ACE TRACKS: August 2018

This past month, I finally had the opportunity to put something to test I've long wanted to: the practicality of my ACE TRACKS: Ultimate Master List!! playlist as a road trip experience. For the first time in my dozen years of going, I was gonna' drive myself to the Shambhala Music Festival, which meant sole control over the music selection! Right, that one bus sojourn could technically count too, and my many trips with Ishkur as the driver left me mostly in charge of music selection along the way (it helps that we both take perverse glee in torturing other passengers with italo disco sets), but this was a solo road trip for yours truly. As I've long claimed my Ultimate Master List!! should make for a useful aid in ultra-long road trips (9-10 hours, one-way), this was my chance to see if my hype lived up to provable facts.

I, uh, forgot to take one thing into consideration: the lack of cell coverage throughout most of British Columbia's mountain highways. By the time I'd gotten out of the Fraser Valley, all streaming came to an abrupt end, the only signal still attainable within the sporadic towns that dot the Crow's Nest Highway. I fortunately also packed with me an ample supply of CDs (just in case), but man, was I ever looking forward to hearing all those tunes on the road, even the dark ambient ones (nothing sets the mood of a province on fire better than dreary, ominous tones). Maybe next time I'll just download a couple of the monthly playlists instead, like this one for this past month of August 2018.


Full track list here.


MISSING ALBUMS:
Various - A Journey Into Ambient Groove
Porya Hatami & Darren McClure - In-Between Spaces

Percentage Of Hip-Hop: 3%
Percentage of Rock: 8%

Whenever I make one of these shortened playlists, they tend to turn out a rather jumbled listening experience. The lack of selection causes frequent genre clashes, especially so when I just go with an alphabetical arrangement. I was expecting the same with this month's playlist, what with music from quite the disparate range of music (UK garage, techno, house, punk, psy, synthwave, ambient). Yet somehow, this turned out a remarkably smooth play-through. Even the jumps into Green Day or Etnica weren't as jarring as I was expecting. Funny how that works out sometimes.

Etnica - The Juggeling Alchemists Under The Black Light

High Society/DAT Records: 1995/2018

No, seriously, is there a better time to be a music fan than this past half-decade? Like, beyond just the unprecedented abundance of selection, even old, obscure stuff is now frequently unearthed and reissued in ultra-deluxe collector's packages. I've always wanted to pick up an Etnica album, one of the O.G. goa trance acts that lured me into the genre's weird, twisted sonic possibilities. Alien Protein was the obvious choice, released on the familiar print Blue Room Released – be easiest to find, is what I'm sayin' (plus, Party Droid!). I never considered their debut album, released on the far smaller label High Society, an item almost certainly lost to the dustbins of an overpriced collector's market. Not only has DAT Records rescued The Juggling Alchemists Under The Black Light from such a fate, but included a second CD of assorted remixes and single material from the same period of Etnica's career. And then they convinced the band to unleash a pile of unreleased early works for a third disc of material. Dang, son, I would have been satisfied just with a standard re-issue, but all that and chicken soup too?

Describing exactly what makes Etnica click in such a way that so few other psy trance acts do is difficult to detail. Yeah, they have just as much wiggly noises and squiggly sounds as any other act of the era, but there's something uniquely identifiable about their particular method. They have just as much freeform songcraft as other respected acts of the era like Kox Box, but always show enough restraint in not getting lost in random, go-nowhere tangents. There's the obligatory goa tonal scales, but it never sounds like Etnica is completely dependant upon them either, trippy tribal trance sounding just as comfortable cruising the cosmos as it does getting crusties flailing about on Indian beaches. And while the original Juggeling Alchemists Under The Black Light album was a tidy seven track outing, all the additional material in this mega-package doesn't dilute the experience in the slightest, Etnica's sound hardly growing stale even as the hours of music pile on. Well, okay, there are a couple quibbles I must point out.

One, due to a mislabeled DAT being sent to DAT, a lone track isn't even an Etnica cut; rather, it's a tune called Alien Phenomenon by another High Society act called Evolution. Whoops. But to make matters worse, this was supposed to be a remix of Party Droid. Aagh! Also, The Early Years disc definitely shows Etnica still in their developmental stage, tracks on there comparatively unpolished when contrasted with the stuff they properly released. It's all serviceable old-school trance, but not terribly different from much of what else was available out there. A fun bonus, then, though when mixed among the wicked-awesome coolio cuts that Etnica started churning out on the regular (as the digital version of this collection does due to alphabetizing the whole playlist) ...yeah, I can hear why they initially sat on it.

Quantum - Darktech

Werkstatt Recordings: 2014

Here we go again. A Werkstatt Recordings release featuring an artist with this as their lone entry at Lord Discogs, and no bio to speak of. It's starting to feel like sifting through long-forgotten goa trance compilations on ultra-obscure French labels containing a pile of one-offs barely anyone's even aware existed. Or maybe I'm just feeling that way given the nature of this particular item, but it's astounding how many dead-ends I've met finding things out about artists released under the Werkstatt banner. I mean, hey, nice of them giving all these unknowns a little extra promotional buzz beyond whatever Soundcloud and Bandcamp tags provide (d'em stickers, yo'!), but surely both parties could be a little more involved than this? Is it some Millennial thing I'm not aware of, online music makers flaunting any and all traditional modes of distribution and PR? Hey, I'm hip, I'm game to the Streamstep and Cloudcore play.

Fortunately, there's a little more info regarding this Quantum fellow in other outlets, including confirming it is a dude we're dealing with here. No doubt about the sex this time out, the associated iconography featuring a menacing Predator-like creature in shadow, its skeletal features illuminated by kinetic neon light. It's like something straight out of psy-trance's playbook, which makes sense as Mr. Rasmussen freely admits to cribbing ideas from that scene and incorporating them with the trendier new hotness of synthwave. It makes for a weird hybrid I haven't heard before, though edges just enough into the psy side of things I'm surprised Werkstatt picked this up at all. Like, isn't their whole modus operani reviving any and all '80s sounds and vibes, from industrial to synth-pop to EBM to space-synth? What's a decidedly '90s genre doing here? Gotta' corner every niche these days.

Actually, Darktech isn't retro in either a '90s or '80s fashion. Yeah, it features the same style of chugging, 'outrun' rhythm synthwavers love indulging, but Quantum does it in a real gritty, vicious darksynth manner – has Blood Music heard this guy yet? There's also ample sprinklings of the half-step 'metal-thrash' bridge dudes like Perturbator are always doing, which keeps things in the realm of synthwave, I guess. Like, if this was a real psy-trance project, those bridges would have been triplets. Aside from that though, everything else has me thinking psy-trance, from the screaming leads, to the chaotic bridges, to the trippy arps. Hell, I'm even willing to cautiously inch towards calling Worldeater aggrotech, that semi-existent '90s sub-genre of industrial that got all comfy with techno. It's certainly noisy enough to fit the vibe

I'm sure there's some micro-nano-yocto sub-genre of the psy scene that would claim singular ownership of Quantum's stylistic fusion (it's called 'psy-synth', isn't it... *sigh*), which really, really, really makes me want to tap out on all that nonsense. Mr. Rasmussen's just made some nifty tunes with a unique identity that can fit in either camp. It isn't necessary to create a lone island for every style.

