think I've ever heard those type of sounds ever since, especially with that type of production, it doesn't sound dated at all. Only comparable to the strangeness, level of detail and production are Hallucinogen, Orichalcum & The Deviant and Hux Flux that I know of. I also find Koxbox to be extremely atmospheric due to their ability of combining the right type of sounds at once and then changing them entirely into another perfectly combined bunch of sounds and melodies that are always so 'far out'.

 

You also said "The smallest sounds added can change the entire track in a positive way." Which is exactly what I love most about Koxbox (or were you talking about Shpongle there?). Anyway... I've listened to their first 2 albums over and over for many years and those little changes and background sounds that just pop out of nowhere but still fit in into what's happening at the moment is what keeps Koxbox fresh as ever.

I can totally understand and respect that your ears simply don't enjoy the Koxbox sound, it's perfectly normal, else tastes wouldn't exist. I can only suggest you that you leave the Koxbox for a month or two and then listen to it again. Don't concentrate too much on it though, just let the sounds swarm into your head by themself, just like only Insect & Insect Bite (Split Mix) can...

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It is not INTELLIGENT music (I think IDM is a misnomer since most IDM music lacks intelligent arrangement, which is the opposite of random arrangement).

maybe you perceive it as random - I see you using this word in a negative way - failing to perceive the intelligence of it.

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Well no it's not about complexity. I love a lot of the Pleiadians and Toi Doi tracks, which I consider some of the more complex goa trance.

 

Here is some problems I identified after listening to some Koxbox and Shpongle:

 

1) They have boring synths: Electronic music relies heavily on having interesting synths thrown in there to make tracks or artists unique from one the rest. Koxbox sounds almost like I'm listening to standard, default sounds with no personality or uniqueness to them.

 

2) They don't use pads: Koxbox's music sounds minimalistic, as Padmapani said, because they don't use enough pads. They have no ambience or atmosphere in their tracks.

 

3) Main problem: their arrangement is not intelligent: Personally, I always listen to an entire track focusing on what changes. In fact, as I listen my main focus is always on whatever parts are changing, and viewing those in relation to all the other parts, always remembering what happened in the previous minutes of the track. So I expect a track to build or tell some story somehow, otherwise it's pointless. To me Shpongle completely fails here, along with the others: usually their tracks will just change randomly into something else with no sense behind it. Instruments come in and out, and then there's a stupid flute playing, but it never builds towards anything or works together to improve the track, it's just pointlessly wasting time. It's too RANDOM for me. It sounds like the track is an experiment of monkeys randomly playing with the mixer. It is not INTELLIGENT music (I think IDM is a misnomer since most IDM music lacks intelligent arrangement, which is the opposite of random arrangement).

 

Anyways, complexity is not the issue. There's nothing I love more than to hear extra layers of sound added in, deeper and deeper, AS LONG AS those sounds are added in an intelligent way and help build the track. The smallest sounds added can change the entire track in a positive way. Also, as was already said, these artists are NOT very complex in terms of the number of sounds played at once. It takes a lot of talent to overlap numerous sounds at once and make them sound good together. That's what most goa trance and downtempo music is. On the other hand, it takes a lot less talent to throw things without order, or things that simply don't enhance each other or the track altogether.

 

That's my current beliefs on it anyways, I'd like to hear someone else's who disagrees. What do you listen for in the music? What part of these artists do you find most appealing, that other artists aren't as good at? Etc.

 

I disagree on everything you said about shpongle. Shpongle is random? How can you say that.

i can't understand, for me shpongle is just out of this world, and nothing will ever come close to that. i make music, and i can telll you that the ways they use the synth are really intelligent. so what shpongle and koxbox has no talent, please. Shpongle does not tell a story? WTF!

 

Shpongle is the ultimate music experience for me, so theres nothing to talk about, taste is taste.

 

and ultimately, what i love the most about shpongle, is the quality of the sounds he throws in, and hes fuckin alone in his league

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Try Doktor Mesmer from Dragon Tales, the track completely blows my mind. The gradual progressions as elements are slowly introduced, you need to listen to it a couple of times before noticing how deftly the track is done, otherwise you completely miss the transitions....and when the bass and synths come in around 3 minutes its purrfect.

