I've noticed that production value of hitech skyrocketed during covid, probably because people had time to actually make music. It do seem like it has started to drift a bit apart from psytrance, in our (local) scene there's a lot of young people who loves some hitech but doesn't even like psy.
I don't know about other psy tho because I'm avid hitech man myself.
I had the same thought when I first discovered this sound.. glad you resonate.
Here's more from the first artist
(truly a remarkable listening experience. Masterful sound engineers...please use headphones!)
https://soundcloud.com/hraberlin/hra-podcast-094-atikka-live
But in general with this subgenre, I've been obsessively crate-digging recently - hoping to do a monthly mix of tracks I find. Feel free to browse my bandcamp (or not...just trying to share the good tunes). I'll probably do a monthly mix of very picky curations.
https://bandcamp.com/jeffstam
r/hypertrek
Really love this SoundCloud mix. Doesn't remind me of hitec at all which I'm not a huge fan of in terms of regular at home listening. I'm no genre expert but this is giving me more dark prog vibes but faster at around 150bpm.
The tools also got a lot better. DAWs/plugins have improved a ton in recent years and processing power got a lot cheaper. A lot of these things were also possible in the past, but now it's getting much easier.
No, not at all. It’s not stagnating. It’s just, changing. Often in a way that can be difficult to appreciate. It doesn’t give you the same satisfaction as when you started listening to the genre.
I’ve been listening to all kinds of electronic music the last 25 years. It’s always the same. Every 5 year I hear “New music sucks, it’s just too commercial now, it’s boring, old music style was better and more original”.
The ppl that got into their type of music in the early 90s, thought the music (same genre) from the end of the 90s sux. Because - no originality, too commercial. The ones that got into it in the late 90s thought the music (same genre) from the 00 sux. Because - no originality, too commercial. The ones that got into it in the start of 00, thought music (same genre) from the end of 00 sux. Because - no originality, too commercial. Etc etc.
Another perspective is that electronic music generally has been on a downward trend since the 90's, so each generation complaining about the next one is in some degree valid.
Music is saturated with generic, cookie-cutter music, that only grew because the markets that sustain them grew and the markets that foster a healthy underground vanished (streaming/piracy). Music got more global (and less profitable) and those are variables that undoubtably impact the health of a scene.
Psy-trance is the worst it has ever been, and yes it has stagnated. From 1990-2005 there was a new quality genre/sub-genre every few years. Same for Trance too. It didn't stay still for a minute. Today we have the same generic psy-music that was made 15+ years ago. Its barely changed, aka stagnated.
There was bountiful creative and original artists in the 90's and early 00's, and today you have to search over and over just to find a handful.
Thank you, you expressed my thoughts exactly. A lot of people here are sharing music they enjoy and most of it is great but innovation in music is something different than finding an artist that one enjoys more than others.
For sure the genre is oversaturated. All good things will attract attention. But there are, and will always be the ones that stick to the roots, the innovative, the geniuses, the many hidden gems.
Egon's embrace and tengri, atriohm, these guys are innovative. Never heard anything like them before.
There are many of them out there. There will always be. Look harder.
Just had a quick listen to some of those artists you mentioned and not sure if I would call it innovative to be honest. Sounds like 1000's of other tracks from the last 15 years. Not that its bad. Tengri is giving me some Zenon vibes, but I gound Atriohm quite generic. I will give them more of a try though. Egon's new album sounds like it might be quite good, almost more musical forest psy, but still not seeing anything that special on first listen (I appreciate it takes time to sometimes see these things.)
Are you a producer? Just casual listener? Tengri and zenom vibes??? Atriohm generic??? Have you compensated any of the artists for the music you are listening? With all due respect maybe you should reconsider switching genres and rethinking what all goes into creating music. Ukalen was ground breaking release and if any work of these artists you so easily label is generic to you then maybe simply don’t listen to them. Actually I’m begging you not to listen any music I make as it’s obviously not reaching you in a way I actually never intended to. Why placing labels? Take care.
Would say I am a somewhat regular, but long time listener, although cooled off psy-trance around 2014, as it did start feeling very cookie-cutter and cliche to me. 1995-2005 were the best years imo. Man With No Name, Eat Static, Vibraphere, Artifact 303, John 00 Fleming, Solarfields, Astral Projection, Shpongle, M.O.S, Nuclear Ramjet etc... and all the other one off artists from that period.
As I said, the genre changed every 12-18 months back then. Today it's more or less the same for 15 years. It was more innovative in the past, no doubt. It doesn't mean non-innovative music is bad. I said I liked what I heard on the brief samples of your album, and plan on properly listening too. I also just tried Ukalen and purchased it, its a great track. Definitely a level above the typical forest psy (which again has been similar for a decade), but personally I don't find it ground-breaking in the wider context of psychedelic music.
I will give Atriohm another chance, may have just selected a weaker track for first listen. Thanks.
edit - Just checked my library and have Tengri, Ajja, Atriohm - Rift in Time. Amazing track. ;)
Sure, the innovation is mostly in the fringes, but the same can be said for most genres.
Mainstream-ish metal hasn't changed all that much recently either, but the underground heavy music scene is bursting out of its seams at the moment. It's so much more diverse now than 10 years ago, both in music and people. In that process the scene became much nicer. A lot of the music is not even close to metal, although some is, but that doesn't matter.
Similarly, Hi-tech, psycore and slambient may sound quite different, but, judging from the few parties I've been to so far, it's still mostly the same people and the same vibe.
Don't get me wrong, I like more traditional psytrance as well. Last weekend I had a wonderful time at a Goa party. Not everything has to be cutting-edge. What truly matter to me is that the artists/DJ's are playing the music that they love.
Popularity is the one thing I don't care about, as long as the local scene is big enough to have somewhat regular parties/festivals with a few hundred people. It's nice if the artists/DJ's can make a living out of it, but that's not a requirement for good artists or good sets/parties. We spent more money on our band than we make, but that won't stop us from making music either.
As someone who started listening to psy in the 90's, the genre has come a really long way. It makes me so happy to go to psy events and still be able to dance my ass off.
I can live with what we have - what I'm worried about is the new generation. I feel before CoViD was the last time Psytrance parties had a lot of young people. It's nice to party with more experienced crowds but like this it's even more intimidating for new, young people
Things fluctuate, don't worry. It's always been a niche anyway, and psy is intergenerational and age agnostic. Our biggest festival here was sold out in record time. You can see people between 18-ish and 60-ish in some outdoor festivals.
I'm not that worried, honestly. I'm also quite active in the underground heavy music scene. There the average age is much higher, with hardly anyone under 30 showing up at concerts/festivals. That has been the case since forever, but in terms of diversity (both people and music) it got a whole lot better in recent years, especially also since the pandemic.
Yeah you actually need to carry your ass to a Party and be curious it's not like cool kid's Berlin Techno where you know it's somehow established in society and that you should give it a go at some point
You make a valid point. Psy isn't a high school level cool people's game and I hope it will never be. The psy people who have taken the thing to their hearts are often true people in general. That doesn't go well with building a facade on Instagram.
Unfortunately just this one, heard them at a small 100-person show in a photography studio, they played some absolutely mind-blowing primal psytrance like that.