Banco de Gaia - 10 Years (Remixed) (Original TC Review)

Disco Gecko: 2003

(2018 Update:
No, I don't have the actual 10 Years compilation from Mr. Marks. I did, at first. I mean, all those classic Banco tunes, plus assorted rarities like the Jack Dangers rub of How Much Reality Can You Take and the Insect Intelligence version of Amber, gathered onto two discs and all. Of course I got myself that! Then I loaned it out to a friend. Never got it back, though to be fair, I didn't push him to return it either. It's not like it was difficult to 'get' the rare offerings again anyway (most of these can be found on the Rewritten Histories collections now), so I was fine letting 10 Years slide from my coffers. I may be a major Banco fan, but I'm not a completist ...he says while reposting a review for a 'completist only' compilation.

This review is pretty rambly for one of my latter-years TC efforts, probably 33% longer than it needs to be. It's like, whenever I got the chance to talk up Banco at TranceCritic, I didn't hold back one iota. The other reviews I wrote for the website - Maya and Farewell Ferengistan - were absolute behemoths in word count. Thank God for self-imposed word count, though I'm oh-so tempted to break that rule whenever I get around to Big Men Cry.)

IN BRIEF: Ten years of tour mates.

For good and ill, the remix album has become an undeniable part of dance music’s legacy. It’s reached a point where they are not only expected, but even counted upon in some circles. I’ve seen several bemoan a lacklustre album-proper only to follow such sentiments thinking “hopefully the remixes will make this better.” Trance alone has several albums packaged with an additional remix disc, not to mention the endless follow-up remix discs for the bigger releases. Despite some of the positives that come with the endeavor - the odd time a remix actually does an original better, or rounding up rare and obscure remixes into a single package - far too often these CDs are cynical, quick money-grabs, milking an artist’s music for every potential penny. Ultimately though, remix albums for electronic music share the same status live albums from rock bands do: potentially interesting, sometimes brilliant, but usually skippable.

This is what makes a remix CD for Banco de Gaia even more peculiar. Toby Marks has consistently shied away from cheap commercial gains, so you really can’t take 10 Years: Remixed as such. On the other hand, it’s not like there's been a plethora of remixes of Banco tunes over the years, most of which are done by Marks himself. Despite some notable names being given the re-rub task (Oliver Lieb, Speedy J, Jack Dangers), the trend has been Banco de Gaia does the best remixes of Banco de Gaia. However, those were already included on the 10 Years proper album.

Which brings us back to 10 Years: Remixed - specifically, what exactly is this release all about? I suppose doing a remix album is justifiable when it’s in conjunction with a retrospective album, but Marks knew full well there weren’t enough in his back catalog for a proper CD. If such is the case, then how about brand new remixes of a bunch of classic Banco tunes? Sounds good to me, only there’s a catch: instead of hiring out big names or scene mainstays, Marks got in touch with a bunch of his musical associates from over the years and gave them carte blanche to go wild. And if you’ve followed his musical career, you’d know the man from the World Bank has had some wildly eclectic associates, though with more of a leaning towards the global-fusion dance beat (obviously).

I guess what I’m trying to say here is only hard-line fans of Banco de Gaia are going to get much out of this release ; par for the course when it comes to remix albums anyway. If you’ve read this far, then you’re obviously a fan (or incredibly curious), so let me tell you what to expect from 10 Years: Remixed.

First, the familiar. Even here at TC, names such as Eat Static, Loop Guru, and HIA (The Higher Intelligence Agency) have crossed paths (er, mainly because of a certain reviewer’s affinity for a certain producer who’s been tied to them), and as such the groups bring their trademark sounds to the tracks they got to remix. HIA turns the obscure proto psy-dub gem Soufie into a clicky ambient-techno piece, Loop Guru ramp up the ethno-dub styling of Sakarya, and Eat Static gives Lai Lah the psy-trance business, but also throws in a bunch of other samples Marks has used in other tracks (I Love Baby Cheesy, Kuos, etc.).

Meanwhile, other psychedelic and dancehall dub mainstays like Temple Of Sound, Zion Train, Dreadzone, Asian Dub Foundation, Future Loop Foundation, and Transglobal Underground lend their hand, with various results. Some are quite the reworkings, such as Temple Of Sound turning Drunk As A Monk from a kind of prog-rock stomp into a brisk neurofunk excursion; or Dreadzone giving the incredibly somber vocal version of Glove Puppet some rhythmic spring (Jennifer Folker still sounds gloriously tragic though). On the other hand, not much is gained or lost in Future Loop Foundation adding dreamy Balearic tones to Celestine, while Zion Train seems at a loss as to what to do with Shanti, providing a brief and rather generic techno -dub tune in the process (honestly, though, would anyone be able to top Marks’ brilliant Black Mountain Mix?); and what exactly is going on in Obsidian? Transglobal Underground’s stomp-dub go at Amber is ace though.

Now, the obscure and unknowns. Well, 100th Monkey isn’t exactly obscure - it's long-time Banco collaborator Andy Guthrie - but certainly not a name you’ll immediately connect with. Since he’s been familiar with Marks’ work over the years, it’s unsurprising he gives Sunspot a great remix - and it’s also a mash-up with Qurna! Elsewhere on the CD, old school industrial group Perfume Tree - here known as Veloce - does a respectable deep-trance rub of Heliopolis, which rates around the Shanti remix in terms of usefulness. It’s the hopelessly obscure Carbomb that brings us the most ‘leftfield’ cut, turning Drippy into a kind of thrash-metal thing - has to be heard to be believed, even more so that it actually works!

*whew* That’s quite the eye-full for the hardcore Banco fan, I must admit, but given the eclecticism and seemingly random order of all these remixes, it could not be glossed over. Well, it could, but that’s not what we here at TC are about. Where am I going with this? Oh, right… 10 Years: Remixed. There’s a few quality remixes here - see below for which - but this CD’s mostly a ‘completists only’ deal. Although it’s interesting to hear different versions, it’s primarily going to be Banco fans that will appreciate them.

Written by Sykonee for TranceCritic.com, 2009. © All rights reserved.

Infected Mushroom - Vicious Delicious (Original TC Review)

YoYo Records: 2007

(2017 Update:
Remember when some Infected Mushroom fans figured this was the absolute worst the duo could reach? Haha, oh you darling dickens, just wait until a weird, parasitic, futuristic noise known as 'brostep' invades their sound. Maybe you'll accept the 'nu-metal' stuff after all then.

When I was writing this a decade ago (!!), I couldn't help but worry whether I had any right claiming authoritative insight on what metal fans would like. For all intents, IM lured in quite a few to the ranks of psy-trance, fascinated by the strange sounds and twisted production tricks unlike anything they'd heard paired with power chords and heavy riffage before. Going back to it though, this album still sounds overwrought and corny, making me embarrassingly cringe in the hopes the music's not leaking too much out of my headphones such that complete strangers give me The Look. But it's not like I haven't enjoyed pseudo-serious metal myself (oh hi, Pantera) - taste will always be subjective, and if Vicious Delicious somehow does it for you (!!!), you shouldn't feel any shame in that. Only fans of Handsup should be ashamed of any pride in listening to that rubbish. Shame on you, Handsup fans.)