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I disagree on everything you said about shpongle. Shpongle is random? How can you say that.

i can't understand, for me shpongle is just out of this world, and nothing will ever come close to that. i make music, and i can telll you that the ways they use the synth are really intelligent. so what shpongle and koxbox has no talent, please. Shpongle does not tell a story? WTF!

I'm not talking about the ways Shpongle uses the synth, but the way they mix their tracks. They just skip along always changing the direction and never looking back, so in the end the track never really went anywhere at all. (Think of the track in a visual depiction like a graph.)

 

It's like if I started whistling all sorts of melodies, and just went from 1 to the next continually with rarely ever looking back. Does this require skill? No, I can do easily do this "on the spot", because you only need to remember what you did for the last 10 seconds to link something new, not the whole 10 minutes. It takes more skill to overlap your sounds and build on them and make something grow out of them than to abandon them at every turn and use new ones instead.

 

I've seen lots of people compare Entheogenic to Shpongle, which I think is stupid. While Entheogenic changes a lot (speaking on first 2 albums) so he might appear at first like Shpongle, he comes back to most of the earlier sounds and integrates them and builds on them throughout the track. Entheogenic is 100x superior to Shpongle in my opinion.

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@sneila

 

I actually think the opposite about most of the things you said about Koxbox, firstly, I find their synths and FX the most unique sounding from that era and I don't think I've ever heard those type of sounds ever since, especially with that type of production, it doesn't sound dated at all. Only comparable to the strangeness, level of detail and production are Hallucinogen, Orichalcum & The Deviant and Hux Flux that I know of. I also find Koxbox to be extremely atmospheric due to their ability of combining the right type of sounds at once and then changing them entirely into another perfectly combined bunch of sounds and melodies that are always so 'far out'.

I believed you till the last line, but now I realize this whole post must be a joke or you just stupid, because you have a blatantly wrong conception of atmospheric.

 

You also said "The smallest sounds added can change the entire track in a positive way." Which is exactly what I love most about Koxbox (or were you talking about Shpongle there?).

 

I was talking about neither actually. What I meant is a small change can change the entire track and give it a whole new appearance, so a LARGE CHANGE IS NOT NECESSARY, and in specific a track that is just 1 large change after another (I'm now talking about Shpongle and Koxbox) shows a lack of skill in making those small changes. In fact the "building" of a track is achieved by introducing small changes (most of the track stays the same as it has been earlier, but stuff is added or removed). What happens when it's only large changes, or way too many of them, is nothing really: the music ends is pointless and never builds up to anything interesting.

 

Because listening to 5 layers of sound playing and then a new 5 layers, over and over, is not very interesting and tends to sound like monkeys at the mixers. I want to listen to 5, then 10, then 15, etc. I want to marvel at how they were all worked in together.

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I only want to explain my reasoning, not say it's better or worse than anyone else's.

 

I believed you till the last line, but now I realize this whole post must be a joke or you just stupid

Fail.

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I believed you till the last line, but now I realize this whole post must be a joke or you just stupid, because you have a blatantly wrong conception of atmospheric.

 

What? Well, thanks for the insult anyway. That's pretty helpful. Could you clarify the rest?

 

Anyway, if people like Simon Posford (Hallucinogen aka the biggest thing to happen to psytrance), Raja Ram (TIP, 1200 Mics), Ian Ion (The Overlords, Sri Hari), FrankE (Psychopod) and Peter Candy are not enough 'skilled' to know how to build up a track for your taste, then you really shouldn't bother listening or even analyzing any of their releases, since they clearly don't know how to do it, and by some strange miracle are one of the most highly praised acts in the history of psytrance.

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What? Well, thanks for the insult anyway. That's pretty helpful. Could you clarify the rest?

 

Anyway, if people like Simon Posford (Hallucinogen aka the biggest thing to happen to psytrance), Raja Ram (TIP, 1200 Mics), Ian Ion (The Overlords, Sri Hari), FrankE (Psychopod) and Peter Candy are not enough 'skilled' to know how to build up a track for your taste, then you really shouldn't bother listening or even analyzing any of their releases, since they clearly don't know how to do it, and by some strange miracle are one of the most highly praised acts in the history of psytrance.

 

+10000
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