Psytrance Guide | Hacker News Reader

Psytrance Guide

psytranceguide.com

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Psytrance Guide https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20693904 (August 14, 2019 — 465 points, 210 comments)

Something not said explicitly but to me, is the characteristic sound of psy-x is the synth bass line. It's a very simple sound that you can make in any subtractive synth - you start with a single saw, add a lowpass filter, and instead of using the amplitude envelope to control the dynamics or "pluck" of the sound you modulate the cutoff of the filter by an envelope with a very short attack, quick decay, and low or zero sustain.

If you're fancy you can use a stepper or lfo sync'd to 16th notes to do the same thing instead of programming loops of 16th notes.

And of course, you sidechain compress that with the kick to get the pumping sound.

That's how you get the deep vibe of a psy track that resonates in the club at 2am.

That's just the basics. The really good tracks find ways to make it crazy, like modulating the decay of the filter envelope with velocity of the notes and then adding velocity curves to create dynamics with the baseline, or adding a reverb send and automating the send level as you build up to the end of a phrase. Or taking the basic idea (a plucky bass with sixteenth notes) and changing how the pluck is defined via an FM synth, or overdrive, or frequency shift, and so on. It's such a simple sound that can be driven to weird places.

Ah yes, of course.

This is what we're here for.

Definitely, but I can still joke about how I didn't understand anything from a comment on something I have no experience with.

It's called (I think) sound design. Changing parameters of a sound wave like filters, resonance, envelope, cutoff, etc, you can achieve desired sounds (you can do that using a real synthesizer or a virtual one). In this case they're explaining how to make a bass sound (which is in the lower frequency of the spectrum)

I am an absolute peon relative to most commenters on HN. Perusing this site feeds both my curiosity and my feelings of inadequacy. But this is one of those rare moments when I actually fully understand what the parent comment is describing. I don’t even produce music myself… I’m more of a fanboy, if anything.

My comment also in jest.

It's this sort of stuff that makes it so good. Nothing like eavesdropping on a highly technical conversation in an esoteric field. Love it.

Sorry, maybe my comment didn't come across appropriately: I agree with you, I loved that comment, I was just joking about how over my head it went!

Just a heads up that your comment is flagged. You can definitely joke about things, but HN asks that comments be substantive. Yours was not. I realize the irony writing this comment, but hopefully a bit of community heads up can preserve HN's characteristics for a little while longer.

How can a joke be substantive?

You can write more than one sentence...? How about an actual take on the topic, and then a joke? Or vice versa! Perhaps a question to ask for more clarity? The possibilities are endless beyond a "lol true" type comment.

Meta: IMO, it was fine. The digression provided an opportunity for me to produce a substantive comment that requires a little less background to understand than duped's excellent explanation.

It's great that you found an opportunity to teach thanks a low-value comment. HN policies still state that comments need to be substantive. There are good reasons for this that should be respected given that we all take advantage of the community built on those clearly stated expectations.

Expressing that you have no idea what the other person is saying (but that this is part of the value of this community) is not without substance or useless. They could have been more verbose about it, but I'm not sure that makes the community better.

The guidelines are guidelines. We all work to interpret them. HN themselves in introducing the guidelines says that "empty" comments can be okay if they're positive, which I feel this was.

Fair points, and I'd appreciate a source on your last statement from the HN guideline side. I just reviewed them to take into account more nuance that may have been added since the last time I checked. I will disagree with your interpretation of substance but defer to the guidelines.

From the Hacker News Welcome that introduces the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

> The test for substance is a lot like it is for links. Does your comment teach us anything? There are two ways to do that: by pointing out some consideration that hadn't previously been mentioned, and by giving more information about the topic, perhaps from personal experience. Whereas comments like "lol" or "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard" teach us nothing.

> Empty comments can be ok if they're positive. There's nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just "Thanks." What we especially discourage are comments that are empty and negative—comments that are mere name-calling.

The statement dates to 2014.

So, in English:

A sawtooth is a wave that looks like the blade of a saw. It is pretty close to sinusoidal, so it sounds somewhat like a single tone, but there is some distortion and harmonics; not nearly as much as you'd get from a square wave, though.

A synthesizer has an envelope generator, to model how real instruments increase in volume, keep a steady volume while active, and then decay. The envelope is usually multiplied by the underlying waveform, like a sawtooth, to give it these characteristics.

If you have a musical keyboard, pressing a key chooses the frequency of the sawtooth, and the moment that the key is pressed and released trigger the envelope generator and choose its shape.

For the psytrace bass line-- instead of the envelope generator being multiplied by the signal (and controlling its amplitude directly), instead it is used to sweep a filter. How much of the distortion and harmonics you hear from the sawtooth changes over the course of the note and gives the bassline its distinctive sound.

"A sawtooth is a wave that looks like the blade of a saw. It is pretty close to sinusoidal, so it sounds somewhat like a single tone, but there is some distortion and harmonics; not nearly as much as you'd get from a square wave, though."

In Fourier terms, a sinusoidal is the fundamental frequency. A square wave contains the fundamental frequency + all odd harmonics. A saw wave contains the fundamental frequency + all odd and even harmonics.

No distortion is needed to shape a saw wave and the rest of what you said is inaccurate.

It is distorted in the sense that a sine wave that has been put through a nonlinear process -- e.g. clipped to form a square wave; clipped and integrated to form a triangle; clipped and integrated asymmetrically to form a saw; etc.

Total harmonic distortion measures the amount of power that you have in harmonics vs. the fundamental wave. A purely sinusoidal tone would have no energy in harmonics; a saw would have 44% of its energy in harmonics.

Maybe you're nitpicking and saying that it's not "distortion", but harmonic distortion as a metric of how much energy is in harmonics-- because the primary way we used to get those harmonics is by distortion of a sine wave-- is common lingo.

Maybe I was nitpicking about the use of the term "distortion" (I prefer "transformation"), but I did want to clarify that saw waves are more harmonically rich and complex than square waves.

Yah. I did screw up the comment, in that I had intended to talk about triangles first and then mention asymmetry.

The fact that you have second harmonics is what makes saws so useful as a basis function for synthesis.

This might help (and it's only 6 minutes for the whole playlist): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrnjie9klQEkZGar3zZ4hRurU...

That's very helpful, thanks!

Bro what the fuck does literally any of that shit mean lol

welcome

https://learningsynths.ableton.com/

This is a cool resource, Ableton being quite respected and all, but I'm interested in making synths with analog electronics if you have any suggestions in that area. Look Mum No Computer and Music From Outerspace are both fantastic for that, but I'm always open to what other folks are doing in the analog space.

Maybe check out the modular synth community? It's kinda DYI.

EDIT: just noticed the analog there, I don't know anything about that.

As much as I would love to have a huge modular rack in my house, I am happy with a blend of physical and digital stuff. My first purchase was an Arturia Microbrute, which is just excellent for learning basic, monophonic synthesis. It's a knob-per-function device so there's nothing better than just twisting knobs and stumbling onto an amazing sound.

I send that through a cheap echo-delay pedal, then a reverb pedal, so I have a lot of control over the dynamics of whatever sound I'm making. I tend to use the Brute for basslines but it's super versatile.

From there, it depends on what I'm trying to make or play with, but I've had a great time using the Brute as both sound and MIDI input to get some nice layered input. VSTs are totally preferential of course, but I have the Arturia Jupiter 8 VST for when I want to get REALLY deep into analog synths without spending $25k on a working physical model.

Otherwise, I also have an Arturia Beatstep Pro (I'm an Arturia fanboi for sure, but their stuff is affordable and fun) which I can control the Brute with via CV in case I want to have it play a loop while I twist some knobs. I also have a profile set up in Ableton that allows me to use all the Beatstep Pro knobs to control various knobs/sliders on the Jupiter 8 VST, which has opened me up for a lot of possibilities. Beyond that, the Brute has a "mod panel" which allows for some fun stuff like jumping the LFO to the sub bass knob - the Brute is monophonic but has an overtone generator you can tune anywhere from -8 to +5.

It sounds like modular or custom synthesis are what you are looking for, but for my level of skill/time/hobby it's nice to have a setup that can fit entirely on an old Yamaha keyboard :)

The concepts are still the same, fundamentally. Unless you want to actually understand how to BUILD a synth and not how to USE one.

https://www.amazon.com/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Ray-Wilson/d...

I knew this was gonna get downvoted and I always do the same for these kind of posts. In this one however, I think the poster put words on a sensation shared by most of us who read the brilliant parent

regarding the pumping, I'm not sure if sidechain compression is what most producers are doing. I'd describe it as a gallop rather than a bump.

so with 16ths, you'd typically see 1/16 & 2/16 have zero to little amplitude, 3/16 & 4/16 have most of the energy. 4 maybe even a little less so.

which can't be done by sidechaining. also phase alignment with the kick is important

Are there any resources out there that you would recommend to learn about this stuff?