IN BRIEF: An attempt to appeal to the most moronic of metal fans.

To say Infected Mushroom’s previous album IM The Supervisor was received with mixed reviews would be too kind. More specifically, it divided their fanbase into two solid camps: those who fully embraced the duo’s forays into metal riffage and singing, and those who wouldn’t give them another chance unless they knocked it off with the guitars and got back to making psy trance. Perhaps it's silly to have such expectations on them though. After all, they've clearly stated they’d rather try different music than stay in a specific niche. Still, this is the psy scene we’re talking about here - although fun, it is quite insular to the rest of the music world.

And unfortunately for such fans, Erez Aizen and Amit ‘Duvdev’ Duvdevani are showing no signs of which way they want to go either. They moved to Los Angeles to escape their Israeli scene stereotype, yet retain mostly a psy trance following whenever on tour. They’ve been featured on the cover of DJ Mag, but probably only as a means of that rag trying to gain some ‘underground’ cred for covering a psy act. And are they trying to be rock or trying to be psy? Who knows anymore. Even their latest album - Vicious Delicious - finds this split personality in full effect, with half the tracks sounding like either or.

I’m almost at a quandary whether we should be covering this release at all. When the duo embrace metal, it’s a full plunge; very little of their electronic background is retained beyond studio tricks that add to a track’s production. This isn’t like S.U.N. Project or other ‘buttrock goa’ acts that would use guitars as something to complement acid squelches; this is Infected Mushroom doing rap-metal, or prog-metal, or metal-metal. But an electronic act they still are, as the standard psy tracks on Vicious Delicious attest to. And ultimately, Infected Mushroom are more electronic than Neil Young, right?

For as large of a name Infected Mushroom is though, I’m amazed at how average their psy trance offerings are here. The track Suliman, for instance. With chunky rubbery hooks, vocal samples, and squelchy guitar licks, this could have been produced by any number of Israeli acts. Of course, its possible producers in Israel are copying the duo due to their success, but it doesn’t excuse them from sounding like everyone else either. Eat It Raw isn’t much better, going through so many meandering psy motions, you’d be hard pressed to remember it later. Change The Formality suffers from directionless writing too, but is redeemed by better sounds at play and an incredibly infectious vocal hook (and probably one of the best on the whole album, but I’ll get to the vocals in bit). Beyond, in avoiding many of Israeli psy’s more annoying clichés, is a nice trancer in its own right but sounds strangely out of place.

Ah yes. Israeli psy clichés. Let me talk to you about them for a moment. The title track Vicious Delicious is filled with the best and worst of them. First the good: the climax is great, with a build that just keeps piling the tension on and on; whenever full-on nails this it’s possibly some of the most exciting electronic music out there, and Infected Mushroom hits it wonderfully here. It comes in the last third of the track though, and you have to sit through a bunch of nonsense to get there: lots of rambling tangents, and lots of ridiculous sounds. What even is that? A burbling baby mixed with intestinal indigestion? Just idiotic.

Still, when compared to the duo’s metal offerings...

The flamenco-styled Becoming Insane is tolerable thanks to the catchy guitar licks but the rest of their offerings are hilariously awful. You'd think they were a couple of teens who'd just discovered Metallica for the first time. It’s bad enough their limp attempt at prog-metal (Heavy Weight) relies on the simplest of power-chords and acoustic melodies to get the long-hairs thrashing their heads (and I’m not talking about the hippies). It’s bad enough Forgive Me sounds like they were inspired by shit-rockers Nickelback. And it’s bad enough Special Place is a misguided combination of rambling Israeli psy with rock. No, the ultimate abomination is their attempts to sound like Linkin fucking Park!

Artillery is rap-metal at its most hokey. With one-time mainstream Canadian rappers Swollen Members in support, Infected Mushroom apparently never got the notice this style of music was officially declared uncool for a number of years now; ever since the initial fanbase of the genre grew out of their prepubescent stage and matured. While the raps are at least functional, 'Duvdev' sounds like he's shooting for Chester Bennington but ends up sounding closer to Chad Kroeger of the aforementioned shit-rock group Nickelback. Here's the actual chorus:

“Loooooooocccked insiiiiiiiiidde this caaaaaaAAAAAAggee agaaaaAIIIiiinnn!”

But guess what! Infected Mushroom decide they need to cover all aspects of metal on this release, and offer to their listeners In Front Of Me, a power ballad! Good God, no.

Folks may think I’m being harsh on Infected Mushroom because they decided to venture out of their familiar psy trappings, that I dislike their metal offerings because of their use of guitars and such. Not at all. Heavy guitars have often worked wonderfully in EDM, with Liam Howlett's usage the greatest example. Fact of the matter, though, is Infected's metal songs are just amateur at best and crap at worst, with songwriting at a level only young teenage boys would think is innovative. I’ll grant ‘buttrock goa’ was never exactly musically creative either, but at least it had tongue-in-cheek self-awareness of this fact. Infected Mushroom seems to believe these tracks are actually good. And production wise, yes I’ll grant they are. But make no mistake: Vicious Delicious’s metal is for beginners ...or psy trancers who are easily amazed at the inclusion of a guitar, judging by some of their fans’ reactions. I find if I reduce my brain to the thoughts of an angst–filled fourteen year old, the songs are tolerable but I shouldn’t have to rely on drinking a six-pack of cheap beer in the school park before 11pm to enjoy an album.

All in all, Vicious Delicious is an average psy trance release, and a metal release bordering on parody; there is no middle-ground. If Infected Mushroom stay on this path, they should have little trouble in continuing the alienation of their old fanbase, yet also satisfying them just the same. Trying to have your cake and eating it too has never been so apparent.

Written by Sykonee for TranceCritic.com, 2007. © All rights reserved

Various - Unfold #2: Christopher Lawrence

Moist Music: 2008

It's taken forever to finally get Christopher Lawrence into this blog’s archives! Whatever is the matter with me? Don’t I have any of his CDs in my collection? Sadly not, this one technically an abandoned TranceCritic promo that I neglected to review for reasons that utterly escape me now. As for never having picked up a C.L. mix or album, I have no excuse for it other than inexplicable apathy. I’ve seen his name for almost as long as I’ve been buying trance CDs, the chap a fixture on Moonshine after the turn of the century. Though I didn’t buy them, I generally liked what I heard, a tougher take on trance at a time when most jocks were getting fluffier and banal (or abandoning the genre altogether). When that label folded, he soon set up his own Pharmacy Music print, which he continues to run and promote podcasts through to this day. Along the way, he joined John ‘00’ Fleming in championing psy trance as the new hotness for proper trance t’ings, so aces in that development.

