pouët.net

Last night I went out to a local nightclub in Exeter, and paid £5 to get into a Psytrance gig. My first Psytrance gig ever in fact. Now, I could go on and talk about how the music changed my perceptions and pushed me closer to god for one priceless evening but that woudn't be remotely true.

So, I'm ok with trance music generally for all it's foibles and commodised nature these days but I really didn't understand this seemingly pretentious hooking point all the "psy ravers" (including 40+ people with long beards and odd looking girls) were banging on about.

Basically, you stand in front of a reasonably volumed soundsystem, and you listen to six minutes of the same 16-beat bassline, the barely varying percussion line with the most tightly gated and compressed samples, only for every 64th bar to have the percussion removed and replaced with an unimaginative fill, and then back to the same bassline.

Dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-boom-brbrbrbrbr-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga-....etc.

Put simply - and I really tried hard - if you removed the percussion, all you're generally left with is a few unintelligable film spoken word samples, and a repetitive synthline that has filters sweeping over it.

So - please - someone - I am open minded, how the fuck am I supposed to get into this?

i'm neither into "normal" trance nor into psytrance - but i, on the contrary, consider psytrance far more interesting than the "normal" cheesy thing.

You're not supposed to ?

Ye, try those first, then go to the gig :o

You just don't get into it and thats all.

Psy/goa trance is something you have to WANT to get into, it's progressive and so you have to get into it and if you don't, you're just -as you said- watching a bunch of guys that are banging their heads.

And don't just say "ho but it's simple and always the same", because it's about something else, filtering, delays.. all the production is done so you get into it.. repetitive? honoez.. alienating...

Just try out "Infected Mushroom - Classical Mushroom", it's what I suggest to people who're not getting it at first.

also, this kinda critique can be heard concerning many kinds of off-mainstream electronic dance music. perhaps, rc55, you expected to get some witty harmonical audio-enertainment, while the purpose is different - to dive into a certain state of hypnosis. i'm not attneding psytrance/goa raves, but when i go to a a uk-dub party for instance, i don't care for entertainment by variations and melodies - i want to be carried and swept away for hours by heavy beats and monster bass. and i guess thats what a psy-raver wants as well. either you get carried away on an audio-visceral trip, or you stand there and don't understand it.

Simply put, you're not SUPPOSED TO. You're supposed to listen to what you like.

especially if you're used to demoscene music, which often add a lot of variations into usual technoid genres.

\o/
JAIME TROP TON BOULE DE MEC!!!

kaneel, very good point about the demoscene music taste. that's exactly what annoys me about most of "demoscene music".

Well, the reason I take exception to Psy/Goa is because I can listen to pretty much any genre and at least have some sort of point where I can understand why people would respond to it.

I listened to some Infected Mushroom, and I suppose there's more of a hooking point with that as there seems to be at least more of a catalyst of variation than what was on in said club.

Maybe I was just among super-chinstroke-psytrance caners on that evening, but I can tell you, it's hell waiting six minutes for a key change and having track after track that's devoid of any melodic content.

It's not that I'm totally off that idea either, there are some great IDM & ambient tracks out there but I wasn't mistaken with what I heard.

@rc55: Yeah you might not be able to be into it (which is not a critic at all, some are, some aren't...)

@dipswitch: I noticed that myself when someone was talking to me about my music and just wondered why we "trackers" were often putting such an amount of variations inside our tracks compared to other producers... noticed it then and maybe it comes from the fact many trackers were into instrumental/orchestral music which were nicely written and so, our ears changed and we "injected" this way to compose inside what we heard in non-scene genres (but I may be wrong about this theory - an other one is about the way you work with trackers, you often hear and hear again the same patterns and so you put variations on each new patterns, this way you feel less bored... and I may be wrong again!)

kaneel i think you'Re quite right.

what, variations?

variforms ?

gargaj: well, not exactly variations, but vagueness and lacking style-consciousness. mind that i am actually NOt talking about _your_ music, which is pretty style-conscious in fact, when it's aimed to.

yes variations....
Because sometimes, people force themselves to put variations and finally, it sometimes sound "ubercheesy"

hmm..
so you mean that sometimes demoscene music is just "demoscene music" without actually trying to aim to be "drum and bass" or "trance" or whatever, and it just happens to wander around genres?

(you might be right there.)

... and there's quality in psy trance and goa trance also.

like, in club with an entry of 5 quids with stoned freaks around you probably don't get that quality music, just something to enhance the effects of the drugs they took.

which is why goa trance was invented in the first place.

gargaj, i don't know why, but you _can_ tell a dnb demo soundtrack from a dnb track by any other musician... there're these style markers demo soundtracks have. probably because of multipart demos, or because they're soundtracks and not just plain pieces

That is exactly the reason why I don't like going to clubs :(

There must be something wrong with me since I don't have any trouble listening to psytrance or goa (and I'm talking totally sober here, no psychoactives), but I still haven't found a single drum'n'bass track that would have given me anything in any way.

I guess it has something to do with looking "inward". To me that kind of repetitive music gives kind of a "hook" inside my head to grab into and to enjoy the slow progression of the percepted colours in the sound. The same thing happens with good minimal or dub techno..

hmm those genres of trance are the only ones i really like in the long run, but, as they say, opinions are like arseholes etc.