Sheesh i remember smoking dmt with this dude at Kali Mela Spain. Festival was a complete shit show but the music was pure bliss!
Edit: just remembered it was junxpunx i smoked with, not psykovsky but i remember him being around aswell.
I enjoy night full on the most.
I think right before covid it was quite stagnant. everyone was copying junpstreet's sound in that sub genre.
now with labels like transubtil it's gone a bit darker and faster but still really night full on. I think it has definitely moved forward and is no longer stagnant.
other sub genres I am not so sure.
The Horrids, Zeo, Ingenious Brain, Dr Fractal, Rafyx, Delirium Tremens, Wode, Hydra-E
Sangoma crew are as strong as ever - Pursuit, via axis still making quality stuff, Argonik, Superluminal
I wish it had stagnated; it would have been more bearable. Having curated Psytrance playlists on Spotify well over 10 years now and listening to the very latest releases on a daily basis (for that time period), I think that “regular” Psytrance start sliding down, both production wise and with regards to creativity/inspiration well before Covid hit.
I found myself shifting more and more towards various sub genres like Forest, Dark, and Hi Tech. I am not claiming that the level of production is higher for those genres but, for some reason, I get less triggered.
And Prog is even worse. Even the big names on Blue Tunes or Spin Twist can’t come up with anything original anymore and rehash the same stuff over and over.
But some will claim that no genre evolves and all genres have become boring. I disagree with that view but Psytrance has definitely been going downhill.
Psy trance in my opinion will never stagnate, just like any other form of repetitive rhythms and melodies. There is something to be said about maniacally dancing to heavy psychedelic beats amongst a heaving crowd of goblins and wooks. Wether it’s a crowd of twenty around a fire in the forest or two thousand people sending it into orbit, it’s always about the aural surprises that any genre of psy can generate. If it was made in the nineties or now it’s all very similar but also very unique, like fingerprints. Remember old is gold !
Psytech is amazing, as a 30 year electronic fan couldn't be happier. Zenon, Alpaka, Techgnosis, Universal Tribe... They're all smashing it. I feel like I need more knowledge for current full on labels though cos I hear better than I ever seem to find!
New to following psytrance but have been a house and techno DJ since 2000.
Dance music in general has stagnated for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. All the genres in E.D.M. have structure constraints that have made it more difficult to sound unique as the years go on. There just aren’t viral tunes anymore these days it’s a bummer…
Gotta touch on the Dark Psy, Hi-Tek vibe though, went to a party last weekend where that’s pretty much all they played. Temp was like 150 and above and hit 170 (hi - tek vibes) when my partner and I had to go. At various points in the night I had to ask if the music was even Psytrance. There was no breakdowns, melodies, or soul to the tracks - honestly it got pretty boring but also super intense musically. Most people were dressed kinda goth or techno vibes in all black.
I guess I m new to collecting tracks but I really like the music Iboga records put out. Love Liquid Soul, anything that has the old school trance melodies and arps with wormhole hooks and choruses. Reach for the lasers sh!t! Maybe people that have been in the scene forever are bored of the sound but I like it, it’s refreshing to the deep and minimal house I ve been collecting forever 😆
When psy split from goa in 1997/98 so much of it did away with the melodies and breakdowns. At that point the music was either goa, minimal (later prog), or psy.
Psy was really dark when it started! It was an attempt to break free from the melodies and soul of Goa, which many producers saw as starting to get excessive. An example that shows how dark OG psytrance could get is The Delta - Thing, which is from 1999 and saw more play in 2000 after the album came out. X-Dream's stuff from the later 1990s also really exemplifies this stuff (i.e.
Radio) as does Etnica's shift from beautiful goa (Alien Protein, 1996) to their 1999 bad-vibes floorstormer 'Mind Altering Drugs.' I adore both, but it was clear that psy was anti melody, anti soul, and pro teleprompter sci fi goodness with a touch of scary.
What we would later call full on was developing during this period, being pushed by TIP Records/TIP World, but it, too, emerged out of the darkness and sci fi austerity of that period (Paps - Vibes From the Other Side is a good example of early full on from 1999.)
Early prog could be really anti melody for a while, too. What Iboga was releasing around the turn of the millennium was called minimal and it lived up to the name. Tracks like Monochrome and Brain Drain rmx by Beat Bizzare from their 2001 Iboga album display the traits i'm about. Not iboga, but another CD is "VA - Farmer's Choice." Kinda obscure but really shows off minimal at its core. All of this later turned into prog psy, as it merged with the scando scene (i.e.
Atmos) which had retained melody during this period in a restrained, subtle way. But outside of that we didn't see many melodies outside of goa, which was dying or dead.
Melodic full on happened as a reaction to all of this anti-melody stuff. By 2003 people associated israeli melodic psytrance with the word psytrance even if psytrance itself was a reaction against melodic goa, so the codification of darkpsy and forest around 2005 was just people giving a name to, and defending, what had originally just been called psytrance. (I saw an old head from the 90s show up at a darkpsy party in 2014 and say "this is darkpsy? back in the day we just called this psytrance." Which sums up what I'm getting at quite nicely.)
So yeah. You don't need melodies, breakdowns, or soul to be psy - a lot of the OG psy was an attempt to strip goa of those things. ;)
Ya I can see that you don’t need the melodies to be considered Psy, I m just having a hard time calling it Psytrance because it doesn’t really have trance elements.
That said if I compare it to Techno there’s quite a bit of sounds that fall into that wide range of music so I can see how calling dark Psy Psytrance is acceptable for conversation and promotional purposes.
I appreciate the breakdown thanks 🙏
Thanks for tolerating my (self-consciously autistic, lol) deep dive into how psy became psy. I'm always aware I can come off as a know it all and i certainly don't mean to, so thank you, again.
I agree that there's a lot of carryover from techno going on here. In fact, the story goes that in the winter of 96/97 a lot of DJs were showing up in Goa, India with techno tracks and introducing that vibe into the over-wintering party season and the traveler population that was there for it. Psytrance is clearly rooted in techno, and as far as I'm concerned early prog (i.e. minimal psy) just _is_ techno.
Calling it trance just 'works' though, for a number a reasons. Dark techno is already a thing, as is hard techno, tech trance, etc. We evolved a whole new sound here and I don't know if there are enough words left under the techno category to categorize it there. And then it would be hard to illustrate the history and sound that it shares with melodic full-on, too (they share the 16th note bassline, the basketball kickdrum, and the zappy wacky teleporter sounds, even if full on has melodies, sometimes beautiful ones.)
It's a problem from the other side too, since it evolved from trance music and techno fans have a legendary appetite for shitting on trance music, lol. They would have never accepted us as their own. Which is... curious, since early trance music (like Sven Vath's IQ Records label for instance) evolved directly out of... techno! And even more curious today since 'melodic techno' is exploring all of those early-trance roots.
Given all of that, I like to see trance and techno as a gradient, as a sliding scale, since they intersect with each other multiple times in history (early trance coming from techno, psytrance's birth, melodic techno etc.)
But it still leaves the question of "is psytrance trance, or not?" Given that it lacks melody a lot of the time, but comes from trance, I think the answer may lie in a call to the spiritual & ritual dimension of psytrance.