It’s during this period we find ourselves with Unfold #2, a short-lived series from Dutch label Fektive Records, and given an American release by Moist Music. Interesting note about Moist, a number of Moonshine refugees found new homes there, though it’s merely a roundabout coincidence that Lawrence finally ended up there too. Unfold itself was designed to highlight some of trance’s most notable old-school DJs still kickin’ out an underground sound, the first volume of which featuring Fleming (of course). A third edition had Marco V - an odd choice for the late ‘00s as he’d moved on from trance by that point - and that was all she wrote for Unfold (so sayeth The Discogs).

As for ol’ Chris’s go here, yeah, it’s a full-on psy set. Perhaps another reason I wasn’t quick in doing a review of this was my interest in the sub-genre had dwindled when this came out. I’m pretty sure I did like it somewhat, just not enough to inspire fingers to keyboard. Weird, because this stuff is pretty good all things considered. I only recognize a few names here (Mad Hatters, Cosmonet… Spacecat?), and I think I’ve heard some of these elsewhere (Basic’s Toyster and Audio-X’s And We Survive have very familiar, punchy hooks). For the most part though, it’s a classy, energetic collection of tunes for this style, with little of the random wibble the Israeli scene churned out. A few early tracks – Brain Damage’s Waiting For My Angel, Mad Contrabender’s Illegal Hardware and Killer from Gaudium Vs Dualsnug (god, these names) – even get my vintage senses tingling. Unfold #2 isn’t the best starting point for Christopher Lawrence, but it’s serviceable if you fancy the psy of the era.

Eh? CD1 of this two-discer? Oh, it’s just C.L. fitting in with the electro-progressive-plod-house of the time (hey, Mark Norman!). The opening track from Spooky (New Light (Strobelight Mix)) is nice, but the rest… yyy-eeah.

Various - UK Space Techno, Vol. I

Millennium Records: 1996

Yeah, I get why Millennium Records would eschew the ‘goa’ tag for its new compilation series. The European market was already flooded with tons of CDs offering trippy, acid-drenched dance music, with many a label rushing out to capitalize on hot buzzwords goa, trance, and the like. And fair enough, a lot of folks thought of early trance simply as ‘space techno’ (or ‘space house’, LOL), so it’s not that great a leap in logic in taking this angle. I dunno though; it still feels disingenuous promising ‘space techno’ from the UK, and having a good sixty percent of the tracks still feeling that rush of psychedelia from the shores of India. I sure wasn’t expecting so much goa trance when I picked this up way back when, nosiree.

What I was expecting was a whole lot of unknown names giving me another crash-course in all this ‘techno’ business going on overseas. I definitely got that, what with names like X-Cabs, Green Nuns Of The Revolution, Jon The Dentist, Darren Price, and Chris Liberator (as Star Power) appearing on this double-discer. Okay, so they weren’t outright unknowns, but who here remembers tracks like The Attic, or Neuro, or Desert Storm’s Scoraig 93, or Kenny Larkin’s rub of LA Synthesis’ Agraphobia? Hm, that’s all techno that’s rather spacey too, isn’t it.

I swear UK Space Techno Vol. I is filled with obscure goa trance, honest and true! Cosmosis’ rub of Disco Volante’s El Metro, for instance, or Monosphere’s Elysian Fields, or the Spectra Mix of Optica’s Alkaline PH9. And who can forget such forgotten gems like Isomise’s KHO Phang Gain, or Head-Doctor’s Train å Medellin, plus Polyploid’s Coaster Prefix? Certainly not I, since I’ve had this CD for two decades now (holy cow!).

Since this compilation tries to have its acid cake and eat its goa trance too, it creates an odd dichotomy of tunes that no amount of ‘space techno’ branding can overcome. CD1 isn’t too bad in this regard, hitting you early with simpler, recognizable tunes like Neuro and Spacer IV’s Arc 3 (I think it was) before moving onto psy leaning cuts, the odd acid techno tune breaking up any potential monotony along the way. CD2, on the other hand, opts for pure techno tracks for the most part, some of which are regarded as classics in terms of UK offerings (Scoraig 93, Agraphobia, The Simirillion (Svenson’s Trip To Gondor Remix), others not so much (Skintrade’s Andromraxess, Integrated Circuits’ Ghost 843). Having them assorted with trippy goa and hard acid from the Stay Up Forever posse doesn’t do them any favors either, coming off rather basic and monotonous compared to the busier cuts. I often don’t even remember much of what’s on CD2 until I throw the disc on again. Such is the case with so many double-disc compilations from the mid-‘90s though: a couple classics, a few unheralded gems, and a pile of agreeable filler lost to the ravages of raving history.

enCAPSULAte - Fetal Position

Waveform Records: 2013

If I’m gonna’ splurge on new stuff from Favorite Labels, I might as well do the same for one of my first Favorite Labels. Only trouble is Waveform Records barely releases much of anything anymore, instead focusing on their Starseeds radio show. And even when they do put a record out, it’s almost always something from Sounds From The Ground or ZerO One - whom I do like but it’s nice hearing from other artists as well. Whatever happened to those heady, early ‘00s days, when Waveform was releasing material from all manner of names (Bluetech! Omnimotion! Phutureprimitive! Pitch Black [nz]! Skin To Skin!). I realize the record label business is a harsh mistress, and all things considered it’s remarkable Waveform’s endured for over two decades when ‘market domination’ or whatever was never on their minds. They could benefit from a couple more fresh signees though; maybe someone making dub beats lurking on one of their new Hawaiian island neighbours?

Relatively speaking though, enCAPSULAte is a new signee, first appearing with the label in 2009. He still went by the name Capsula then, dropping the album Sense Of A Drop. Prior to that, he debuted with Ajana Records, the psy-chill and dub offshoot of Trishula Records. And holy cow, I can’t believe I’ve now gone Six Degrees Of with the dark psy print on this CD. I had no idea of this connection, simply picking up Fetal Position because it was one of the newer albums from Waveform (also, I like blue). Naturally the man behind the alias - Yosef Shamay – would find a new home after Trishula ceased operation, but on Waveform? The odds, mang!

Ah yes, psy dub, a genre this label’s often flirted with but never seriously committed itself towards. I can’t say it’s why I pick up Waveform CDs to begin with, though the few I took a chance on by whim turned out ace. I was leery about enCAPSULAte after first track Imaginary Gods though, very much in the Shpongle/Ott mold, and sounding incredibly digital and plastic as so much post-millennial psy does. And I freely admit that’s entirely my fault, what with having just indulged the lush sound quality of Ultimae, Silent Season, Cryo Chamber... who could live up to a run of widescreen sonics like that?

Once I got over my aesthetic bias however, Fetal Position warmed itself through sheer creativity. Some tracks like Loosey Goosey and Dark Blanket Of Night go too psy-dub hammy for my taste, but others like Guardians Of Sanity and Overall Pattern tickle my trippy groovy sensibilities just right. Mr. Shamay shows little fear in bucking conventions either, Alice In Spiral Land making use of honest-to-Shiva Amen Breaks, The Hoax a shufflin’ acid jazz outing (with heavy emphasis on the acid), and Krishna Krazy more of a breakbeat thing with a wonderfully daft sample that’d have Dr. Alex Paterson keeling over in glee. Plus finishing off on a pleasant piece of mysterious Indian ambient? I’ll take it!