Basic song writing is a good place to start (and should cover the dynamics/loudness of notes and sounds as per the parent post to introduce groove). Then combine with sound engineering.

There is a lot of resources all over the web, and tutors and courses that you can do.

If you want to start off with an easy introduction then maybe Oscar @ Underdog can help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAJz4-YZdio&t=8s

If you want to product Psytrance - then you are lucky because IMHO it's perhaps the easiest most formulaic genre.

Kickstart VST is the ez button.

Underdog Music School on Youtube is fantastic. Also check out Polarity Music, Andrew Huang, AlexReidStudios, and TachesTeaches.

https://youtu.be/jQWfzlg9x_4?t=598

There’s a few ways to skin a cat. The more I research, the less popular side-chaining seems in general. What’s more common is side-chaining with ghost notes or manually ducking by drawing envelopes in automation lanes.

These days in my experience most people don't use a sidechain signal, just chop out, or filter, enough of the first base note so that it doesn't clash with the kick. People still refer to it as "sidechain" just because historically that's what it was. Most popular plugin to achieve this is LFOTool but also Shaperbox is used now too which is nice as it lets you cut in frequency ranges in different amounts. Its all about making it gel with the kick. You want your bass to be powerful but in the modern sound you always want the kick to win.

Yes phase alignment is important too. There's always a sweet spot where it just sounds "right". Plus staring endlessly at an oscilloscope to check they aren't interfering. Then doing it for hours and hours and wondering at the end if it sounded better before you started mucking around with it actually but your ears are so tired of it you can't tell anymore.

This stuff is such a rabbit hole. Lots of fun though.

Also perhaps not explicitly stated but in these genres the bass line is a drone. There's no melody in the bass line. This is similar to instruments like the sitar. It creates add harmonics and basically gives it the psychedelic sound.

2am? More like 6:30am

6:30am? More like 2am the following day

Have any examples in mind of the “really good tracks?”

https://youtu.be/rXrdBiS0e00

Good, but it doesn't really feature the technique described in the original comment.

you're right, i just really like this track :~)

Can you please give an example?

It was psytrance (Infected Mushroom) that led to the purchase of my first synth. I’m no longer big on psytrance, but it has a special place in my heart.

Wow, and I thought C++ was complicated!

Seriously, interesting discussion. I think I'll stick with physical instruments!

I’ve enjoyed listening to psychedelic electronic music while programming since discovering Shpongle twenty years ago. I feel like it helps my brain get into the right mode somehow. I’m not familiar with the definitions of a lot of these sub-taxonomies but interested in listening to them!

I have a coding playlist I’ve put together over the years that is more towards the psybient/chillout end but includes some trance as well, I like the variation in speed and intensity: https://spotify.link/CHSvf399YDb

thanks, my only comment on this topic was going to be "where can I find more like shpongle". Well, I guess the second comment would be "when will somebody make a Generative Shpongle?"

I use this site fairly often to just browse stuff that comes up for bands I like. YMMV.

https://www.music-map.com/shpongle

Walter Ego, Celtic Cross, Ott, Globular, Entheogenic, Younger Brother, Desert Dwellers, Jaia, Western Rebel Alliance, and the list goes on

If Simon Posford is involved, give it a listen. Much better than some “AI” generative model

I highly recommend Posford's "The Herb Garden" from Mystery of the Yeti Part 2 (released as a Hallucinogen track before he seemingly switched to doing all of his chiller music with Raja) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Nce44osPpE

Celtic Cross, Ott, and Entheogenic are phenomenal as well.

I'd recommend Third Ear Audio, Carbon Based Lifeforms, Kuba (specifically the album Through a Lens), Phutureprimitive, Saafi Brothers

If you're ever looking to put on a few hours of something and want an epic thematic journey spanning 2 albums, try "When the silence is..." by Koan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBksiW_3dCY

edit: I'm not sure what genre this fits under, but the album "Deliverance" by Culprate reminds me a lot of Shpongle in ways that it has no right to, since... I'm pretty sure it's not psychill/psytrance

> Phutureprimitive

Ah man, his early stuff still holds up; but when he started to get into 140 (Dubstep) I just couldn't get into it; I had been in that sound since 2006 and while I appreciate him expanding as an artist, it was just off-putting.

Mark Pritchard on the other hand (1/2 of Global Communication) had a much better go of it and even got a release(s) on Deep Medi for example.

Thanks for the link to Mystery of the Yeti, I hadn't heard that- and it sounds almost exactly like Shpongle (I think even some of the samples are the same).

Shulman is one of my favourites - i wish they still made music. Incredible incredible music - not just for psytrance, just in general. Also recommend Bluetech.

Zero Degrees is one of the trippiest songs of all time.

"random thoughts" is pure class.

In Search of a Meaningful Moment will remain in my top 10.

I always enjoyed this review from Discogs [0]:

"Just turn off the lights, forget the TV and the computer, close the windows and listen to this album with max volume. Spend some time in a different world created by Shulman. You'll be amazed with the effect this album will have on you, trust me!"

Wherever you are Yaniv, I hope you're well.

[0] https://www.discogs.com/Shulman-In-Search-Of-A-Meaningful-Mo...

agreed - i installed a very very sizeable car audio system in my car years ago - and Shulman as the review states = an incredible sound world, and most probably missed by most - absolutely sublime in the low end...im talking with a 15 inch, 1500W sub powering the show....just jaw dropping augmentation of reality...without drugs :P

Laugh all you want, when I was like 12 years old my family was into this weird techno-pseudoscience-cult of "Ramtha's school of enlightenment" and they have the biggest trance/shamanistic playlists, we had these long ceremonies of hours of dancing while listening to music like this and drinking red wine and smoking tobacco on pipes. I guess if it wasn't for the alcohol I would have remembered all these amazing songs but well... I think that sect is still alive and I wish they had a playlist somewhere outside their website coz I can't stand the website much due to the religious content bringing back drunk memories. If you know of such a playlist please share

Can you elaborate on your experience at Ramtha, and what lasting effect it had on your psyche/moral compass?

The bad: I was an alcoholic and smoked from age 12 to age 30. The community builds a level of arrogance that they have access to special knowledge because they are in a specific stage in the evolutionary "destiny". Breaking bonds with other family/friends is almost needed because you don't hear their points anymore, just like scientology or other closed sects, not sure their proper name. You think you have a guardian angel too that your destiny is to survive and become enlightened and you shouldn't have fear, I had a couple of near death experiences because of this false sense of security, plus the constant wine drinking... The good: they pack a lot of trigonometry and algebra but then they teach you "sacred geometry"... They also teach basic quantum mechanics basics, but then teach you that the observer effect is controlled by our minds, or that you can transform a carrot into gold... So somethings are useful... I'm still recovering from these cults, it's crazy how much our minds can change, therapy takes a while to take and forgetting/re-learning also takes its time, as it should...

Ramtha's School of Enlightenment used to come to a university I used to work at between sessions while the students were away. They would have a section of paddock fenced off and would wander around it blindfolded making "PSSHHTT" noises to stop running into each other (I assume). They definitely seemed like a peculiar bunch.

Even seated you would make these psssshhht sounds of pushing air out, you would end up sweating from a meditation session because your muscles would also be contracted as you focus on the hand position in your chest... In your mind you have to visualize words backwards and breath them out letter by letter... I still laugh at the "so be it" that has to be said with absolute certainty for your wishes to come true

Also try Aes Dana, Scann-Tec, Solar Fields

Check out Benji Vaughan (the other half of Younger Brother along with Simon Posford), and his harder alias, Prometheus.

his first solo album under his own name, Even Tundra, is incredible

He just dropped a new album, Eidolon, last week. It's wonderful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljzFWdax0iE&list=PL44Q4mKIiC...

Try Hallucinogen’s In Dub, and In Dub Live.

I once saw Simon in a massive rave as Hallucinogen from 4am to 8am and Shpongle from 12pm to 3pm. Those Gamma Goblins still travel trough my spine.

A true connoisseur!

Great album–there are two tracks on that playlist from it!

I see a lot of H.U.V.A Network and Carbon Based Lifeforms. I'm mainly a trance lover, but when I get tired of it, these are the two I switch over to and start expanding from.

> I see a lot of H.U.V.A Network and Carbon Based Lifeforms.

This [0] is more psyambient, isn't? I hate typecasting into genres, but I always saw that as the more chill-side of that version of EDM whereas psytrance was more like Alwoods [1], E-Mantra or Capsula etc...