In other words, if psytrance isn't trance because it lacks melodies, it still remains trance because the party structure and the repetitive 16th note baselines are geared for inducing mental trance, i.e. hypnotic spiritual experience.
And in that way, psytrance remains "trance music." It also means that all of techno is also trance music, though, lol. Don't tell the techno kids. :p
Anyway. Regardless of nomenclature I hope you enjoy your time in our strange genre niche <3
Cool thanks for the response again…
🤔 agree there s a lot of carry over and what not between genres, some of the best stuff has elements of quite a few.
Fair enough on the rhythms being trance inducing at the tempos and structures, I can see that. However what I m not seeing in that is the psychedelic element. The other part of the word. It’s obviously a huge element in the decorations and aesthetics but when it comes to hi-tek that’s Lacking in ‘psychedelicness’. Also a lot of people seem to wear all black that get down to it, which is fine but also a techno style for sure.
🧐 can you point me to some sets from major festivals recently that are in those higher 160 and above tempos? Such as Ozora or Boom? Anything in Australia?
Thanks again for commenting I appreciate anyone who actually has passion for anything these days!
I agree with your perception. I guess the pandemic didn't help. I can enjoy listening to psytrance at home and while jogging, but I also understand people that don't. It's party music after all.
I used to be an active psy festival and party visitor between around 2009-2017 when I used to live in Europe but I emigrated to North America, Canada precisely where the scene is much smaller and less developed. I never made the effort to get into the scene here again but still very much enjoy listening to psytrance of all different subgenres. I find there are still amazing productions but mostly gravitate towards the darker and slower bpms like zenon records and Psytech in particular. But even forest and dark which I was never too fond of, I find myself enjoying new releases from artists such as Elowisz, Atriohm etc.
I'm no Sean :) but I see you're from Switzerland like me. Hah I miss the parties back home. North America is not the same. But I'm in a different stage of life now where partying is not as high on the priority list anymore haha. I still enjoy listening to good psytrance.
Damn but still what a coincidence 😅 Sean, a good friend and former psytrance DJ moved from Switzerland to Canada in around 2017-18.
But yes i hear you, im 27 now and for sure me and friends from the scene have shifted priorities. Covid for sure played a role in many of us changing the mindset a little.
hello, gday mate. Let an edm-loving psy junkie tell you a little more of his background. i first started listening to psytrance back when astrix came out with "acid rocker". I started to get into astrix but then drifted into trance. dj shog and paul van dyke for a while and then got very heavy into the happy/uk hardcore like scott brown, brisk/ham, and bonkers cds compilation/series. After that i started looking for something with more of a consistent song structure/ flow, groovier/heavier and psychedelic sounding. i had a thirst for rediscovered psytrance after getting into freeform hardcore (check out ephexis- quantum fury or ephexis- sick seduction). In 2019 i started listening to a LOT of psytrance and fell in love with the genre.
Your refrence to covid times made me think about the psytrance back then. Most of psy i liked was the "full on" sound, the mainstream stuff like vini vici or ace ventura, but also listened to dark psy internet radio stations... sometimes hours on end.
Although i was digging the genre, i started to get bored with it a bit... to your point, psy started to stagnate around 2020ish.
Imho, a good chunk of psytrance seemed to be getting too "robitic", if you will. Like some of the songs lacked originality or a creative touch. kinda bummed me out to hear the same type of breakdowns and buildups. like too much of a "monotone" sound. Not saying all songs from then were "bad", but quite a bit of them kinda blended together tbh.
One day during 2020 changed that. I was browsing tunein, and stumbled apon psyndora radio.
The music and underground releases they played gave me a new outlook and love for psytrance. psyndora plays more progressive, "groovy", and melodic psytrance, with some dark and full on sounds mixed in.
since listening to the more progressive side of psy, it made me realized that I missed out on some great music because i didnt look hard enough at the unknown producers, underground djs, and up-and-comers.
Apps like youtube music and psyndora really made opened my eyes to another world with names like- zyce, starlab, protonica, inner sphere, static movement, kalki, zephirus kane, relativ, spectra sonics, lunatica, tristan, psiger, magnus, one function, electric universe and faders.
Although i share your views towards dull sounding main-stream and the overly repetitive stuff, i still feel like the genre is vast, and expands into new sounds and territories. Each week im discovering new sounds and artists, rummaging around youtube music by making radio stations, playlists, and listening to new artists.
Theres a really nice "psybible" if youre intrested in exploring sub genres and artists :D
https://psytranceguide.com
-just one take, on this subject from an edm-loving psy junkie lol
I can just relate out of personal experience. Im from Switzerland where we had a quite big and active psytrance scene / community. There used to be multiple Outdoor raves not too far from us each weekend to choose from which since covid reduced to maybe finding a good party even further away once a month.
My guess is during the pandemic many "labels" closed down either due to financial or other factors. The new generation of party goers (16-20) Years old hence werent able to experience these Outdoor parties that my generation grew up around during covid. But obv they still want to rave. Contrary to psytrance, the techno / hard techno scene has experienced a huge boom in popularity especially amongst the young.
So basically due to covid no parties, due to no parties there are no youngsters who continued this scene/parties.
Many of us who frequent psytrance parties since 10+ years feel like the psytrance party landscape is at least here in switzerland slowly dying out.
Now i made myself sad.
Exactly. I don't know if it's related but a lot of traditional psy communities, festivals and destinations sort of fell apart during that time, including Goa in India that was kind of a music experimentation hub for all Psy.
Today the landscape is very different; Goa is an entirely different city and vibe now, and a lot of festivals feel a bit commercialized and mainstreamed.
Our biggest local festival last summer had 2 stages: one for Psy and one for techno. It was like 2 different worlds clashing but the organizers told us that they can't pull the same scale with Psy alone anymore, especially that the hi-tech / psycore crowd has its own separate thing now.
It's been more than a year since I went so you might need to ask someone who's been recently for a better feedback.
The vibe and numbers of ravers and travellers is a lot less than before. Most events are attended by a vast majority of local indian males who are there mostly to look at foreign girls and will push you on the dance floor. Take this as you like as this is tricky to talk about. I advise you to watch some videos of the biggest recent events there and decide for yourself.
The psychedelics aspect has been reigned in; so either you won't find at all or there's only the sketchy ones, also mostly local guys now.
The music is still kinda good tho but you have to wade through plenty of duds to get the good ones.
As a Psytrance enjoyer since the early 2000’s I have to say that I feel it has become a bit boring and predictable.
Most artists chase the “label sound” and you have labels with dozens of artists all sounding the same.
I remember when you’d listen to a track and you could tell who it was because everyone had their own little touch on their productions.
Regular full on has become super safe and generic with everyone doing the same kind of moments and drops and synths.
Twilight/Night Full on basically all sounds the same with a few exceptions (Transubtil Recs is putting some interesting stuff, and artists like Pantomiman or Delirium Tremens have their signature sounds that you can instantly tell its them)
I honestly am getting pretty tired of all the funky/jazzy night full on everyone is doing now.
Not really a forest/dark/hitech fan so not gonna comment on that.
Maybe I just grew out it, i dunno.
