Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Rieko's GOA/Psytrance Set

This set was a tour of a few GOA Trance/Psytrance subgenres, since there were a few questions about the genres the prior week. I'm not a real expert on categories, so it's just a rough tour, and I'm sure a lot of this could generate pages of debate.

GOA Trance: GOA Trance is named that way because it emerged from groups of hippies (LOL) playing music for each other in GOA, India, a place where they used to congregate as a retreat from society. For me, GOA sounds are dreamy, often other poeple describe them as 'organic'. You ride along with to multiple layers of cascading, pulsing, and meandering synthesizers. The beats set the pace, but aren't pronounced. There are now many subgenres of GOA also, but I'm just sticking with the standard.

1. Astral Project - "Amen"
2. Ethereal - "Moondawn"
3. Shakta - "Ten Times Around the Sun"

Psychedelic Trance: Psychedelic Trance evolved from GOA Trance. The sound is more electronic, and progresses through different varieties of sounds, whereas GOA tends to use layers of similar 'squelches'. Psytrance also has a greater emphasis on the beats.

4. Silicon Sound - "Inner Space"

Morning Full On: A popular subgenre of Psytrance emerged as Psy's popularity grew. Morning Full On focused on catchy, uplifting melodies, drawing a bit of influence from popular club music. There's often a clean synthesizer or an angelic background tone.

5. Protoculture - "Circadians"

Full On: Normal Full On Psytrance focuses on high energy, exciting beats. Full On and Morning Full On are often intertwined, much of both having developed in Israel. Much of Electronic Dance Music runs on 4/4 beats, and Full On frequently squeezes in more base pulses between each beat to make the music seem more rapid and intense.

6. Sesto Sento - "Disconnecting"
7. Psywalker - "Chemical Trance"
8. Xerox & Illumination - "The Vision"
9. Save the Robot - "Robotz"

Night Full On: Night Full On later emerged as an opposite of morning full on (I suppose when it didn't feel appropriate to play happy angelic tunes during late night raves). The tunes are a bit faster, and the melodies are darker and more sinister.

10. Menog - "Digital Feelings"
11. Neuromotor - "Android from Mars"
12. Iron Madness - "Dinak Productions"

Darkpsy (is my personal favorite!): Darkpsy is even faster, but it doesn't always aim to be intense. Rather frequently attempts to immerse you in hypnotic sounds, similar to GOA Trance. There is far less, if any, melodies in DarkPsy, but the tunes get a dose of Industrial influence with sampling and heavy distortion. The sounds are very dense, with the goal of invoking a variety of tones: eerieness, mechanical hollowness, sinister, spooky forests, etc. Much of Darkpsy developed in Russia.

13. Karmazon - "The calling"
14. CPC - "Piter 25"
15. Horror Place - "Empty Space"
16. Kindzadza - "Superstrings"

1 comment:

  1. Hey, Rieko--thanks for posting the Cliff Notes to your Fracture U lecture. Big grins.

    ReplyDelete