I spent many HDDs streaming SomaFM and got to listen to a ton of it, but there was a notable difference when those tracks drop in not just tempo/BPM and bassline sigs.Cosmic Leaf Records was a really cool label that used to deal in both sounds as their artists had lots of cross-over.

And thanks to this thread I just found out CBL dropped an album this year, going to go deep on that later this week. Still rinsing World of Sleepers after all this time.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly4KqXUE0F4 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMy1pB4NG10

Definitely more of psy chill/ambient than trance. I tend to like moving between psytrance and psybient–too many hours of trance alone makes me feel like my brain is vibrating inside my skull!

Divine Moments of Truth is an amazing piece of music that I think could appeal broadly to fans of classical/art music, electronica, EDM, rock, etc. More people should listen to Shpongle.

I remember ... the very first time ... I programmed in C

If you like Shpongle, I recently bought a new album, Transient States - Ballade en Forêt, that sounds very derivative (in a good way!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLLzz4vxKb0

Hallucinogen In Dub (remixed by Ott) is another gorgeous album. Ott has a bunch of his own albums too.

Thanks for sharing that playlist. Happily a fair few of those come up with the little green heart - a very encouraging sign.

Reviewing the playlist highlighted that Spotify, for some reason, no longer has Smoked Glass and Chrome (Blumenkraft) available, or at least it's not available in AU / for me. The rest of the album remains available, but that track is just spectacularly good.

I bought the album off bandcamp ages ago, so it's only mildly inconvenient, but in turn highlights the annoyance of music brokers like Spotify silently dropping items from their catalogue.

Yeah several of the tracks are unavailable to me in the US. It’s one of my least favorite things about the move towards streaming music generally–the ability to listen to music I love being subject to the whims of business people and lawyers’ disagreements.

I still have a large digital library of “owned” music (the core of this playlist I think dates back to files purchased from the iTunes Music Store the first year it launched in 2003), but the convenience of streaming has gotten me out of the habit of maintaining it.

Thanks for sharing. Super awesome and will check it out fully! (It's saved after an hour+ of listening)

Easily Embarrassed is a band worth checking out. Same with Vibrasphere.

If anybody here is in the Seattle area and wants to check out a show or jam, please email me!

Never thought I would see Ott mentioned on HN!

Love Shpongle, saw him for the first time last year (as Simon Posford live) and it blew my mind.

He's playing in Denver for 2 shows on Halloween weekend btw! I'd catch him since he's technically "retired"

Having grown up with psytrance, I find that 25 years later the modern stuff just sounds like a cheap, low-effort pastiche of what psytrance used to be. And... I just became my Dad.

Happens probably to anyone loving a genre for an extended amount of time. Trance, Drum & Bass, Psytrance, you hear that sentiment everywhere.

I really wonder if this is 1) Nostalgia.Obviously, the first tracks you heard were your introduction to the genre, so they will have emotional value. 2) First-mover advantage, for the lack of a better word. Obviously you perceive every new track t_i in the context of t_{0..i-1} that you already know. Maybe track t_443, which sounds cheap and commercial now, would have sounded innovative if you heard it as t_33? 3) Genre saturation. How many truly new tracks can be done in psytrance (or any other specific genre) while still being psytrance, before every track sounds like one that was done before? I don't envy the poor souls trying to express individuality in established, specialized genres.

I also wonder whether we could use deep learning to learn representations unbiased by our own history with the genres, and analyze this in a more unbiased way. But I'm also sure you can make the model say whatever you want if you bend the data the right way :)

I think the bar has been raised by what even casual producers can do with DAWs. I gave a listen to a classic drum and bass album recently (Wormhole by Ed Rush and Optical) and while I really enjoyed it, by the end of the album I can kind of tell how many of the various samples were used over and over again. The Wikipedia article[1] lists the hardware/software they used, and it looks like the recording computer was an Apple LCII. So a lot of what they were able to make seems like it would have been limited by what hardware they were able to finagle.

Compare that to a similarly layered and voiced project in a modern DAW. While the compute requirements have gone up drastically, the complexity the DAW has compressed into a single screen would make it trivial to make a similar album now (from a purely technical standpoint - the album is still the work of an artist).

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole_(album)

Maybe, I don't think so.

The first time I heard goa trance it was in 90s, Astral Projection. It was too weird for me. I couldn't stand it!

Then in the early 00s I got introduced to psytrance. I started listening to it. Then I refound my love for goa trance (see my other post for examples) and I fell in love. It was an exciting time for me. I fell in love with two women, I used my first time MDMA and mushrooms later on, all of this while I learned to know this fantastic genre.

One could argue it was related to my first listening of AP. But I don't think I heard MWNN before, and I instantly loved it, and he has a very distinctive style. If you take Shakta, he's also made psytance, same with Miranda, MWNN, AP, etc etc but I don't like it.

Also, back in the 90s I listened to a lot of progressive trance as well (the usual names: Paul Oakenfold, Paul van Dyk, stuff mixed by Tiesto, Ferry Corsten, etc etc). How would you explain that?

Plus I like a lot more electronic music, mostly (but not solely) from 90s. I even like some psydub/psybient. But psytance? Nope. Well, barely.

I stopped listening around the time of Infected Mushroom's Vicious Delicious. The genre seemed to jump the shark around that time. Looking back Goa Trance was the real trance and by 2000 it was already starting to go down the shitter.

Whilst I do like a lot of Infected Mushroom's stuff I've always seen them as the cheesy, commercial, "like it ironically" side of psy-trance. I don't consider them truly representative of psy-trance, at least the eurocentric versions I listen to.

Although I do like the variety that has developed, especially when there's multi-room club and it's possible to walk around and find whatever fits your current mood and energy level.

They have a really wide range. I don’t listen to the vocal heavy “recent” stuff but they have very good songs and in particular very well orchestrated albums where you barely notice the track changes.

My favorites to put on while focus working are Classical Mushroom and Outdoor Party Vol 3. The latter can be hard to find for some reason but imo is their best.

Sometimes I'm in the mood for the vocal stuff sometimes not so much. Nonetheless, I feel they created their very own niche over the years. They even did dubstep back when it was cool. Sometimes while listening to their stuff I feel that undescribable warm feeling you get when you stumble upon art.

They host an annual dessert rave and go for a 4 hour retro set starting just before the sun rises. Been there, felt like I've seen the light. It was spiritual.

> Whilst I do like a lot of Infected Mushroom's stuff I've always seen them as the cheesy, commercial, "like it ironically" side of psy-trance.

You're going to have to trust me that as far as Israeli producers go, IM are neither cheesy nor commercial.

> I don't consider them truly representative of psy-trance, at least the eurocentric versions I listen to.

Ehhh, that's veering way too close to "metal genres" territory for me

2000 was the year when the Goa regional government decided they had had enough of skint backpackers and beach parties, and wanted to attract tourists who would spend more money, not look so obviously like drug-takers, and do whatever they do more out of sight of the state’s conservative population. I feel that the Goa trance genre had peaked years before, but as an end year, 2000 seems fitting.

Goa trance was a great genre in the 90s. After that it went downwards (with Filteria & Suntrip 2004 revival from death of the genre but on life support). It got completely overshadowed by this abomination called psytance which I don't like.

The specific album you mentioned, has two tracks I like (Heavyweight and Suliman) because I saw a fellow on YouTube using a guitar to 1:1 the riffs. It was that good that I donated to him. But otherwise I've never been much of a fan of IM. I find they're overrated.

When I think of goa trance I think of names like Astral Projection, Green Nuns Of The Revolution, Hallucinogen, Man With No Name, Miranda, Prana, Transwave and many of these dabbled into the psytrance genre. Some came back!

I'll mention some of my favourites: Hallucinogen live at DNA Lounge (2001?), Paul Oakenfold's Essential Mix ('Goa silver and gold mix', '94), any 90s live set by Astral Projection (there are many), and Imperial Project / Goa Syndrome (all of which were released on MP3.com). Also, any remix by MWNN and AP is gold.

Indeed. In the past tunes would keep evolving. Now everything has that tuba bassline, soft sounding kick and different kind of snarling sounds with echo and that's it.

I'm a new-comer to the genres, myself, despite my age. For some reason the D&B/trances/technos scene never clicked with me back in my metal days, but it fills a gap that needed filling in my life now.

That said, there's plenty of great modern artists, too...however, some amazing stuff was happening back in the day that I missed out on, and it is a treat to discover that now.

Simon Posford enters the chat

His album during covid was 11/10 (very different though)

https://simonposford.bandcamp.com/album/flux-contemplation-p...

I know right? I have that weird feeling that I still don't fully understand it.. I really liked it though. It's different. Shpongle is just.. magical

My top artist of all music artists.