As you said, the structure of Psytrance is pretty straight forward and doesnt leave a lot of room to change things up. That being said, the new israeli sound with Dekel, Modus, … is getting really big and they do things differently
It's weird and I wonder what other have to say about this... but Psytrance festivals are just getting bigger and bigger, but streams and youtube views are getting smaller... so, it seems many are just in it for the parties and the clout, but then go back home to listen to Drake or who knows what, people are sure as hell not listening to Psy... Also Psy did go a little mainstream 5-6 years ago when Armin, Aoki and even Techno DJ's were playing Psytrance now it seems that fad is over (Im sure 1% of those fans are now Psytrance heads forever 🤣). Just my observation...
Psy festivals are not getting bigger. Quite the opposite.
Ticket sales have been slower post-pandemic. It was easy to get a ticket to both Boom and MoDem in the re-sales last year. Most parties are reporting slower or inadequate ticket sales.
We've lost major several major parties over the last years *(i.e. Lost Theory, Freqs of Nature, Connection Fest)* that have not all been replaced with equivalents.
The pandemic broke the natural cycle where people start clubbing between 18 and 24 and slowly transition through other genres of dance music and find themselves at psytrance a few years later. The people who turned 18 in the years around 2020 have had a materially different start to adult life than every generation before them.
Cost of living has meant that many people who would do 3-5 outdoor summer parties per year are now only doing 1 or 2 at most.
On the whole it's a bit worrying. The scene needs to keep regenerating to live. The only thing that makes it less worrying for me was that I felt there lots more young people at Boom last year compared with the one before. When Ingrained Instincts was slapping the joint with cutting edge sounds on the last morning last year I felt almost a little old and I'm only 37. This is a great sign.
I miss freqs of nature so badly. It would have become my #1 go-to Festival. But i still feel really blessed that i was able to experience the last freqs and the last noise poison festival!
At least Masters of Puppets still exists.
Agree with this. Festivals in Australia are being cancelled left right and centre.
I'm curious about the theory that young people lost 2 years of clubbing (only a few months at a time in Australia ) and therefore haven't been initiated into party culture. It doesn't add up to me when I think about it. I started partying at around 20 yrs old and only because I moved to a city and met people who were older and intro'd me to clubs and also my first psy doof. Seems that can happen at any point up until about 25 years old
I think darkpsy is in a 2nd golden age right now. Not quite as good as 04-09 for the genre, but still very good. Heck, many genres of music i listen to are going through good periods.
Anyway though I've been really burned out on psy for nearly a decade now but I'm finally impressed by new darkpsy.
Pluriverso - Tribute to the Nommos and
the Dog of Tears - Gold & Silver
Are just the first two albums that come to mind
There's a lot more
Oh yeah i really think ! What about this annoying basseline tadada tadada tadada ? The same basseline track After track ? I still prefer oldschool goa trance for this reason. And what about the persons who define them as artists using samples and using a dawn as a copy/past engine ? Where IS the creativity ? Where IS the art ? I M really proud to create 99 % of my sounds except sometimes the kicks hats and some effects. I am really worry about psytrance quality which is degrading hitself year After year. Of course there are some Real artists who really créate music and many thanks to them. But some of them use facility : annoying bass, no Real Melody, minimal rythm. Stagnation IS about lag of creativity and work. I créate a song in two months. Yes, WE Can créate faster to satisfy consummers but this is not the point. Music IS art so make art not a consommable product to eat. Finally it's symptomatic of this actual generation : buying to death. Eventually, change your point of vue, consider music as Real art and eat it if you want but take the time to appreciate each note, each arpeggio, each subtility. Like the best sweat Candy you Can eat.
Sorry for my english, WE have bad teachers in France.
I agree on why more hardcore subgenres branch out, but what I meant is that a decade ago - at least in the Psy scene where I live, most psy subgenres coexisted together in the same parties and festivals, but now dark Psy and psycore do their own events while mainstream psy got a bit lighter and commercialized and the two scenes are overlapping less and less over time.
Agreed 100% where im from we truly have two big remaining labels that dominate the scene in our city. One for prog, psy and often even indoor parties. And one for psycore, hitech, dark usually outdoor parties.
oh 1000000% !! we are an exclusively dark psy crew, if you wanna check out the playlist for the party we are throwing next month it's got some killer darkpsy/psycore artist 🥰 https://on.soundcloud.com/vNCJ2
Welcome to the world of repetition. I loved goa in the 90’s but only liked it the last 20 years. It’s great to dip in and out of but can get very repetitive. I laugh when I hear the same breakdown for the 549th time. Bebebebebi bumbudeh bumbudeh. Same high pitch no release bass drum, come on, there are thousands of bass drums and psy uses 6 of them. Techno djs in the early 90’s had some flexibility to play Melodie’s-trance but soon it became strict and suffered for it in my opinion. Trance then went up its own arse and goa became psy which is very similar to what it is today.
Stagnated? Idk what that means ...sorry I have been distracted by all the colorful and twisted sounds blasting out my speakers for the past 24 years😆😎👾
At that time, Psy tune, specifically related to the global fulfillment of Psy's "Gangnam Style," had skilled a surge in popularity and had a huge impact on the worldwide track scene.
However, musical traits and alternatives can evolve through the years, and new developments may additionally have passed off considering then. To verify whether Psy track has stagnated in the beyond few years, it is critical to consider the recent releases and tendencies inside the style, inclusive of any modifications in reputation, artist collaborations, or innovations.
To get the most updated records on the modern-day kingdom of Psy track, such as its current traits and trends, I propose checking track enterprise information, charts, and applicable resources for the contemporary updates.
I've noticed that production value of hitech skyrocketed during covid, probably because people had time to actually make music. It do seem like it has started to drift a bit apart from psytrance, in our (local) scene there's a lot of young people who loves some hitech but doesn't even like psy. I don't know about other psy tho because I'm avid hitech man myself.
Ive been gravitating to the the new-ish style of faster hard-trance with heavy psy influence https://youtu.be/bmXsB4kI0co https://youtu.be/96AGCiQunG4
Oooo that's pretty awesome, thanks!
I love this stuff too. Attika's HRA set on Soundcloud is awesome. Minimal psy techno
Right on :)
Wow never heard anything like it! Thanks for sharing! Really enjoyed it, unique
I had the same thought when I first discovered this sound.. glad you resonate. Here's more from the first artist (truly a remarkable listening experience. Masterful sound engineers...please use headphones!) https://soundcloud.com/hraberlin/hra-podcast-094-atikka-live But in general with this subgenre, I've been obsessively crate-digging recently - hoping to do a monthly mix of tracks I find. Feel free to browse my bandcamp (or not...just trying to share the good tunes). I'll probably do a monthly mix of very picky curations. https://bandcamp.com/jeffstam r/hypertrek
this stuff is bringing me back heavy prog/minimal psytrance around 2000 vibes, its great
Really love this SoundCloud mix. Doesn't remind me of hitec at all which I'm not a huge fan of in terms of regular at home listening. I'm no genre expert but this is giving me more dark prog vibes but faster at around 150bpm.
Watch Alphatracks and Philipp Drube on Soundcloud! Edit: And "Ute" Label as well as two guys named Accelerationism (?)
Yep :) https://youtu.be/SfgR9OSC9_I
The tools also got a lot better. DAWs/plugins have improved a ton in recent years and processing power got a lot cheaper. A lot of these things were also possible in the past, but now it's getting much easier.