ACE TRACKS: July 2016

Everyone sick of TRANCE yet? Because I sure am… not? Whoa, how is this even possible? I’ve difficulty enduring a singular genre for even a week straight, much less any longer, yet here we are a complete July past, and I’ve nary felt a smidge of burnout on the genre. What gives? A significant factor is this how much of a nostalgic trip down my trancecracker years this has been, reliving those exploratory ‘90s when trance felt new, edgy, and mysterious. I can almost guarantee, were I to indulge modern trance for a similar length of time, I’d have gone squirrel-shit insane by now. One disc of Mike Shiver was plenty ‘nuff, thank you. Of course I’ve bias towards the years I was first having sex [citation needed].

Another factor was taking a break from it all, pacing the month out, filling the gaps with different music, and taking a mini-vacation to Seattle. Where I got to hear Nirvana all the time. And a bunch of Metallica on the car radio for one inexplicable Sunday, no matter which station I tuned into. Having Beastie Boys’ Sabotage stuck in my head for nearly a week didn’t hurt/help either (thanks, ST: Beyond!). Naturally, none of this shall appear on ACE TRACKS: July 2016 (The Total Trip Trance-Voyage Experience!).



Full track list here.

MISSING ALBUMS:
Various – Tranced Out And Dreaming
Various - Trance V.oice 2
Various - Trance 2001: A Trance Odyssey
Various - Trance Trippin’
Various - Trance To Planet X: Influence 3.3
Various - Trance Sessions
Various - Trance Psyberdelic
Various - Trance Mission: Leon Bolier & Mike Shiver
Various - Trance Europe 2.0
Various - Trance Divas 2
Various - Muzik Presents Trance Classics
Various - Trance Central – Return To The Classics Vol. 4: Jørn Stenzel
Chris Fortier - Trance America

Percentage Of Hip-Hop: 0%
Percentage Of Rock: 0%
Most “WTF?” Track: Kraftwelt - Confusion (wait, what’s this non-trance track doing in this all-trance playlist!?)

Holy cow, look at all those missing CDs. Trance isn’t that obscure on Spotify, is it? Not entirely, as I found many tracks on other releases scattered about the app, but at least a quarter of the tracks are missing regardless. What’s strange is how some Hypnotic CDs are on Spotify, a few even re-released with different cover art (lenticular gimmicks aren’t so nifty as a .gif). There was no clear logic in how Cleopatra went about selecting which to upload though, but that’s kinda’ par for the course with that label. Hey, at least they’re still in operation, which is more than can be said for so many other defunct prints of trance’s past.

Various - Trance Psyberdelic

Moonshine Music: 1997

Early Moonshine wasn’t much known for their trance output. Even their Psychotrance series leaned closer to the domain of techno than anything Germany was pumping out with abandon. That didn’t prevent the label from an occasional dip into the scene though, for when you brand yourself as an outlet that offers any and all genres under the raving sun, you’d best deliver even the most obscure ‘hard-hop’ and ‘trypno’. Right, I’ve no idea whether Moonshine deliberately branded themselves as such, though given the diversity of their early releases, they may as well have. It’s all part and parcel of that carefree California scene, where anything goes so long as the vibes stay alive.

As the Moontribe parties of the ‘90s were undoubtedly filled with raving crusties, you bet they had their share of acid and psy trance indulgences. One of Moonshine’s earliest compilation mini-series, Concept In Dance, dealt with the genre, and they kept dabbling with a CD or two in the following years. By 1997, psy trance was having something of a commercial and critical surge (thanks, Juno Reactor!), such that you’d find all manner of fractal cover art and Goa imagery plastered about the ‘electronica’ section of your major music shop. Naturally Moonshine was there to cash in, with DJ Brian premiering his Hardesertrance series, while also providing a Stateside release of Made On Earth from seminal psy print Blue Room Released. Oh, and this CD I’m supposed to be reviewing right now, that one too.

Trance Psyberdelic stands as an oddity in the Moonshine archives, a collection of psy that goes as deep into the dark DMT hole as any compilation of the time. There is a DMT hole, right? I don’t know, I’ve never done the stuff. Heard it’s one ca-ray-zee trip tho’!

Anyway, the cover art has a charming-tacky mid-‘90s CGI thing that seems more like a Hypnotic release, but there’s nothing cheesy about Trance Psyberdelic, presenting us with the ‘serious’ side of the scene. The music within comes from the likes of Prana, Slinky Wizard, Tristan, and Syb Unity Nettwerk, featuring tons of sci-fi lasers, hard-to-the-floor heady beats, acid-drenched acid, and nary a melody that’ll stay in your noggin after the CD finishes. Except Koxbox’ Stratosfearless, holy cow, for ten minutes they do such amazing, diverse things with an incredibly simple hook! Pete Martin, who also compiled the CD, crops up twice, first as U.X. with one-time Juno Reactor and Killing Joke member Kris Kylven (he’s also that Syb guy). Martin’s other, more familiar project of Slide, also appears. Yes, as in ‘Cass & Slide’. What, you didn’t know one of prog’s biggest darlings started out in the psy camps? Don’t worry, easy mistake, that.

Eh? Oh yeah, I did say Trance Psyberdelic doesn’t stick in the brain much after. It’s a fussy sort of psy, sounding fine as it plays, but lacking the soaring thrills this genre often has. Except that Koxbox cut, that’s fun!

ACE TRACKS: November 2012

We’re nearly at the end of these back-tracking ACE TRACKS Playlists. It’s weird realizing that the music I was playing and reviews I was writing was done over three years ago now, enough time that I’m actually having faded recollection of the month. Like, as though it was a distant part of my past, not unlike my TranceCritic writing days. The music I was covering seems so innocent too, still going through my old collection of trusty favorites and stand-bys, having no clue of the splurging I’d undertake that’d bloat out my library to the four digit realm. About a dozen CDs have since been added within this block alone, and that’s just narrowly missing out that Pete Namlook tribute box set. Back then I had no idea labels like Silent Season, Altar, or Psychonavigation even existed! That November also marked the point I realized I could keep writing at a near-daily clip, though with a signficant chunk being some of my all-time favorite albums, it’s not surprising I was feeling the mojo then. It’s also a big ol’ ACE TRACKS Playlist, so let’s get to ‘er.


Full track list here.

MISSING ALBUMS:
Pete Namlook - The Definitive Ambient Collection: Volume 2
Deep Forest - Deep Forest
Dillinja - Cybotron
Djen Ajakan Shean - Crows Heading For Point Break
Roc Raida - Crossfaderz: A Turntablist’s Throwdown!!
Quadrophonia - Cozmic Jam

Percentage Of Hip-Hop: 12%
Percentage Of Rock: 19%
Most “WTF?” Track: Fear Factory - Pisschrist (that title, tho’!)

Full albums from Future Sound Of London, Pink Floyd, and Spicelab are a must. A bunch of Fear Factory, a pile of progressive trance, a little techno, psy, and world beat thrown in for good measure. Oh, and that last little bit of Bone Thugs working its way in too. Man, did I ever look like the Bone Thugs fanboy in those early months. Little did anyone know my hip-hop allegiance lay with the Wu-Tang Clan (plus whatever Del was up to). All in all, this is a fun, varied month’s worth of music, another reason why I likely sped through those CDs so fast. Couldn’t wait to hear the next one again!