Everything that dude touched turned to gold. I've never found another artist who made music as unique and complex as him. Listening to Shpongle, its basically impossible to place the time period its from. It's totally unique music in it's own category.

that's funny, I loved Shpongle when I was younger but it sounds SUPER dated to me now. Just sounds like the early aughts to me

Shpongle also "just" sounds like "normal" psytrance with added flute, to me, after many hours of listening, and the flute is Raja Ram's addition iirc. I stopped following Posford after Younger Brother - Vaccine came out, though.. never could get into that one, and I always found Hallucinogen to be "just like Shpongle but not as good"

FWIW even in my metal days I recognized that the kind of (mostly black) metal that I enjoyed was fairly close to some of my brother's techno that I happened liking. All those droning guitars, layers of synth and screeching vocals are, experience-wise, quite similar to a deep techno DJ set. A music to work to, rather than to analyze -- I guess that's the value I find in it.

Also, I don't listen to hardcore / horror core techno much, but I find it striking how the artists adopt the imagery and themes that I would traditionally associate with metal: horrors, monsters, final battles for future of humanity, etc.

"Infected Mushroom - Becoming Insane" got me from mostly metal into psytrance.

Fully agree, and hello from another dad here. There's no more stuff like Paps, Mumbo Jumbo, Double Dragon, Reefer Decree, Ticon, etc, and even the legendary Son Kite and Beat Bizzarre are not the same they've used to be in the heydays of the genre. I think the apogee was in the early 2000s, the early releases of Iboga Records.

I've switched to the [dub] techno scene a few years ago, and it looks like there's much more psychedelia and overall creative stuff going on over there now. Azu Tiwaline, Al Wootton, Deadbeat, Claudio PRC, Ntogn, Luigi Tozzi, Feral, and so on. Party goes on!

Thanks for all the new recs! Loving what I've heard so far. Ntogn is a vibe

Glad you've liked it! Check out Planetary Assault Systems, Forward Strategy Group, Silent Servant, Xhin, Aes Dana, Function, Cio d'Or. Lots and lots of modern, interesting music! Oh, and how could I have forgotten Rambadu?

Dad #3 here, and I concur.

Though more progressive and tribal than the others, Antix's "Lull" album epitomized the early '00s sound for me.

Minilogue managed to keep the vibe alive a bit longer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgiL7lsIATA

Lastly, yes, the techno scene does scratch that itch for atmosphere and psychedelia. I've been to a few techno parties and was surprised by the striking similarities to that '00s sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87y49RmWJeg

Your dad knows what he is talking about. I feel the same, and the sentiment is shared by many. They are having retro parties now, and new productions of the "goa" sound.

Man this takes me back to Goa in the 90s. It was just about the only place that would book Russian DJs, so it was the only place where reel-to-reel DJing was better known than vinyl. It's amazing to see what people have done with the style in the intervening decades, but for me nothing beats the old tunes from the beach parties.

Terrific stuff - this is the sort of thing I use without really knowing what it is ("uh dark techno trance mix please YouTube") to get in the zone, so a very useful guide for me - even if the whole million-subgenre-effect feels somewhat like source material for a Monty Python sketch.

I was a psytrance DJ through much of the 00s and what a wonderful and diverse genre this is :) It takes some time getting used to though. My first listening experience I basically denounced it as "too hard" and noisy but my general love for electronic music made me keep listening and all of a sudden I was hooked. I listened to and played mostly goa-trance due to its very melodic nature, it really has something unique with its focus on melody (with non-western scales) and not just squeeky and strange sounds (which I do like). The explosion of "Full-on" in the mid 00s made me loose interest and it dominated the parties I went to and played at. Full on has this particular annoying feature of being, yes full on, hardly any buildups just cheap, cheesy breaks and "in your face" to please the fistbumping crowd. I still occasionally listen when there is an interesting release but this is mainly a fading memory from my youth..

This is in general a great guide, very impressive! I mean it even includes Suomisaundi (one of my favourites) which is such a small subsub-genre, back in the days it encompassed maybe a handful of artists on 1-2 record labels. The sometimes narrow BPM ranges I'd say you can ignore. The genre is very experimental so you can have pretty much any of the faster sub-genres speed down and then just call it "* chill". This was often the case when albums were made in the 00s, that an artist would end with a chill track, many times these were their best outputs and sometimes lead to new side projects.

I don't want to pick on the song selection but there is at least one major artist missing here. Shpongle is probably the most successful psychill artist of all time and one of my most powerful musical experiences of any genre. Start with "Tales of the inexpressible" and work your way through their catalog :)

I'd recommend starting with "Are you Shpongled" personally.

More than Shpongle missing, I would have expected a sample from Hallucinogen (also Simon Posford's project) which predates Shpongle by a few years, and was at the forefront of the wave of Goa as it spilled over to the western world in its nascent years

I agree about full on, that killed it for me in the parties that I was going to in 2004/2005.

I loves the melodic old school goa psytrance, but all everyone seemed to want was that.

It's great to see a link specifically about Psytrance on Hacker News.

I enjoy trying to understand how Psytrance is made and if that is something you find interesting too checkout @Projector_music on youtube (no affiliation).

Any chance you typo'd that? I can't find it.

Maybe @projektor_music; seems to match the genre.

I would love to learn about this... Specially in the era of demucs, maybe some python automation to ableton live tracks that we can modify through the day slightly? I have playlist with dozens of 1+ hour videos on YouTube of psytrance and I find them so enjoyable, full of bass and good for focusing (granted there's the obligatory 1 minute muttering in the song of Terrence McKenna but OK, if psilocybin helped them create these amazing songs then so be it )

If you want to literally program music, I can recommend Sonic Pi. The current top comment describes the typical psy bass line in technical terms, which is enough to recreate it in code.

Learn about synthesis. Specifically the relation between the harmonic structure of the saw and square wave and the properties of a resonant filter that can pick these harmonics out in various ways. For psytrance many of the sequences are sparse, have subtle glissando and slides, in phrygian, hungarian minor and other exotic scales with canonical forms and contrapuntal rounds often achieved by shifting subsequences a few steps forward or backward.

Oh, boy. This post sent me way back in time, and I just realized psyshop closed its doors in 2021.

It used to be my catalog for 0day psy mp3 to hunt in dc++ channels, where I used to hang for days, waiting for a slot to open.

I think I still have some of those releases, and I sure was able to get a good chunk of Psytopia catalog.

Dimension 5, Astral Projection, Infected Mushroom, Analog Pussy, Blue Planet Corporation, Mistery of the Yeti, Shiva Chandra…

I miss my Spirit Zone Records shirt.

I love Mystery of the Yeti. What a great couple of albums.

Surprised no Shpongle on the lists

Hallucinogen/Shpongle/AnyPosford is always top, along with Astral Projection and other household names, but at this time (I’m talking 99-04+, when I was knee deep) there where plenty of efforts by so many people that somehow ended as cds and were sold on psyshop [0]. Some acts got to release two or three records in one year, all full of original songs and an hour+ long.

Around that time, I became aware of 0day mp3 “scene”, and for some reason I became obsessed with getting all my psy/goa from scene releases. My day went back like this: check for weekly new releases on psyshop; monitor mp3 scene releases log dumps leaks on sites like mp3kings and others, and once the record was released, go hang on dc++ psyside, psyhub and other psy hubs and hit the search until someone appeared with the files. Then you could queue the files and idle until it got spread sufficiently or some “connected” user or admin was kind enough to grant you a slot.

My method worked so well that I started getting requests from top users and admins to grant slots to get the latest stuff. I guess xkcd describes it better [1].

Some of the acts that got my attention or i can remember are:

* Blue Planet Corporation * Phoney Orphans * Ticon * Son Kite * Flying Buddhas * Penta * Minilogue * Shiva Chandra * Shiva Shidappu * Astrix * Vibrasphere * Green nuns of the revolution * GMS * Talamasca * Total Eclipse * Astralasia * Cosma

…and I could keep goin.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200929135452/https://www.psysh...

[1] https://xkcd.com/1095/

I'm mostly surprised that a post about psytrance gets over 400 upvotes on HN. I'm a former (goa/psy) trance producer (in another life and century), and recently coming back to the world of producing. Maybe I'm stuck in the 90s, but it still feels to me like that "underground" sound we dance in the forest or desert to. But nope - 400+ upvotes on HN means it's a lot less underground than it is in my head, and even though the millennium was just "2 years ago" it seems like there was a lot of progress in those "couple years".

Same feeling here... Really surprised there are so many upvotes here. Well, the fact that we now have a vocal and even political psytrance only says that this is now part of the pop culture. And the sound has changed as well. Today's music is, well, uhm, different from what was produced back in the DAT tape era...

I kinda miss the DAT days. There was a certain aura around music and it's un-availability that is missing today when everything is available.