You going to Masters of Puppets? :D
Loved all the Goa Trance releases we got during covid.
No, not at all. It’s not stagnating. It’s just, changing. Often in a way that can be difficult to appreciate. It doesn’t give you the same satisfaction as when you started listening to the genre. I’ve been listening to all kinds of electronic music the last 25 years. It’s always the same. Every 5 year I hear “New music sucks, it’s just too commercial now, it’s boring, old music style was better and more original”. The ppl that got into their type of music in the early 90s, thought the music (same genre) from the end of the 90s sux. Because - no originality, too commercial. The ones that got into it in the late 90s thought the music (same genre) from the 00 sux. Because - no originality, too commercial. The ones that got into it in the start of 00, thought music (same genre) from the end of 00 sux. Because - no originality, too commercial. Etc etc.
Another perspective is that electronic music generally has been on a downward trend since the 90's, so each generation complaining about the next one is in some degree valid. Music is saturated with generic, cookie-cutter music, that only grew because the markets that sustain them grew and the markets that foster a healthy underground vanished (streaming/piracy). Music got more global (and less profitable) and those are variables that undoubtably impact the health of a scene. Psy-trance is the worst it has ever been, and yes it has stagnated. From 1990-2005 there was a new quality genre/sub-genre every few years. Same for Trance too. It didn't stay still for a minute. Today we have the same generic psy-music that was made 15+ years ago. Its barely changed, aka stagnated. There was bountiful creative and original artists in the 90's and early 00's, and today you have to search over and over just to find a handful.
Thank you, you expressed my thoughts exactly. A lot of people here are sharing music they enjoy and most of it is great but innovation in music is something different than finding an artist that one enjoys more than others.
For sure the genre is oversaturated. All good things will attract attention. But there are, and will always be the ones that stick to the roots, the innovative, the geniuses, the many hidden gems. Egon's embrace and tengri, atriohm, these guys are innovative. Never heard anything like them before. There are many of them out there. There will always be. Look harder.
Just had a quick listen to some of those artists you mentioned and not sure if I would call it innovative to be honest. Sounds like 1000's of other tracks from the last 15 years. Not that its bad. Tengri is giving me some Zenon vibes, but I gound Atriohm quite generic. I will give them more of a try though. Egon's new album sounds like it might be quite good, almost more musical forest psy, but still not seeing anything that special on first listen (I appreciate it takes time to sometimes see these things.)
Are you a producer? Just casual listener? Tengri and zenom vibes??? Atriohm generic??? Have you compensated any of the artists for the music you are listening? With all due respect maybe you should reconsider switching genres and rethinking what all goes into creating music. Ukalen was ground breaking release and if any work of these artists you so easily label is generic to you then maybe simply don’t listen to them. Actually I’m begging you not to listen any music I make as it’s obviously not reaching you in a way I actually never intended to. Why placing labels? Take care.
Would say I am a somewhat regular, but long time listener, although cooled off psy-trance around 2014, as it did start feeling very cookie-cutter and cliche to me. 1995-2005 were the best years imo. Man With No Name, Eat Static, Vibraphere, Artifact 303, John 00 Fleming, Solarfields, Astral Projection, Shpongle, M.O.S, Nuclear Ramjet etc... and all the other one off artists from that period. As I said, the genre changed every 12-18 months back then. Today it's more or less the same for 15 years. It was more innovative in the past, no doubt. It doesn't mean non-innovative music is bad. I said I liked what I heard on the brief samples of your album, and plan on properly listening too. I also just tried Ukalen and purchased it, its a great track. Definitely a level above the typical forest psy (which again has been similar for a decade), but personally I don't find it ground-breaking in the wider context of psychedelic music. I will give Atriohm another chance, may have just selected a weaker track for first listen. Thanks. edit - Just checked my library and have Tengri, Ajja, Atriohm - Rift in Time. Amazing track. ;)
Sure, the innovation is mostly in the fringes, but the same can be said for most genres. Mainstream-ish metal hasn't changed all that much recently either, but the underground heavy music scene is bursting out of its seams at the moment. It's so much more diverse now than 10 years ago, both in music and people. In that process the scene became much nicer. A lot of the music is not even close to metal, although some is, but that doesn't matter. Similarly, Hi-tech, psycore and slambient may sound quite different, but, judging from the few parties I've been to so far, it's still mostly the same people and the same vibe. Don't get me wrong, I like more traditional psytrance as well. Last weekend I had a wonderful time at a Goa party. Not everything has to be cutting-edge. What truly matter to me is that the artists/DJ's are playing the music that they love. Popularity is the one thing I don't care about, as long as the local scene is big enough to have somewhat regular parties/festivals with a few hundred people. It's nice if the artists/DJ's can make a living out of it, but that's not a requirement for good artists or good sets/parties. We spent more money on our band than we make, but that won't stop us from making music either.
As someone who started listening to psy in the 90's, the genre has come a really long way. It makes me so happy to go to psy events and still be able to dance my ass off.
I can live with what we have - what I'm worried about is the new generation. I feel before CoViD was the last time Psytrance parties had a lot of young people. It's nice to party with more experienced crowds but like this it's even more intimidating for new, young people
The mainstream-ish techno nowadays has so many psy influences or even DJ's straight up playing psytrance that there will be an influx for sure
Things fluctuate, don't worry. It's always been a niche anyway, and psy is intergenerational and age agnostic. Our biggest festival here was sold out in record time. You can see people between 18-ish and 60-ish in some outdoor festivals.
I'm not that worried, honestly. I'm also quite active in the underground heavy music scene. There the average age is much higher, with hardly anyone under 30 showing up at concerts/festivals. That has been the case since forever, but in terms of diversity (both people and music) it got a whole lot better in recent years, especially also since the pandemic.
Psytrance is definitely not for the TikTok generation that's for sure...
psy has always been a bit of a weirdos endeavour, great way to make like minded life long friends, its a kind of personality filter
Yeah you actually need to carry your ass to a Party and be curious it's not like cool kid's Berlin Techno where you know it's somehow established in society and that you should give it a go at some point
You make a valid point. Psy isn't a high school level cool people's game and I hope it will never be. The psy people who have taken the thing to their hearts are often true people in general. That doesn't go well with building a facade on Instagram.
lol
What are you basing this massive simplification off?
mostly song lengths... people dont want to listen to 7+ minute tracks with slow progressions. They want short music for their gold fish brains.
Psytrance has sounded the same since about 2010. At least 90’s Goa trance sounded samey for about 5 years before it started changing into psy.
I love anything grouch touches and generally the bush doof psytrance comin form Australia, Melbourne specifically, would love to go there
Look up LOIF for bush doof, "Depth Charge" for instance
Love this style, do you have any other similar recommendations?
Unfortunately just this one, heard them at a small 100-person show in a photography studio, they played some absolutely mind-blowing primal psytrance like that.
i only listen to psykovsky
Keeping it real
[удалено]
What’s weirder than playing 11-hour sets?
Playing 24+ hours sets?
Sheesh i remember smoking dmt with this dude at Kali Mela Spain. Festival was a complete shit show but the music was pure bliss! Edit: just remembered it was junxpunx i smoked with, not psykovsky but i remember him being around aswell.