Eat Static - Dead Planet

Mesmobeat: 2015

I was wondering if Eat Static would ever release another album, then ol' Merv goes and gives us a double-album. No wonder he took so long then, and a good idea too. His last foray into the LP domain saw two CDs released as well, though on separate labels focusing on completely different styles. It was a neat idea to feature an exclusively downtempo album for Interchill, but it’d probably be a hard-sell twice. Folks come to Eat Static for the tear-out psy with the crazy cybernetic leads and pulpy sci-fi samples; the few mellow moments under the stoner sun are best served as respites.

Well nothing doing for Dead Planet, once again splitting the Eat Static stylee up between two discs, uptempo stuff on the titular CD, and a chill offering in the second tray titled Human Upgrade. Interestingly, this has been released on Mesmobeat, the label Eat Static set-up for themselves after Planet Dog died, and been in semi-limbo for the past half-decade. What, did no one else want to give this double-LP a chance?

Dead Planet kicks off with another System 7 pairing, tickling all those old-school goa trance triggers in my head. It pretty much goes for the twisted full-on stuff from there though (with one obligatory mint d’n’b leaning cut with Ringlefinch), tracks evolving in dark-psy fashion before unleashing a spacey bit for the climax. It’s all well-produced, but as with so much modern psy-trance, hasn’t evolved much in the past decade, and the same is true for Eat Static’s take on the sound, sci-fi quirks aside. And yet, it’s better than Merv’s dip into other music here. Dragon’s Breath is a frightfully dull tech-plodder, while In All Worlds with Robert Smith is a fine track on a cyberpunk soundtrack, but way out of place here. And Odious Odium sounds like it’s building up to a hideously obnoxious brostep drop (clap builds! glitch-bends!), then does an awesome one-eighty into spaced-out tear-out psy (that low-end!). That’s the Eat Static I love!

Human Upgrade meanwhile... holy cow, where did this album come from? As the chiller side of Eat Static, I was expecting some psy-dub rubs, or maybe a throwback cut that might have appeared on the old Planet Dog compilations. And the first few tracks do offer this, even getting Robbert Heynen of the former Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia in with Near Future Myth (dear Lord, such expansive sonics!). The back-end of CD2 then grows more ethnic, orchestrated, and wordly with the beats. There were hints of this sound on Back To Earth, but ol’ Merv’s taken things to another level here, sounding like latter-era Juno Reactor in some parts. I know I said hearing Eat Static without the quirkiness feels off, but if lush production like this is what we can also expect, I’m all for it.

Dead Planet as a whole is quite a bit to take in, but is well worth the investment for followers of the alien nation.

ACE TRACKS: October 2015

An extra hour of sleep this past night? Pft, I totally wasted that the night before, where I slept for about eleven hours. I didn’t think I was that tired, but then again, I have noticed the fatiguing signs. The shorter daylight hours, leading me to rely more on ultra-caffeine to plow through, leading to nights with less deep sleep, and the cycle continues. I don’t recall having these problems before. Was it because I was a steady Rock Star drinker for twelve years? I had to quit those suckers earlier this year because of compounding chest pains. Heck, I ‘relapsed’ this past month to get through those rough mornings, and started feeling those pains again. Why? Why must this aging process limit societal crutches? Dear Lord, don’t let the same thing happen to music! Maybe I needed happier music this past October, but there be Beach Boys in th’ar. Here, take a listen.


Full track list here.

MISSING ALBUMS:
Sven Väth ‎– In The Mix: The Sound Of The Ninth Season
Various - The Sound Of Zero and One
Olien - Sounded Paratronic
Overdream - Soundprints
Peter Benisch - Soundtrack Saga
Various - Space Jazz
Der Dritte Raum - Spaceglider
Distant System - Spiral Empire
Jerry Goldsmith - Star Trek: The Motion Picture
James Horner - Star Trek: The Search For Spock

Percentage of Hip-Hop: 8%
Percentage Of Rock: 35% (it’s all Beach Boys)
Most “WTF?” Track: Horsemilk - They Milk Horses Don’t They? (that title alone …oh yeah, and Olien)

Ugh, so much great music, so much not on Spotify. I mean, this past month had me going through a number of albums I’ve endlessly namedropped over the years, and I can’t even share audio clips of them now. Well, unless y’all followed my advice and already copped yourselves some Benisch, Olien, and D. System.

That still leaves a bunch of cool music from other though: Thievery Corporation, AstroPilot, OutKast, and the aforementioned Beach Boys. If you’re feeling the SADS, maybe they’ll help add a little sunshine in your day. Yeah, that’s dorky, but so were they, so win-win, I say.

Juno Reactor - Shango

Metropolis: 2000

Shango is about as transitional an album as a transitional album can get. Not that we were aware of it back when Juno Reactor dropped his fifth LP in the year 2000, though one could definitely suspect Ben Watkins leaving his psy trance legacy in the dust. Bible Of Dreams already hinted at a muse looking for new roads to travel, fresh genres to explore. Maybe he'd start dabbling in that burgeoning psy dub thing, or take a stab at another ambient concept album. Ooh, industrial rock and big beat is still popular, especially with movie soundtracks – why not make a few tunes geared for TVT's latest cyberpunk thriller?

I don’t know about that, but hearing some of his Bible cuts featured in movies and video games must have given Mr. Watkins a shot of inspiration, envisioning his music in cinematic terms rather than outdoor party fodder. It's the only explanation I have for opening Shango with a track stampeding out of a Robert Rodriguez grindhouse Western. Pistolero's got the flamenco guitars, Mexican samples, bank robberies, and a ton of energy to spare, desperado rhythms furiously galloping across the arid lands of Chihuahua. No matter what you thought Juno Reactor might bring to this album, I highly doubt anyone figured it'd be something as off the dusty trail as Pistolero.

And then he changes gears straight after with Hule Lam, a collaboration with long-time South African traditionalist troupe Amampondo that goes deep into the tribal conga fury. Er, I honestly don't know which African ethnicity they draw their music from, though this song was oddly featured in a dancing mini-game tie-in to the movie Madagascar 2. Wait, what? Talk about licensing to the extreme. I hope none of the kids vibing on Hule Lam checked out the rest of Shango, only to have the fierce, terrifying meditative Badimo assault their senses shortly after.

If you're getting a feeling of musical whiplash with these descriptions, fret not for that's one of the problems with Shango as an album. Masters Of The Universe marks the midpoint of the album, and it’s the closest thing to a tear-out psy trance outing you’ll find. Following that are two versions of Nitrogen, the first having a lending hand from Orb members Alex Paterson and Greg Hunter for a thumping dubbed-out excursion, the second more of a conventional industrial-trance tune (with some mint drum fills thrown in throughout!). And while you can always count on a nice ambient closure on most albums, Shango ends with two, neither having much to do with each other. Solaris is a dark ambient outing with chants and such, while Song Of Ancestors comes off like the credits sequence to whatever movie Watkins had in mind for Pistolero.