Vocal psytrance goes all the way back to the 1990s. Lost Tribes’ "Gamemaster" was released in what, 1998?

I’m an engineer who has enjoyed psytrance since the 90's and I’ve sometimes wondered how the two relate, if at all. In some aspects psytrance could be better described as sculpture in motion rather than music. The process of making it also feels more like sculpture than the live, in the moment creation of music on an instrument. Regarding the two, I visualise psytrance as form, motion, colour, etc., with a lot of slowly shifting, but often nested, repetition much in the same way I visualise computational processes.

To me, coding and making electronic music in the nineties were very similar. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker]

I've been listening to Infected Mushroom daily for about 15+ years, mostly on repeat and I love it (obviously). My problem is that I just can't find similar music. People will say: "Oh I like psy too" and then recommend various artists of which the music sounds very repetitive to me (it's not just 5 minutes of dunalun)

One of the things I feel sets them apart (at least in for example in their best works) is that they're very complex tracks that feel like you're going on a journey where they start with a theme and then revisit it later in the track.

I was excited to see this site cause I'd maybe finally understand what subgenre I need to search in specifically but they weren't mentioned even once which is strange since they're the most successful psy artist of all time.

So what sub genre do they fit into and what else can I listen to?

They kinda spinned their own genre 2004- most similar stuff what I kind know is shpongle(more downtempo) and Suomisaundi(own psy subgenre, weird stuff from Finnish artists)

I remembered Shpongle earlier this year, after not even thinking of them for the better part of a decade. The work clean room hasn't been the same since. It's a welcome respite from pop radio in the main workshop.

Yes, I feel the same. For me it was Infected Mushrooms and Shpongle. I didn't have 15+ years of tenacity though. So try Shpongle if you don't know them yet. Back in the day, i moved from listening to them all the time to listening to Igorrr (breakcore) all the time.

IM didn't really stick to one genre. I remember calling them psy-metal because of the harder edge on so many of their songs. Maybe if you tell us what your favourite album we'd have a better idea of what you're going for

Classical Mushroom! Not a fan of their reggae stuff and my favourite songs from them lately are all BliSS colabs like: Cookie from Space, Boss la Rosh, Bliss on mushrooms, Ani Mevushal.

I love Bombat, Bust a Move, The Shen, Dracul, Missed Symphony, Scorpion Frog, Return of the Shadows, Smash the Opponent

The inimitable Ishkur called it butt rock goa, that's how I discovered IM and pretty much the entire genre, back when Flash was still a thing.

IM are legendary! I still listen to them now and then. My favorite tracks from them are - 'Deeply Disturbed', 'Becoming Insane' and 'Where do I belong'. Not exactly the same, but checkout Astrix and Neelix if you haven't already.

I love infected mushroom too. On my Spotify list, I noticed that it was recommending more Offbeat to me. I didn’t know it was called offbeat until I saw it on the guide.

1200 Micrograms would that fit the bill?

If you're into skiing, put either the messenger 2011 or dancing with kadafi in your earphones before starting a long piste, preferably one that goes through a forest. There is nothing more like it in the world.

Back when I was listening to Goa/Psy, I liked Infected Mushroom, Juno Reactor, Hallucinogen, Cosma and Shpongle. I also liked the chill Mystery of the Yeti albums.

Have no clue who most of the artist on the topic website are. Sean Tyas’ Matter of Time’s quite nice, but aggressive.

Interestingly this misses one psy genre of paramount importance - the PsyDub.

Hallucinogen in Dub by Ott, and the Dub Trees project for example to name a few. There is a recent dubstep/psydub crossover which sounds very promising.

Also I would add what is called mental techno in this list, even though it’s more on the acid side of things.

I came here for this comment! Always loved that psy dub sound (also OTT - Blumenkraft, and Nagual Sound Experiment's Invisible Movements) and particularly the hybrids that have come out of it recently. Most 'classic' psy trance stuff I find pretty boring to be honest.

Globular has done some distinctly psy dub albums in the last few years. And then on the bass/dubstep side, I'm hearing psy influences in releases by Om Unit (e.g. Acid Dub Studies) and also some of DjRUM's stuff.

Indeed, uncle Om is turning back to acid sounds (not so much psychedelic), but I totally agree that psydub is the logical progression for the psy* genres (don't kill me goa ppl, pls). to me the real progress in the psychedelic sounds is techno dub - a true psychedelic genre for the 21ct century. psytrance/progressive trance seem too 90s in composition and aesthetics to me.

Anyone who enjoys Ott may also want to check out Cosmic Trigger [0] and/or Globular [1]

https://shponglemusic.bandcamp.com/album/shpongle-remixed-by...

https://globular.bandcamp.com/album/long-grass-for-small-fro...

downtempo as well

As other people have said, it's a shame that so much of psytrance relegates itself to being "electronic dance music", playing off the same clichés and subdividing itself so much such that the most minute production details are catalogued. While you could reasonably say that about any electronic genre, Psytrance really ups the level of having any given median track sounding indistinguishable. Yeah, the sound design experimentations are cool; yeah, it's a good sound... but I wish I would actually remember it for _something_ specific it does well.

In general, I think I miss the songwriting aspect most. Infected Mushroom really nailed it, which is why they're so popular. Nowadays, I can only find the Japanese doujin music scene among those that regularly mix and match psytrance with various other genres.

A few other recs going more in that direction:

- Talpa (https://sundancerecords.bandcamp.com/album/when-the-somberne...)

- Jerico's Law (https://juno909.bandcamp.com/album/another-law)

- Migma Shelter (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l3dfWAOgloDDde... -- j-pop psytrance!)

- Hilight Tribe (https://hilighttribe.bandcamp.com/album/temple-of-light)

- Koxbox (https://koxboxmemo604.bandcamp.com/album/the-great-unknown)

- Hallucinogen (https://hallucinogenmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-lone-derang...)

- And finally, the best hi-tech work I've ever heard. Sephax - Electric Currents (https://alice-drecords.bandcamp.com/album/sephax-electric-cu...)

> playing off the same clichés and subdividing itself so much such that the most minute production details are catalogued

Agreed. It’s unnecessary and in my experience the music creators themselves dislike it. It’s largely the hobby of stamp collector and trivia-oriented minds who are inhibited in enjoying the music itself. That said, the terminology can be useful for liberal associative descriptions. But humans love strict hierarchical taxonomies, stuffing artists into single buckets.

Great list, thanks

I have never understood why psytrance subgenres are so focused on BPM range. There is so much more to music than the tempo, it has always felt overly reductive to me. I had a friend who was a psytrance producer and even hearing him talk at length about it, I was never convinced that BPM was a critical differentiator. Also respectfully I think categorizing a subgenre as falling within 4 BPM is outrageously too narrow. Many casual listeners cannot even detect such a small change in tempo.

Because it's how DJs connect tracks together. That's the target audience for purchasing psytrance, and most electronic dance music, tracks.

Yeah, but with most genres, you typically don't find them isolated to such small BPM ranges (I see on this guide ranges as low as 2 BPM). Most genres have a much wider range, eg ~10-ish or more BPMs. I really don't think it's accurate to limit these genres to such a small range, when a genre is more about the specific sound and style of a track.

Source: DJ for ~25 years.

Yeah, I'm not saying all the genres operate the same with BPMs. Compared to most house and techno events I go to, I do feel that psytrance events are a bit more "unrelenting" in bpm where I wish there was more variety.

"Many casual listeners cannot even detect such a small change in tempo."

Maybe not consciously, but their heart can probably (literaly) feel it and react differently, which is what this is mostly about. And in general I totally agree, that there is way more to music than tempo and I am only partially into anything techno as I like more instruments and variations, but with electronic dance music the rhythm simply matters the most for dancing.

Casual listeners can't detect it, but it strongly affects the possibility space for production purposes. For instance, if you're writing happy hardcore music at 170+ BPM with a kick drum on every beat, you will get surprisingly little time between those kicks to work with the bass and other instruments. While this is a somewhat extreme example, even something like the difference between 128 BPM and 138 BPM can change what you're making. A commercial house track produced at 128 BPM may sound like 90s Eurodance when played at 138. Similarly, a deep house track produced at 122 might feel like radio EDM when played at 128.

While you could certainly make psytrance at 150 BPM, it's going to pack a different punch. You'll make different decisions about what works and what doesn't, and then it's going to end up sounding even more different from the rest of the 138 PBM psytrance -- oops, you've shifted genres. Slow it down to 110 and then people aren't dancing to the track quite the same way anymore. Try dancing to the same song at 100 BPM and then at 120 BPM... you'll notice the difference immediately. Tempo isn't everything, but it's much more than just a number.