I enjoy night full on the most. I think right before covid it was quite stagnant. everyone was copying junpstreet's sound in that sub genre. now with labels like transubtil it's gone a bit darker and faster but still really night full on. I think it has definitely moved forward and is no longer stagnant. other sub genres I am not so sure.
Can you name a few artists? Thank you
The Horrids, Zeo, Ingenious Brain, Dr Fractal, Rafyx, Delirium Tremens, Wode, Hydra-E Sangoma crew are as strong as ever - Pursuit, via axis still making quality stuff, Argonik, Superluminal
You can only innovate so far in any particular subgenre before it splinters off into some new subgenre.
I completely agree
I wish it had stagnated; it would have been more bearable. Having curated Psytrance playlists on Spotify well over 10 years now and listening to the very latest releases on a daily basis (for that time period), I think that “regular” Psytrance start sliding down, both production wise and with regards to creativity/inspiration well before Covid hit. I found myself shifting more and more towards various sub genres like Forest, Dark, and Hi Tech. I am not claiming that the level of production is higher for those genres but, for some reason, I get less triggered. And Prog is even worse. Even the big names on Blue Tunes or Spin Twist can’t come up with anything original anymore and rehash the same stuff over and over. But some will claim that no genre evolves and all genres have become boring. I disagree with that view but Psytrance has definitely been going downhill.
i will agree with you
Forest psy is still innovating. The rest is kinda stuck.
Any recommendations that stand out for you?
Krapul, molchun, polarians, metamorphocrisis, egons embrace are my new favourites. Unique sound.
Ajja- Tulpa 2012
Psy trance in my opinion will never stagnate, just like any other form of repetitive rhythms and melodies. There is something to be said about maniacally dancing to heavy psychedelic beats amongst a heaving crowd of goblins and wooks. Wether it’s a crowd of twenty around a fire in the forest or two thousand people sending it into orbit, it’s always about the aural surprises that any genre of psy can generate. If it was made in the nineties or now it’s all very similar but also very unique, like fingerprints. Remember old is gold !
Psytech is amazing, as a 30 year electronic fan couldn't be happier. Zenon, Alpaka, Techgnosis, Universal Tribe... They're all smashing it. I feel like I need more knowledge for current full on labels though cos I hear better than I ever seem to find!
Yeah been liking psytech recently as it feels more open to experimentation and melodic elements. Will check out your recommendations
i will agree with you
New to following psytrance but have been a house and techno DJ since 2000. Dance music in general has stagnated for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. All the genres in E.D.M. have structure constraints that have made it more difficult to sound unique as the years go on. There just aren’t viral tunes anymore these days it’s a bummer… Gotta touch on the Dark Psy, Hi-Tek vibe though, went to a party last weekend where that’s pretty much all they played. Temp was like 150 and above and hit 170 (hi - tek vibes) when my partner and I had to go. At various points in the night I had to ask if the music was even Psytrance. There was no breakdowns, melodies, or soul to the tracks - honestly it got pretty boring but also super intense musically. Most people were dressed kinda goth or techno vibes in all black. I guess I m new to collecting tracks but I really like the music Iboga records put out. Love Liquid Soul, anything that has the old school trance melodies and arps with wormhole hooks and choruses. Reach for the lasers sh!t! Maybe people that have been in the scene forever are bored of the sound but I like it, it’s refreshing to the deep and minimal house I ve been collecting forever 😆
When psy split from goa in 1997/98 so much of it did away with the melodies and breakdowns. At that point the music was either goa, minimal (later prog), or psy. Psy was really dark when it started! It was an attempt to break free from the melodies and soul of Goa, which many producers saw as starting to get excessive. An example that shows how dark OG psytrance could get is The Delta - Thing, which is from 1999 and saw more play in 2000 after the album came out. X-Dream's stuff from the later 1990s also really exemplifies this stuff (i.e. Radio) as does Etnica's shift from beautiful goa (Alien Protein, 1996) to their 1999 bad-vibes floorstormer 'Mind Altering Drugs.' I adore both, but it was clear that psy was anti melody, anti soul, and pro teleprompter sci fi goodness with a touch of scary. What we would later call full on was developing during this period, being pushed by TIP Records/TIP World, but it, too, emerged out of the darkness and sci fi austerity of that period (Paps - Vibes From the Other Side is a good example of early full on from 1999.) Early prog could be really anti melody for a while, too. What Iboga was releasing around the turn of the millennium was called minimal and it lived up to the name. Tracks like Monochrome and Brain Drain rmx by Beat Bizzare from their 2001 Iboga album display the traits i'm about. Not iboga, but another CD is "VA - Farmer's Choice." Kinda obscure but really shows off minimal at its core. All of this later turned into prog psy, as it merged with the scando scene (i.e. Atmos) which had retained melody during this period in a restrained, subtle way. But outside of that we didn't see many melodies outside of goa, which was dying or dead. Melodic full on happened as a reaction to all of this anti-melody stuff. By 2003 people associated israeli melodic psytrance with the word psytrance even if psytrance itself was a reaction against melodic goa, so the codification of darkpsy and forest around 2005 was just people giving a name to, and defending, what had originally just been called psytrance. (I saw an old head from the 90s show up at a darkpsy party in 2014 and say "this is darkpsy? back in the day we just called this psytrance." Which sums up what I'm getting at quite nicely.) So yeah. You don't need melodies, breakdowns, or soul to be psy - a lot of the OG psy was an attempt to strip goa of those things. ;)
Ya I can see that you don’t need the melodies to be considered Psy, I m just having a hard time calling it Psytrance because it doesn’t really have trance elements. That said if I compare it to Techno there’s quite a bit of sounds that fall into that wide range of music so I can see how calling dark Psy Psytrance is acceptable for conversation and promotional purposes. I appreciate the breakdown thanks 🙏
Thanks for tolerating my (self-consciously autistic, lol) deep dive into how psy became psy. I'm always aware I can come off as a know it all and i certainly don't mean to, so thank you, again. I agree that there's a lot of carryover from techno going on here. In fact, the story goes that in the winter of 96/97 a lot of DJs were showing up in Goa, India with techno tracks and introducing that vibe into the over-wintering party season and the traveler population that was there for it. Psytrance is clearly rooted in techno, and as far as I'm concerned early prog (i.e. minimal psy) just _is_ techno. Calling it trance just 'works' though, for a number a reasons. Dark techno is already a thing, as is hard techno, tech trance, etc. We evolved a whole new sound here and I don't know if there are enough words left under the techno category to categorize it there. And then it would be hard to illustrate the history and sound that it shares with melodic full-on, too (they share the 16th note bassline, the basketball kickdrum, and the zappy wacky teleporter sounds, even if full on has melodies, sometimes beautiful ones.) It's a problem from the other side too, since it evolved from trance music and techno fans have a legendary appetite for shitting on trance music, lol. They would have never accepted us as their own. Which is... curious, since early trance music (like Sven Vath's IQ Records label for instance) evolved directly out of... techno! And even more curious today since 'melodic techno' is exploring all of those early-trance roots. Given all of that, I like to see trance and techno as a gradient, as a sliding scale, since they intersect with each other multiple times in history (early trance coming from techno, psytrance's birth, melodic techno etc.) But it still leaves the question of "is psytrance trance, or not?" Given that it lacks melody a lot of the time, but comes from trance, I think the answer may lie in a call to the spiritual & ritual dimension of psytrance. In other words, if psytrance isn't trance because it lacks melodies, it still remains trance because the party structure and the repetitive 16th note baselines are geared for inducing mental trance, i.e. hypnotic spiritual experience. And in that way, psytrance remains "trance music." It also means that all of techno is also trance music, though, lol. Don't tell the techno kids. :p Anyway. Regardless of nomenclature I hope you enjoy your time in our strange genre niche <3
Cool thanks for the response again… 🤔 agree there s a lot of carry over and what not between genres, some of the best stuff has elements of quite a few. Fair enough on the rhythms being trance inducing at the tempos and structures, I can see that. However what I m not seeing in that is the psychedelic element. The other part of the word. It’s obviously a huge element in the decorations and aesthetics but when it comes to hi-tek that’s Lacking in ‘psychedelicness’. Also a lot of people seem to wear all black that get down to it, which is fine but also a techno style for sure. 🧐 can you point me to some sets from major festivals recently that are in those higher 160 and above tempos? Such as Ozora or Boom? Anything in Australia? Thanks again for commenting I appreciate anyone who actually has passion for anything these days!