That’s Shango in a nutshell: an LP with many great ideas and cool tunes, but little holding it together. Come Labyrinth, Watkins would tie his inspirations into cohesive whole, but here he’s figuring out just how far he can take Juno Reactor.

Eat Static - Science Of The Gods

Mammoth Records: 1997

I may have pre-hyped this album a bit much, what with so many namedrops in past Eat Static reviews. For all I know, Science Of The Gods was unanimously rejected by the psy-trance faithful, seen as a betrayal of all that the goa scene held true. The hippies and techno crusties were in no need of their chosen heroes getting in on that surging d’n’b action, and junglists were even more insular, waging their own war over classic Amen Break darkside productions versus the new tech-step hotness. There’s no way these two disparate scenes should have any business interacting. It’s poison. It’s toxic. It’s catastrophic. You don’t cross the scenes!

So of course Eat Static said nuts to all that and delivered some of the gnarliest d’n’b I’ve ever heard. In adding the tricks they developed performing goa and psy, these aliens don’t so much invade the junglist’s realm as take some artefacts for themselves for display on their own world. The main tune off here, Interceptor, features a pummelling tech-step rhythm with thick, chunky kicks and a grimy acid bassline, serving as a rudder for all manner of sci-fi sound effects, knob tweaks, drum fills, and general psychedelic craziness to hang off. If Eat Static made this track specifically as a tie-in with the RTS game Conquest Earth, it’s about the only saving grace in that forgotten crap game. Come, bask in its glorious ‘90s CGI alien invasion video. It’s like watching a demo episode of Babylon 5!

Two other tracks on Science Of The Gods work the d’n’b angle, Dissection going deeper with Amen Break business with their usual assortment of sci-fi sounds and noises. Following a brief interlude, they tentatively dip their toes in jazzstep’s calmer waters on Bodystealers before going full-in with experimental beatcraft of micro-bleeps and reverb effects. Can’t ever say these guys never ventured where no others dared, even if this portion grows overindulgent after a couple minutes.

For all the supposed talk of this album straying from Eat Static’s core audience, folks forget that’s only three tracks out of eight, the remaining attending to the needs of their loyal outdoor followers as expertly as ever. The opening titular cut is all kinds of trippy fun, giving us a dirty bit of twisted acid funk before seemingly falling off the rails. Nay, it’s just the duo playing, soon enough unleashing a beast of acid techno for the remainder. Elsewhere, Kryll floats about with a spacey, proggy vibe, Spawn will kick the shit out of you, and Contact leans way old-school goa, sounding like a leftover from the Abduction days. Finally, The Hanger is one seriously dubby, low-riding monster of a track – imagine Predator cruising the cosmos with blunts billowing against the stars, feelin’ chill after a successful hunt.

I’ve no more else to say about Science Of The Gods. It may look campy, but that’s always been Eat Static’s charm, fooling the suspicious with the weird before unleashing their face-melting weaponry upon your ears.

ACE TRACKS: September 2013

Oh dear. Hockey Playoffs are about to start, and unlike these past two years, this one actually looks to be more fun for yours truly (so many teams I'm routing for!). It shouldn't impact my writing output that much, but if Vancouver, Winnipeg, Washington, Ottawa or Montreal make lengthy runs, I suspect many a drunken revelry shall be had upon victorious nights. But I'm sure you folks from across the seas and regions devoid of hockey rinks care not for this, so here's an ACE TRACKS playlist for the month of September 2013. *whew* Only one more year's worth of this backtracking to go...


Full track list here.

MISSING ALBUMS:
Faithless - If Lovin’ You Is Wrong
Carbon Based Lifeforms - Hydroponic Garden
Miguel Migs - Get Salted, Volume 1

Percentage Of Hip-Hop: 27%
Percentage Of Rock: 2%
Most “WTF?” Track: Nothing in particular, but ICE MC’s definitely way out of place in this Playlist.

So much hip-hop in this month, yet only one instance of Wu-Tang Clan. Guess they felt naming an album with some variant of ‘ill’ was a played out cliché in rap slang – or allowed Nas ownage of the term forever after. Also, hope you’re a fan of ‘90s Juno Reactor. If not, I back-loaded most of the tunes anyway, so they wouldn’t dominate too much of the early sections of the runtime?

Overall, this one turned out pretty well, which I’d never thought possible with early BT, angry Ice Cube, spacey Petar Dundov, and bouncy Banco de Gaia all making appearances. Remarkable how well some tunes can flow together with just a couple suitable linkers between them. Or maybe my taste in music skews in specific ways no matter what genre or scene I pluck my tracks from.

ACE TRACKS: January 2015

What a bizarre month. There’s been a few in the past where one or two styles of music dominated a playlist, but never in the way this one turned out. Hope you like a lot of hip-hop. Wait, you do? Well, cool, but I hope you enjoy a bunch of psy-trance mixed in with that. Wait, you do? Who are you, some kind of weirdo? Oh, wait, that’s just my reflection in the monitor. Looks like a bit of yolk dripping off my nose at that. Well, here’s the ACE TRACKS of January 2015 in any event:



Full Track List Here.

MISSING ALBUMS:
John ‘00’ Fleming - Psy-Trance Euphoria 2
Various - Psychedelic Goa Trance
Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia - Psychick Rhythms Vol. 1
Various - Psychotrance 2001: D:Fuse
Various - Cosmic Funk
Various - Dub Selector
Amon Tobin - Piranha Breaks

Percentage Of Hip-Hop: 25%
Percentage Of Rock : 10%
Most “WTF?” Track: The Statler Brothers - Flowers On The Wall (for its glorious ‘movie moment’, though it’s certainly an odd one here too)

You know who makes for surprisingly good bed fellows? Early Burial and early Nine Inch Nails! Or maybe in a playlist fighting for space in the crowds of Wu-Tang Clan and French psychedelia, they found common ground, comfort in their outsider status. But yeah, with a few extra inclusions of lengthy Neil Young rock and borderline EBM, this is a weird assortment of tunes. Whatever happened to the regular ol’ house and techno, eh? This playlist should be a hoot if you’re daring to wander outside those comfort zones.

Electro Sun - Pure Blue (2015 Update)

Trancelucent Productions: 2005

(Click here to read my original TranceCritic review)

Before digging into updates regarding Electro Sun, I need to get this off my chest...

Dear God, has it ever taken forever getting through these last two letters! Right, officially the count's four months, and at least one week was eaten up by a technicality of Western languages. I look at the hard numbers though, and it doesn’t seem like I should only now be wrapping up the ‘P’s, yet here we are, eighty-four albums successfully navigated through and reviewed (sans the alphabetical back-track releases). You know what’s scary though? Eighty-four is still nowhere near the amount of albums I have starting with ‘S’ – that letter may eat up four months of this project alone. I guess I should be thankful that ‘P’ took some of the hit with all those ‘psy-whatever’ CDs. Ooh, can’t pass up a genre segueway like that now!