If you're interested in some BPM fuckery, there's a small-ish contingent of artists/labels doing some cool things around the 80/160-ish BPM range. Folk like Donato Dozzy, Patrick Russell and Forest Drive West have been putting together some great sets that sound like this militant-ish blend of Techno and Drum and Bass and just get really 'out there' in, in my opinion, the best way possible.

There's one moment in a Forest Drive West set (I wish I could remember which one) where he plays the first 45-ish minutes at 160-ish, and then drops down to 125-130 for the last 1hr+ - but he does it in a manner that you never hear DJs do and almost doesn't work. He leaves the ~160BPM track playing, and brings in the 125-ish track over it in a way that creates this really cool syncopated rhythm. It's risky, and there's a reason you usually don't see people do it, but he pulls it off. I have a particular fondness for Jazz music, particularly Jazz musicians who fuck with time in a similar manner, so to hear a DJ pulling off something like that is awesome to me.

But yeah, highly recommend checking out Dozzy's surprise closing set at Terraforma[1] and Patrick Russell's Mostra[2] set.

Edit: The FDW set I'm thinking of is his set from Boom Festival[3].

[1]https://soundcloud.com/donato-dozzy/donato-dozzy-terraforma-...

[2]https://soundcloud.com/monument-podcast/mnmt-recordings-patr...

[3]https://soundcloud.com/boomfestival/forestdrivewest-the-gard...

Donato Dozzy is an amazing selector. One of the greats.

Damn right! I'll forever be gutted knowing that I had the chance to see Voices From the Lake live and ended up not going.

I think they are touring as VFTL again, I saw them perform the first album here in London at the start of the year and they are back next week with all new material! So there’s hope that they might come back to whatever part of the world you’re in :)

Oh man, if you ever find that forest drive west set I’d love to hear it.

Such a delight seeing psytrance and donato dozzy and dub techno pop up on HN.

Ah what a pleasure to see Donato Dozzy mentioned on here! One of my favourite DJs/artists. Hearing his Labyrinth 2008 set [1] had a big impact on my musical tastes - I was into techno already, but hadn’t discovered anything so deep and hypnotic.

It actually might appeal to people on here who like psy trance - it’s a different style (hypnotic/deep techno) and tempo but it shares some structural and sonic elements.

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing him play many times and meeting him and he’s just as lovely as you’d hope!

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nGIUCQ8KW9Y or https://m.soundcloud.com/paul-wuerdig/sets/donato-dozzy-laby...

Chillgressive is a great search term to find some slow psychedelic beats

> Tempo isn't everything, but it's much more than just a number.

Does this specifically apply to Psytrance where I think the tempo stays more or less constant for most of the song. In general is there any Psytrance where tempo evolves during the song, goes up and down? I understand it might be difficult to dance to.

In Psytrance, and dance music in general, most BPMs will stay the same throughout the track. You may have moments where the track will cut to half-time and "feel" slower, even though it's kinda not, but more often than not you're going to find that dance music tracks maintain the same BPM throughout.

DJs, however, will often be the ones switching the tempo up during a set, either slowly adjusting it up and down over the course of the night, or switching things up and suddenly bringing in a track at a completely different BPM.

Because DJs don’t want to change the tempo of what they play by too much until it sounds wrong, and most electronic music is produced to be played at clubs

And because the dance styles that match ranges of bpm are so different, audiences find ranges they prefer. Try dancing to 125bpm old berghain tracks and compare with how you’re able to move your body in sync with 155bpm hard groove. It’s a completely different experience. This is dance music.

Some of my favorite dancefloor moments have been hearing a track I love played at a wildly different BPM than I'm used to hearing (whether it's playing a 33 as a 45/vice versa, or using a CDJ to really stretch the tempo). The way the vibe of a track can change completely, and shift your perspective of a piece of music, is always super cool to me.

I caught Rhadoo a few years back and he spent two hours playing this dark, kinda spacey techno that just chugged along real nicely at around 125BPM. I didn't love the tracks, but thought the way that he was blending everything was interesting - I'd recommend seeing him play if you can solely for the master class in mixing that he'll give ya.

At any rate, a little over two hours in, I started to hear a familiar hi-hat. My body knew the track, but I couldn't place it. Then he started fucking with the low-end EQs and you could hear it - Happy Cycling by Boards of Canada (the original, not a remix or an edit or anything), a 100BPM downtempo-ish track, coming into the middle of this dark, chugging techno set at 125BPM. Literally my favorite BoC track and the last thing I'd ever expect to hear in the middle of such a set. It was like he'd built the whole set up to that moment, and it worked so fucking well. I still get chills thinking about it.

Man, this thread has me waxing poetic haha...

What you describe is the defining element of FreeTek. A lot of the tracks I danced to in the 90s were 33 played at 45.

> Many casual listeners cannot even detect such a small change in tempo.

I DJ both electronic formats as well as "general pop hits" nights. People may not consciously tell, but you take a well know track, and speed it up 3-5% (which also increases the pitch, unless you enable pitch-time stretch correction), and it injects a noticeable amount of energy into the dancefloor.

It's also just a social/"conformal" thing. Tempo regions serve as a kind of Schelling point for styles and energy levels. So if you have a given sub-style or vibe, you are likely to produce music in that style and speed, so it can readily mix in the same context.

Again, all of these micro-genres listed still fall under the aegis of "psytrance" and djs can and often do mix across boundaries and pitch stuff up/down as a part of their art. It's really about self-association and capturing specific vibes, vs exclusion or genre-policing.

Many casual listeners

Since the target audience is 'people who dance to the same music from ~midnight to sunrise', the ability to sustain a steady pace over that period matters the same way it would for a marathon runner or similar. I haven't gone racing in a while but goa parties used to have a pretty consistent cycle of warmup for an hour, take off over an hour, full-on for 4-6 urs depending on the time of year, then the sun comes up and it would switch to 'sloa', basically the same musical flavor but coasting down to a walking pace.

I play psy-trance at a range of tempos, from dub stuff at 70-80bpm, through prog stuff around 110-130bpm, to more high energy stuff up at 140-150bpm.

The main reason for sticking to a tempo is because psy-trance, and (good) trance music in general is about the constant pulse. The goal is to put the listener in 'the zone' (a trance even :P), and then give them a bunch of ear candy in the mids and highs to keep their happy little brains occupied.

So for any given set DJs generally pick a tempo and stick to it and deliver a driving, consistent pulse, and everything else is just colouring in on top.

It is not about the listeners, but about the DJs. The less BPM difference, the easier it is to mix a set.

Correct.

This is a weird setup and way to approach it and anyone involved with the scene in its glory days etc never was classifying things this way. Styles based on description of sounds sure but not bpms. This is some weird engineer take on things.

I used to listen all the time to http://spaceunicorn.radio *, most stuff is psytrance and great.

I've rarely seen more than ten contemporary listeners and I don't remember how I ran into it myself, but it's the best psytrance thing I'm aware of.

There are various djs though, not all equally good, so maybe check at different times (dj puddles is to a large degree a guarantee).

* yes no tls : - (

I was interested in that, but unless I missed it, it doesn't show the currently playing track. And no tracklist anywhere.

Yes that's one of its problems unfortunately.

The radio seems to be an afterthought, with their main focus being on their Second Life (yes apparently it still exists) clubs.

Anyhow, from Dj Puddles' YouTube videos ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz1rM6EhFvoqq6WC3f9fSwQ ) it looks like the track is shown in the Second Life's clubs (the videos are often marred by the dj's unbearable distorted voice...).

Furthermore, many of the mixes are published on mixcloud (https://www.mixcloud.com/DJBabeBPM , https://www.mixcloud.com/DJ_Gadget ), but you need to have a subscription to see the trackslist?? :facepalm:

All in all, there seems to be an incredible effort on the music, the Second Life part and a lot more but the web side is definitely stuck in the 90s, disgracefully...

They probably don't realize what they could be if they looked outside Second Life...

Ah thanks. Funny how second life is still around.

Yeah, and it probably has more users than meta's thing xD

Interesting that this is on the front page of HN today. Tensions are running high in the psytrance subreddit this week. Psytrance is very popular among Israeli settlers, perhaps because many visit Goa after completing their military service.

The festival in Israel where 250 people were murdered by Palestinians while they were dancing in peace was a Psy Trance festival. One of the greatest Psy Trance bands of all time, Astral Projection, was supposed to play at the festival. You're right that tensions are running high. This was an absolute pogrom on a peace loving community that many people (including myself) have been a part of for 40+ years. Suggesting that "tensions are running high" is the understatement of the year.

A survivor of this attack claims that IDF open-fired on the hostages https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-forces-shot-t...

That publication is dripping in propaganda.

> "It happened when Israeli forces engaged in fierce gun battles with Palestinian fighters in Kibbutz Be’eri and fired indiscriminately at both the fighters and their Israeli prisoners."