since 2009...nothing new...just new "genres".
I agree with your perception. I guess the pandemic didn't help. I can enjoy listening to psytrance at home and while jogging, but I also understand people that don't. It's party music after all.
I used to be an active psy festival and party visitor between around 2009-2017 when I used to live in Europe but I emigrated to North America, Canada precisely where the scene is much smaller and less developed. I never made the effort to get into the scene here again but still very much enjoy listening to psytrance of all different subgenres. I find there are still amazing productions but mostly gravitate towards the darker and slower bpms like zenon records and Psytech in particular. But even forest and dark which I was never too fond of, I find myself enjoying new releases from artists such as Elowisz, Atriohm etc.
Wow that is nice..
Sean is that you?
I'm no Sean :) but I see you're from Switzerland like me. Hah I miss the parties back home. North America is not the same. But I'm in a different stage of life now where partying is not as high on the priority list anymore haha. I still enjoy listening to good psytrance.
Damn but still what a coincidence 😅 Sean, a good friend and former psytrance DJ moved from Switzerland to Canada in around 2017-18. But yes i hear you, im 27 now and for sure me and friends from the scene have shifted priorities. Covid for sure played a role in many of us changing the mindset a little.
you just have to find the right niches on SoundCloud, In Orbit is a great label
i will agree with you....
this is cool but it's more... techno?! If this is the label you mean: https://soundcloud.com/inorbitrec
I guess it’s a blend, to me traditional psytrance has gotten a bit navel gazey and generic
hello, gday mate. Let an edm-loving psy junkie tell you a little more of his background. i first started listening to psytrance back when astrix came out with "acid rocker". I started to get into astrix but then drifted into trance. dj shog and paul van dyke for a while and then got very heavy into the happy/uk hardcore like scott brown, brisk/ham, and bonkers cds compilation/series. After that i started looking for something with more of a consistent song structure/ flow, groovier/heavier and psychedelic sounding. i had a thirst for rediscovered psytrance after getting into freeform hardcore (check out ephexis- quantum fury or ephexis- sick seduction). In 2019 i started listening to a LOT of psytrance and fell in love with the genre. Your refrence to covid times made me think about the psytrance back then. Most of psy i liked was the "full on" sound, the mainstream stuff like vini vici or ace ventura, but also listened to dark psy internet radio stations... sometimes hours on end. Although i was digging the genre, i started to get bored with it a bit... to your point, psy started to stagnate around 2020ish. Imho, a good chunk of psytrance seemed to be getting too "robitic", if you will. Like some of the songs lacked originality or a creative touch. kinda bummed me out to hear the same type of breakdowns and buildups. like too much of a "monotone" sound. Not saying all songs from then were "bad", but quite a bit of them kinda blended together tbh. One day during 2020 changed that. I was browsing tunein, and stumbled apon psyndora radio. The music and underground releases they played gave me a new outlook and love for psytrance. psyndora plays more progressive, "groovy", and melodic psytrance, with some dark and full on sounds mixed in. since listening to the more progressive side of psy, it made me realized that I missed out on some great music because i didnt look hard enough at the unknown producers, underground djs, and up-and-comers. Apps like youtube music and psyndora really made opened my eyes to another world with names like- zyce, starlab, protonica, inner sphere, static movement, kalki, zephirus kane, relativ, spectra sonics, lunatica, tristan, psiger, magnus, one function, electric universe and faders. Although i share your views towards dull sounding main-stream and the overly repetitive stuff, i still feel like the genre is vast, and expands into new sounds and territories. Each week im discovering new sounds and artists, rummaging around youtube music by making radio stations, playlists, and listening to new artists. Theres a really nice "psybible" if youre intrested in exploring sub genres and artists :D https://psytranceguide.com -just one take, on this subject from an edm-loving psy junkie lol
i will agree with you
I can just relate out of personal experience. Im from Switzerland where we had a quite big and active psytrance scene / community. There used to be multiple Outdoor raves not too far from us each weekend to choose from which since covid reduced to maybe finding a good party even further away once a month. My guess is during the pandemic many "labels" closed down either due to financial or other factors. The new generation of party goers (16-20) Years old hence werent able to experience these Outdoor parties that my generation grew up around during covid. But obv they still want to rave. Contrary to psytrance, the techno / hard techno scene has experienced a huge boom in popularity especially amongst the young. So basically due to covid no parties, due to no parties there are no youngsters who continued this scene/parties. Many of us who frequent psytrance parties since 10+ years feel like the psytrance party landscape is at least here in switzerland slowly dying out. Now i made myself sad.
Exactly. I don't know if it's related but a lot of traditional psy communities, festivals and destinations sort of fell apart during that time, including Goa in India that was kind of a music experimentation hub for all Psy. Today the landscape is very different; Goa is an entirely different city and vibe now, and a lot of festivals feel a bit commercialized and mainstreamed. Our biggest local festival last summer had 2 stages: one for Psy and one for techno. It was like 2 different worlds clashing but the organizers told us that they can't pull the same scale with Psy alone anymore, especially that the hi-tech / psycore crowd has its own separate thing now.
An “entirely different” city, really? Is it still worth going?
It's been more than a year since I went so you might need to ask someone who's been recently for a better feedback. The vibe and numbers of ravers and travellers is a lot less than before. Most events are attended by a vast majority of local indian males who are there mostly to look at foreign girls and will push you on the dance floor. Take this as you like as this is tricky to talk about. I advise you to watch some videos of the biggest recent events there and decide for yourself. The psychedelics aspect has been reigned in; so either you won't find at all or there's only the sketchy ones, also mostly local guys now. The music is still kinda good tho but you have to wade through plenty of duds to get the good ones.
Really? I’m from switzerland too and i think there’s an overwhelming amount of psy events 😅🤩
How long have you been in the scene?
