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Psytrance sub-genres


tjaal

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Hello Forum!

Could you help with some information? I would appreciate it very much if you could give your views on this

 

some people in Brazil have spread that this guide below shows the proper way to classify the psytrance sub-genres, and how its used in Europe. Could you give your thoughts about it, please?

http://psytranceguide.com/

 

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tbh most of these "subgenres" are just progressive psytrance. the whole guide seems to focus on progressive mainly and leaves out much distinction in other subgenres.

what they call "psytrance" is often called "serbian style progressive"  (the main label that pioneered that sound was the seribian label tesseract) or "fullon-influenced progressive". what i call "pure" psytrance is something like children of the bong - bionic bong, sex on mushroom - dirty 80s or prometheus - arcadia magik. if you look into what "hot" fresh tracks come closest to that you'll have to go with uk psytrance atm (btw, "psychedelic" really? comeon. if it isn't psychedelic it shouldn't be in that guide. calling a subgenre of psychedelic trance "psycedelic" is just nonsense).

bunching up the old style of progressive "minimal psy" with zenonesque aka dark prog that has a very different distinct sound and came much later with nothing in between is also kind of strange.

"tribal" is a joke here. it's not as if a track suddenly changes genre simply because you throw a sample in there. those "tribal" tracks are the same subgenre as what is called "mainstream" in the guide. the usual term would be "futureprog". so again this is progressive psytrance, but the kind where people rightfully start to question wheter it as much or anything to do with "psy".

similar thing with offbeat. just because the bassline has a particular pattern it's not suddenly another genre. it is commonly called "hamburg-style progressive" because that sort of sound is most popular in nothern germany.

"psytechno" is another mess. "psytek" is a subgenre from back in 2001 characterised by fast tempos and heavy focus on techno like percussion. think x-dream - thorazin, auricular - pilzvergiftung or etnica - technoshit. what was called "psytecho" a few years ago (the style has all but vanished now) was a cross between progressive (again!) and minimal techno/house. think d nox&beckers. utterly boring stuff if you ask me.

"psy-tech-trance" is something i've never heard before. i've seen "techtrance" in the context of psy to refer to the "psytek" i mentioned above. but the examples here are just more regular progressive. albeit more on the commercial side.

"psybreaks" i'm completely fine with. same with nitzho (although it might be useful to differentiate between new nitzhogoa and old nitzhonot which was related to but was not psy strictly speaking) 

"goa trance" definitely needs some differention. newschool goa has evolved to become way different from oldschool goa. and if you treated goa in the same way as they treat progressive, you'd end up with at least 20 "genres" of goa. astral projection - mahadeva would nonsensically end up in a different drawer (probably something like "tribal offbeat goa" if you apply the same rules) as astral projection - let there be light.

fullon also needs differentiation. the ultra-commercial stuff they mention for regular or morning (?!?) fullon is much more different from actual regular fullon (think talamasca, post-goa cosmosis, logic bomb, optokoppler, psydrop, post-goa electric universe). morning fullon (protoculture, silicon sound, sirius isness, fatali) should be seperate if you want to go deeper than "goa, fullon ,prog, dark".

night fullon (cpu, absolum, xerox) is different from twilight (slide).

the division into dark, forest and hitech is sensible though i'd definitely split psycore and hitech. highko is nothing like crazy astronaut.

"psychill" and "chillout"? really? either lump it all together under psychill or differentiate between at least psychill, psydub, downtempo psytrance and beatless ambient.

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Interesting answer/analysis Padmapani. Especially for someone like me who has been absent from the psy/goa scene for a while. And mainly listens to old and new goa, and sometimes acid-trance and mid 90s acid. I think psy-trance is interesting as well, but find it a bit overwhelming with how much stuff that is out there. :) Goa trance is more than enough to keep me finding gems every week, for now.

One thing I notice while browsing older goa compilations, is that they often contain different genres. Psy-trance, goa, acid-trance beeing the most common. Compared to todays neo goa compilations which seems to be more strict in that sense, since it's collectors/discogs members who compile them. :P

It's cool to see that the styles keep on evolving, and that every region keeps on developing/combining styles.

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I made a thread with a document gathering all the styles of Psychedelic Trance (thx to the help of this community here too) and explaining it here https://www.psynews.org/forums/topic/70402-the-psychedelic-trance-in-its-entirety/

And thx Padmapani for your further explainations :)

 

Btw, about the creator of psytranceguide.com :

image.png.b02bff06d18366631982c7230006739a.thumb.png.f156858602688b92db4eea674ec5fed4.png

:P

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