"terrorists took civilian hostages", has become "fighters took prisoners". That is the wheels of propaganda spinning.

> "...said that prior to that, she and other civilians had been held by the Palestinians for several hours and treated “humanely.” She had fled the nearby “Nova” rave"

Well sure, all I'd be talking about is the nice treatment of my captors too, who just slaughtered 250 of my fellow ravers. They offered tea and cake it was nice.

“Hmm… I wonder where Infected Mushroom falls…”

    ^F Infected

… zero results. o_O

Once they started singing like Moby, well, whatevs. They laughed all the way to the bank with the explosion in popularity outside the 5000 people globally that knew who they were prior.

Oforia, MFG, Astral Projection, and more fill the void the disinfected mushroom left

I don’t know, converting vegetarians was a pretty awesome album.

They still make ‘classic’ style tracks often enough, but honestly I never started paying much attention to them until they started adding vocals - it really kicked them up to a new level of creativity and value for me. Vicious Delicious was the first time I was like, oh, yeah, this entire album!!!

I don't understand why bands get so much animosity for "leaving their roots". IM make amazing, unique music and put on one hell of a live show. Is it as "pure" psytrance as Astral Projection et al? No but why does it have to be? They make music they like to make.

I don't understand your not understanding. Just because the band changes doesn't mean that the fans have to follow along if they don't like what they've started to produce. Everyone has their likes/dislikes. If someone makes specific reasonings for their tastes not following the new direction doesn't mean they are wrong. You're no better for making your comment than someone stating theirs.

For example, how many people that like Ministry have ever heard their true first album and actually likes it?

The first two Black Eyed Peas albums are wildly different from anything else they did. They stopped being a hip-hop group and became a pop band.

U2, Radiohead, Kate Nash, Metallica, Coldplay have also dramatically changed musical direction and lost/gained fans in the process.

It's the intensity of it that strikes me. It's not just a matter of not liking their new stuff. I've encountered many folks that are basically mad the band changed directions. Almost as if the band owes it to the world to keep producing the same sound.

It's more that IM and AP are more beginner-level Goa trance and MFG/Bypass Unit/Oforia/Juno/many others are the real OG ;)

They filled it equally well before IM showed up, if not significantly better; I still enjoy that early Israeli style although it sounds a little cookie-cutter by now. Can't say I vibed with the DarkPsy style & ethos that came in around that time.

I agree. After B.P.Empire they pretty much died to me I don't think I've liked a single track by them after that album.

I feel like they were big around the same time as Juno Reactor, which shows up on the list. I don't really listen to this genre much, though.

They are still big.

IM's work as a whole is all over the place; it doesn't fall cleanly into any single genre. You'd have to narrow it down to individual albums, or even to tracks.

Yup, most important psytrance artist to include. Lots of no name generic artists. Included Ace Ventura which is good, but no Sub6, Skazi, Blastoyz, Infected. Was this just done based on random Spotify searches?

When I was 10 we got a CD player and one of the first CDs I owned - I bought a music magazine with a free cover disk - it happened to be the entire The Lone Deranger by Hallucinogen - through most of my teens I didn't really have a preference, but when I got to 18 I discovered clubs, and it likely had an effect on me liking techno and PsyTrance at the time which I prefered.

In 2001 I spent a year in The Netherlands and went to warehouse parties in the North, at that time abandoned warehouses (also at that time Amsterdam was full of squats which are now > €1m flats) - it was both weird and an amazing time.

The Lone Deranger was also one of my first (Goa) CDs. Simon Posford is pretty much a hero of the scene. Later found Shpongle and was pretty amazed that is the same guy. Also check out the Younger Brother project, also by him.

Is there something like this I can find for techno/trance/acid etc.?

BPM, example songs, where to find more, lineage

This site is awesome.

Beatport is the main hub for digging for electronic music. A lot of producers are active on soundcloud and bandcamp. Looking at specific labels in particular is usually pretty good to find similar-but-different music.

https://music.ishkur.com/

i use youtube, it has more music than soundcloud, beatport, spotify, etc.. I could explore it 24/7 and never hear it all, and i have a discogs window open to to research

lol I've been using YT for music for years. it's maybe slightly cumbersome, and a total waste of bandwidth. but i think its the largest catalogue of music available. i only recently stopped using it quite as much once they neutered the search function (all you get is "recommended for you" etc). but i'm happy to see a fellow youtube listener, thought I was the crazy one in my friend group

digging on discogs is great for electronic music imo. check out Telekom Beats TV on youtube - amazing german music channel. Their blind test is amazing. You'll get loads of recommendations. on discogs though if you enter a year range + combo of genres - then just listen to the results - you'll get some great recs imo!

Not just electronic, but basically ALL genres on spotify:

https://everynoise.com/engenremap.html

This website helped me discover some psytrance genres.

https://everynoise.com/

> control-f "infected mushroom" no results

does this person even know what psytrance is?

http://music.ishkur.com/?query=PsychedelicTrance Here is a better breakdown of the genre, by an overly opinionated producer who has been cataloging electronic music styles for decades

And yet from that (great) reference: "If you're waiting for me to say something about Juno Reactor, Hallucinogen or Infected Mushroom, the truth is I find their music to be middle of the pack. I understand they are very popular and they were the introduction to the world of Psy Trance for a lot of people so they win a lot of hearts and minds through first impressions. But the scene is massive with thousands of labels and artists around the world, and I find their contributions to be very ignorable. They aren't a good representation of what's actually out there."

ishkur's guide is a really awesome resource for discovering electronic music.

Something strange is how prevalent listening to trance music seems to be amongst people doing deep work or study. I personally get my best work done when there's a good trance mix and no voice/intelligible conversation. I almost can't solve the harder types of problems if I'm not listening to trance.

Any mixes you’d single out as best for problem solving?

I didn't research much, I just put ASOT on Spotify and I skip all the talking.

Dimension 5, read the reviews, https://www.discogs.com/release/145286-Dimension-5-Transdime...

eg:

Wotzenknecht 1 Dec 2009

"An old classic, fortunately repressed thanks to Suntrip Records.

What defines a classic goa record ?

1) Simplicity over complexity

Take that, new-schoolers. Hear how simple the dreamy and uplifting "Deep Space 5D" is. Learn how to use space and time instead of adding huge layers of ultra-complex melodies one atop each other, then drowning everything into an ocean of reverb. Learn to know how the mind reacts to certain sound and patterns - learn buddhism.

2) A universe in each track

Ten tracks, ten unique moods. From cosmic mysticism to numbing bliss, notwithstanding the mind-fucking psychotropic experiences of both "Omega Centaurus" and the incredible "Harmonic Convergence". The melodies stay in memory for a long time, and for nothing in the world would I let them flow away.

3) An ending (Ascent)

No, this has nothing to do with Brian Eno. Or does it ? Learn that a downtempo track is not a pitched-down full-on stomper: again, it has to tell a story of its own. Remember how the best Transwave tracks always were their slowest one ? Speed is a measure, not a goal. "Flow" is beautiful, oneiric and chilling to the point of being terribly addictive.

This may sound paradoxical, but classic records often define their own rules. A tip to remember. "Transdimensional" is unique although no other album could define more flawlessly what goa trance is about. Yes, they are other classics out there - but guess what ? They use their own rules as well. It's no use trying to catch their spirit these days - they are already way beyond stars, between past and timeless hyperspace."

Transdimensional is the best album ever made

Modern remasters are usually unconvincing, but this one was. Also: UX (Ultimate Experience) one of the best in the genre.

Psytrance (specifically psychedelic, goa, progressive & minimal) is one of the few genres that can keep me in the zone for many hours. It feels like I'm in a creativity bubble connecting dots from everywhere, riding the chain of thought without interruptions. Combine that with a good pair of headphones (Sony wh-1000xm5) and a biscuit edible I find myself coding and VIMing like playing the piano.

Current favorite artist: DJ Bim & Drukverdeler

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1mpYUkGqPoE5jZYUENa8Ig?si=1M...

Some of those I absolutely love, some of those I absolutely hate and wish did not exist.

https://www.psydb.net/samples

Is also fun to see a large library of the samples found in psytrance, but lots of other stuff on the site as well

This very, very cool and comprehensive!

Notably missing influential artists: GMS, 1200 Micrograms, Shpongle, Infected Mushroom, Captain Hook, Ott… I probably forgot quite a few

Envision Festival in Costa Rica is coming up -- March 4th to 11th in Costa Rica. It is an absolutely epic psytrance festival on the beach in a tropical jungle with the most beautiful people in the world. https://www.envisionfestival.com

Goa trance was the sub-genre of psytrance that I really loved in the early 2000s.

Astral Projection, Infected Mushroom, Neuromotor, Goa Gil.