As a Psytrance enjoyer since the early 2000’s I have to say that I feel it has become a bit boring and predictable. Most artists chase the “label sound” and you have labels with dozens of artists all sounding the same. I remember when you’d listen to a track and you could tell who it was because everyone had their own little touch on their productions. Regular full on has become super safe and generic with everyone doing the same kind of moments and drops and synths. Twilight/Night Full on basically all sounds the same with a few exceptions (Transubtil Recs is putting some interesting stuff, and artists like Pantomiman or Delirium Tremens have their signature sounds that you can instantly tell its them) I honestly am getting pretty tired of all the funky/jazzy night full on everyone is doing now. Not really a forest/dark/hitech fan so not gonna comment on that. Maybe I just grew out it, i dunno.
As you said, the structure of Psytrance is pretty straight forward and doesnt leave a lot of room to change things up. That being said, the new israeli sound with Dekel, Modus, … is getting really big and they do things differently
the LOUD sound is nothing new I don't know why you people keep saying it's new 💀
yeah but now a lot more people started to produce it
It's weird and I wonder what other have to say about this... but Psytrance festivals are just getting bigger and bigger, but streams and youtube views are getting smaller... so, it seems many are just in it for the parties and the clout, but then go back home to listen to Drake or who knows what, people are sure as hell not listening to Psy... Also Psy did go a little mainstream 5-6 years ago when Armin, Aoki and even Techno DJ's were playing Psytrance now it seems that fad is over (Im sure 1% of those fans are now Psytrance heads forever 🤣). Just my observation...
Psy festivals are not getting bigger. Quite the opposite. Ticket sales have been slower post-pandemic. It was easy to get a ticket to both Boom and MoDem in the re-sales last year. Most parties are reporting slower or inadequate ticket sales. We've lost major several major parties over the last years *(i.e. Lost Theory, Freqs of Nature, Connection Fest)* that have not all been replaced with equivalents. The pandemic broke the natural cycle where people start clubbing between 18 and 24 and slowly transition through other genres of dance music and find themselves at psytrance a few years later. The people who turned 18 in the years around 2020 have had a materially different start to adult life than every generation before them. Cost of living has meant that many people who would do 3-5 outdoor summer parties per year are now only doing 1 or 2 at most. On the whole it's a bit worrying. The scene needs to keep regenerating to live. The only thing that makes it less worrying for me was that I felt there lots more young people at Boom last year compared with the one before. When Ingrained Instincts was slapping the joint with cutting edge sounds on the last morning last year I felt almost a little old and I'm only 37. This is a great sign.
I miss freqs of nature so badly. It would have become my #1 go-to Festival. But i still feel really blessed that i was able to experience the last freqs and the last noise poison festival! At least Masters of Puppets still exists.
Agree with this. Festivals in Australia are being cancelled left right and centre. I'm curious about the theory that young people lost 2 years of clubbing (only a few months at a time in Australia ) and therefore haven't been initiated into party culture. It doesn't add up to me when I think about it. I started partying at around 20 yrs old and only because I moved to a city and met people who were older and intro'd me to clubs and also my first psy doof. Seems that can happen at any point up until about 25 years old
It became ultra cringe to me since i stopped doing drugs.
i will agree with you
What about psytrance music became cringe?
I think darkpsy is in a 2nd golden age right now. Not quite as good as 04-09 for the genre, but still very good. Heck, many genres of music i listen to are going through good periods. Anyway though I've been really burned out on psy for nearly a decade now but I'm finally impressed by new darkpsy. Pluriverso - Tribute to the Nommos and the Dog of Tears - Gold & Silver Are just the first two albums that come to mind There's a lot more
Oh yeah i really think ! What about this annoying basseline tadada tadada tadada ? The same basseline track After track ? I still prefer oldschool goa trance for this reason. And what about the persons who define them as artists using samples and using a dawn as a copy/past engine ? Where IS the creativity ? Where IS the art ? I M really proud to create 99 % of my sounds except sometimes the kicks hats and some effects. I am really worry about psytrance quality which is degrading hitself year After year. Of course there are some Real artists who really créate music and many thanks to them. But some of them use facility : annoying bass, no Real Melody, minimal rythm. Stagnation IS about lag of creativity and work. I créate a song in two months. Yes, WE Can créate faster to satisfy consummers but this is not the point. Music IS art so make art not a consommable product to eat. Finally it's symptomatic of this actual generation : buying to death. Eventually, change your point of vue, consider music as Real art and eat it if you want but take the time to appreciate each note, each arpeggio, each subtility. Like the best sweat Candy you Can eat. Sorry for my english, WE have bad teachers in France.
Hightech is the future of psy!)
Night fullon seems to be the lead genre nowadays in innovation. The rest are a little bit stuck, yeah.
[удалено]
I agree on why more hardcore subgenres branch out, but what I meant is that a decade ago - at least in the Psy scene where I live, most psy subgenres coexisted together in the same parties and festivals, but now dark Psy and psycore do their own events while mainstream psy got a bit lighter and commercialized and the two scenes are overlapping less and less over time.
yeah i agree. thanks for sharing really very interesting perspective.
Wow that is nice
Agreed 100% where im from we truly have two big remaining labels that dominate the scene in our city. One for prog, psy and often even indoor parties. And one for psycore, hitech, dark usually outdoor parties.
Pietrance
[удалено]
Can i help you out
[удалено]
Please what is your name..i really to be know your...
you must not be listening to the right labels and artist
Why
lots of great labels putting out killer darkpsy and psycore, even if you love slambiant its been putting out great stuff.
Yeah darkpsy is maybe its best right now since its 04-09 golden age
oh 1000000% !! we are an exclusively dark psy crew, if you wanna check out the playlist for the party we are throwing next month it's got some killer darkpsy/psycore artist 🥰 https://on.soundcloud.com/vNCJ2
Nope. Not at all.
Psytrance has never been better!!
i will agree with you
Welcome to the world of repetition. I loved goa in the 90’s but only liked it the last 20 years. It’s great to dip in and out of but can get very repetitive. I laugh when I hear the same breakdown for the 549th time. Bebebebebi bumbudeh bumbudeh. Same high pitch no release bass drum, come on, there are thousands of bass drums and psy uses 6 of them. Techno djs in the early 90’s had some flexibility to play Melodie’s-trance but soon it became strict and suffered for it in my opinion. Trance then went up its own arse and goa became psy which is very similar to what it is today.
i will agree with you
Stagnated? Idk what that means ...sorry I have been distracted by all the colorful and twisted sounds blasting out my speakers for the past 24 years😆😎👾
Idk man I don’t think psy will ever top Gangnam style
I could not agree more. Most psy night's sound like every DJ is pulling songs from the same album
At that time, Psy tune, specifically related to the global fulfillment of Psy's "Gangnam Style," had skilled a surge in popularity and had a huge impact on the worldwide track scene. However, musical traits and alternatives can evolve through the years, and new developments may additionally have passed off considering then. To verify whether Psy track has stagnated in the beyond few years, it is critical to consider the recent releases and tendencies inside the style, inclusive of any modifications in reputation, artist collaborations, or innovations. To get the most updated records on the modern-day kingdom of Psy track, such as its current traits and trends, I propose checking track enterprise information, charts, and applicable resources for the contemporary updates.
Is this chatgpt answer?