Yeah, I know, Electro Sun’s debut LP Pure Blue is only psy trance in the most liberal sense of the word. I even pointed that out in my original TranceCritic review, and I was just getting my feet wet with the nascent Israeli full-on movement. With plenty of time checking out more full-on since, I think his tunes fall under the micro-sub genre of Morning Trance, though only 7am will suffice for the track Sundance. Which one was that again? You know, the track with wibbly rhythm, the wubbly melodies, and the bouncy hook that sounds like acid filtered through a tin can. No, the other one that sounds like that. No, the- ah geez, not this snarky shit again.

Make no mistake, that “bland Stretch of Vanilla” doesn’t hold up in the slightest. Mr. Elkayam’s production comes off as plastic and cheap as any generic Israeli trance as you can stereotype, and sounds woefully dated a decade on. And yet, those few good tracks I liked before (I’ve Got The Power, In My Dream ...Super Nova, maybe) are simply irresistible to the cheddar centres sparking the lumps of grey matter inside my skull. There’s something just so cheerfully earnest about these tunes, I can’t hate on them no matter how much critical logic dictates I should. Damn these feels I have for silly, slap-happy psy.

As for ol’ Nadav, he’s kept a steady career since this album, releasing two more full-lengths, the latest of which coming out in 2011. Even more recently he’s gotten his fingers into the digital EP business, though Lord Discogs only lists two such offerings at this point. Whether he’s released more music than that, I haven’t a clue, nor do I care. Pure Blue was average at best, and while Electro Sun may have grown as a producer, he toed the divide between shameless fun and eye-rolling rubbish too closely for my liking. It wouldn’t take much for him to dive fully and completely into either side, but judging by the awful cover of his third album, Higher Than Ever, I can safely guess which way he went.

Various - Psychedelic Goa Trance

Omnisonus: 1996

Debates raged throughout the ‘90s over what differentiated goa trance from psychedelic trance. Was it identifiable melodies that defined goa? Out-and-out twisted acid noises that marked psy? I suppose so, though I suspect the terms that were finally settled upon came about for convenience’s sake. Something had to eventually be made sense of it all, and with new sub-genres like full-on and prog-psy emerging at the turn of the millennium, it was easier to go back to the older tunes and start categorizing them by their unique attributes. I mean, what were we supposed to do at the time, rely on label marketers? They only made things worse!

Take, for instance, this CD that I just so totally by chance am reviewing right now, Psychedelic Goa Trance, brought to us by yet another French label, Omnisonus. This print was broader in its electronic music promotion, releasing everything from Basic Techno to Hypno Techno, plus the future sound of Paris (whatever that was) and hardcore music that'd give you a fever, apparently. I jest, of course, but mark my words there were plenty of doe-eyed ravers believing these were actual genre names. And here we have psychedelic goa trance. Not just simple ol' goa, nor cutting edge psy, but a mesh of the two, offered to us when terms and classifications were an increasing clusterfuck. And here was I, only just venturing into the world of trance, picking this CD up because it looked weird and had a whole bunch of names on the back I was unfamiliar with. Ah, those exciting days when every compilation was a mystery.

Yeah, this was my first introduction to goa, or psy (whichever). I can’t say it immediately won me over, so radically different from the hard German stuff I enjoyed, it was. I probably couldn’t have lucked on a better primer though, as it has a solid assortment of names and tunes to its credit. There’s the lengthy psychedelic stuff with Etnica’s Party Droid and Witchcraft’s Whale, trippy fun cuts care of Total Eclipse’s Free Lemonade and Kox Box’ Fuel On, high octane acid trance like Indoor’s Dubull Click and Karmic Energies’ Bonobo, serious shit like Prana’s The Earth and Karmic Energies’ Born To Be Wild, awesome noisy acid bedlam like Trans-Lucid’s Flying Reindeer and Karmic Energies’ Equal & Surpass, and total tribal nonsense like Karmatic 767’s Kalashakra. So overall a nice mix of recognizable and obscure tracks, though obviously overkill in jamming in all three tracks off Karmic Energies’ Equal & Surpass EP. Mighty suspicious, that.

Omnisonus would release a second volume of Psychedelic Goa Trance the following year, which included recognizable names like The Delta, Technossomy, Man Made Man, and Tristan – also, two more Karmic Energies cuts (geez, Charles Rapeneau only ever released two singles under the alias). It doesn’t look as remarkable as the first compilation though, and even this one likely won’t impress seasoned goa veterans. Whatever, I still get a kick out it!

DJ Orphée - Psychedelic Goa Core 3

Javelin Ltd.: 1997

What's up with all these mid-'90s French psy trance labels? Did France have big enough of a goa scene that it could support dozens of compilations every month? Britain was big, sure, and Israel came to dominate in the new millennium, but I'm hard pressed to recall much press for the trippy side of acid trance as cultivated by Francophone folk. I'd never heard of this Javelin Ltd. print before, yet a quick peruse of its Lord Discogs data reveals nearly one-hundred CDs of various trance musics, much of which on the psychedelic trip, all released in a brief window within ‘95 through '97. Some of it was domestic distributions for larger albums like Juno Reactor’s Beyond The Infinite, Total Eclipse’s Delta Aquarids, and Etnica’s Alien Protein, but for the most part they flooded the market with compilations. And that's just one label out of at least a half-dozen I'm somewhat familiar with, yet nary a soul brings them up anymore. Damn disco and house producers stole all the spotlights, that's what happened I wager.

Psychedelic Goa Core was one of many compilations series Javelin put out, headed by one DJ Orphée, as much a mystery to Lord Discogs as most goa DJs of the ‘90s are. Going by this third volume, the emphasis was on the harder, deeper side of the genre, reflecting a gradual shift from goa’s earlier melodic side to the minimalist ‘psy-tekk’ style that most producers adopted at the turn of the century. Hell, a few names on this track list were almost solely responsible for it: Nervasystem, Tristan and Process, though the latter two with individual tracks rather than their collaborations. Lesser known names on Psychedelic Goa Core 3 that go this route include Noosphere, Doda, Germinating Seeds Of Doda (yes, it’s the same duo, but with additional convoluted nonsense in their name) and Growling Mad Synchro. Hey, I know this one, they were on that Goa Spirit 3 CD I reviewed from way back. Wait, how come I’ve two instances of only have the third volume of two long-forgotten ‘90s psy trance compilations? They both even have yellow as their colour themes. Damn, it can’t be a random coincidence, there must be a connection! Send your theories to sykonee@crackpotpsytranceconnections.goa.

Okay, bitchin’ time. Psychedelic Goa Core 3 is in fact a DJ mix, a format for ‘90s psy trance I’ve seldom heard good examples of, and this is no exception. I’ll grant the music was never the most mix friendly form out there, but that’s all the more reason sticking with traditional track showcase collections was superior. Tunes like Man Made Man’s Drama and Electric Universe’s Technologic are busy enough, we don’t need forced attempts at beat-matching incompatible drum kicks gumming things up further.

As a mix though, Psychedelic Goa Core 3 is fine enough, mostly sticking to the hard, minimalist stuff for the first half before unleashing a few high-energy space acid squawkers for the end. I’ll never tire of that trippy Indian scale!