'99 I was in Goa, when everyone thought that Y2K was the end of the world!

Can still remember 25 thousand people dancing on the beach in Anjuna!

It was quite an experience!

Heck I was at one gig where Goa Gil played a set straight for 24 hrs! Bom Shankar!!

Nice!

As an old Simon Posford (shpongle etc) fan boy … can anyone explain why exactly I’m not seeing his projects here? Too old, wrong genre?

Hallucinogen is listed under "goa trance", which seems like a reasonable place for it. Shpongle is downtempo, so not really psytrance, despite the goa flavor.

Not all of Shpongle is downtempo. That’s the beauty of Shpongle. One track is like a demo for a theatrical movie score. Pidgeon hole Shpongle at your own demise!

All those different subgenres are quite daunting as a newcomer. I've listened to songs labelled as “Psytrance” by Spotify, though I couldn't pinpoint the subgenre after listening to the examples provided by the guide.

For example, what would the song “Shiva Style, Pt. 2” by Mandragora classify as (if it counts as Psytrance)?

Why is there a sudden interest in psytrance right now? Is it because of terror attack on the music festival in Israel?

It’s not sudden, it is perhaps only that psy* was not cool in your city for few years and is again. I don’t think interest in trance music ever ceased…

Trance in general is on its way back. Even Tiesto just put a trance track out again.

Trance Pop has been big for a few years. Career Boy by Dorian Electra comes to mind but there are more.

Happy hardcore had a resurgence in 2021-2022 which is still going.

> Trance Pop

Like Armin’s last album.

Progressive Trance coming out of Anjuna has been huge for a while too.

Also tech house like ‘Hot in it’ by Charli XCX and Tiësto from last year.

I'm glad to see Wizzy Noise on the recommendations for Full On Psytrance. Their remix of Flasback by GMS is the best melodic buildup Full On song I've ever listened to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PAoapibFWI

For Astrix, check out "Sex Style" from the album "Artcore": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plcj3hKRxec

I'll never understand the fascination with naming/categorizing music into thinner and thinner things. There are artists like Neurotech out there who don't care about this, and those are by far the best music available.

EDIT I'm still glad for this site to recommend artists, that is a nice thing to do.

I'll never understand the fascination with naming/categorizing music into thinner and thinner things

While I'm generally not a fan of trying to cram things into single boxes just for the sake of it, let alone have discussiona about which is which, it does really help to have categories. Maybe not too thin, ok, but still. Simple example: last weekend some local bands were playing and we were talking about whether or not to go. So instead of looking them up on the internet (if they were even to be found already), I could just ask the organizer to give me a general idea of the style. If they say 'one is goregrind, the other melodic death metal and the last one fairly standard grindcore' then we know pretty much what to expect. Same with psytrance: I really like when flyers simply state which of the various genres it roughly is. Like, if it's labelled as old-school goa trance then it's almost a gurantee for me I'll be able to completely lose my mind there, as opposed to hi-tech which I find interesting but isn't hours-long party material for me.

Very interesting guide. I liked the examples.

The understanding of the author on each subgenre is surprisingly different from mine.

Subgenres in dance music are _extremely_ fluid and change from year to year and even month to month. Some of them are basically just adjective + genre.

The reason dance music has so many sub-genres has to do with how djs mix records. They want to mix songs _smoothly_ and to do that they need songs that sound substantially similar to other songs they want to play. So they find a song or two they like, then they go looking for songs with similar tempos, energy levels, instruments, etc, so they can mix them together. If enough people settle into a particular musical territory, that becomes a "sub-genre", at least for now.

Even something sort of broad like "techno" evolves a lot over time.

A while ago, In some nostalgic trip I've made a Spotify playlist of classic and classic-like tunes of the earlier sound (90s and Early 00):

https://spotify.link/FidWchdd1Db

Just wanted to thank the submitter and the website creator for this lovely resource. I love the selection; it led me to some high quality music. It is hard to find among the mass-produced beats made to assemble "10 hours amazing treynsbibouent" yt videos.

Hi tech psytrance is some of the most aggressively weird stuff I've ever heard. I love it.

Try finnish psytrance. Texas Faggott, Flying Scorpions,OOOT…

Suomisaundi psytrance is carzy.

I don't know why this is flagged. Texas Faggott perhaps? It the name of an artist.

Soumisaundi - wikipedia[0] "In 1997 Exogenic Records became the first record label to focus on Suomisaundi and approximately during the same time Midiliitto was founded as an association focusing on the advancement of production and commercialisation of Suomisaundi. Pepe Kosminen was the founding Chairman of Midiliitto. Together with Flippin Bixies, Midiliitto counted within its members many of the future international stars of Suomisaundi, including the members of groups like Texas Faggott and Squaremeat."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomisaundi

Not sure I agree with this. Psytrance _is_ Psychedelic Trance. Not sure why there is a separate genre for it. Goa Trance is part of this for example, as well as Forest Psy.

I feel like it tries to define and narrow big overarching genres like that.

There are so many excellent examples out there. Personally, I love tracks like https://on.soundcloud.com/aV91kefmnviRJwxg7

Wow!!! Now make one for Industrial/Goth, one of the earliest forms of EDM according to Iskur’s guide to EDM. I’d like to hear samples of the various sub genres, synth, future pop, EBM, etc.

PLEASE!!

oh man do i love to see psytrance pop up on HN! opened this while wearing my Shpongle hoodie from 2006, hah! i've been hooked ever since i first heard Astral Projection in the early 00's, though i stopped listening as much when full-on took over, when IM "sold out", when the music became a little lifeless for lack of better wording. there is only one other genre of music that gives me the same feelings of freedom, exploration, and adventure as psytrance: jam bands like the Dead, Phish, etc. which isn't strange if you think about the history of goa/psytrance, where such psychedelic rock was spun for the hippies before this other-worldy beep boop stuff was created. reckon it all comes from the same source, cut from the same cloth.

i miss isratrance. psyshop. i miss going to shows in the forest for a weekend and the freedom of it all. walk around naked if you want, it's nothing but love!

i'm going to share some artists and songs that i haven't seen listed yet from some other sub-genres of this weird music:

- Psykovsky (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onYzuQUmQzo) caution: this one is relentless!

- Eat Static (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzCjkXiVAdM)

- Planet B.E.N (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BadJg0pBwU0)

- Hux Flux (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIO9DFmAOYs)

- Derango (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fw7meaL83Q)

- Etnica (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A47EaYXcgnk)

- The Antidote (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUf6aYUW3H4)

... man this post sent me back to high school. thank you for the nostalgia trip! i really wish the parties near me were still happening. when isratrance died i lost touch with the scene. everyone moved to facebook. i really, really miss it. i had a lot of fun collaborating with folks on isra, bouncing project files and stems back and forth. especially the swedes, those crazy forest folks :) reckon this winter i should dust off the gear. take care HN & much love.

A little bummed not to see Blue Planet Corporation in there.

Where is Underworld on music map in relation to this genre?

Invisible.

Underworld is usually closer to techno/tech-house than trance although I feel trying to fit Underworld into any genre is a disservice. They are masters of their own sound and a class act!

I love this guide, I just absolutely detest psytrance :(

Of all the dance genres available I am always frustrated that it's more popular than so many other great ones!

DAE like Bluetech? Very accessible downtempo/psybient, used to listen to him a lot during my Simon Posford/IM phase.

Anyone got recommendations on dj sets that are more like offbeat psytrance but contain big drops that make you want to dance?

I really enjoyed reading Ishkur's hyper-precise, super narrowly focused description of the trance genre, posted again yesterday (https://music.ishkur.com/).

I wanted to share it in to see how others react to it.

genre: Trance also: Trance scene: Trance emergence: early 90s Trance is the second most misattributed genre in all of electronic music (after Techno). If I asked you to give me a list of the best Trance DJs, all of them would be wrong. Because 1) You shouldn't have a concept of "best Trance DJs" and 2) Unless you have a copy of Harthouse or Eye Q's early catalogue on vinyl you probably don't know any actual Trance DJs. You probably don't know what Trance is either.

So what, exactly, is Trance and where did it come from?

As direct as I can put it: Trance was an offshoot of German EBM in the late 80s and early 90s and was probably coined in 1991 by Mark Reeder of MFS Records (although the word had been bandied about for several years before then). And we know this because he tells us as such in this 1993 documentary about the early Trance scene:

That first literal needle drop is Secret Knowledge - Sugar Daddy -- a "fine example of trance music". Trance proper is a term that only applies to this short-lived style of music in Germany and the UK (and to a lesser extent the US) before it got ripped apart and pulled in different directions for different reasons, mangling its reputation beyond recognition. And that is all Trance should refer to and nothing else.

The principle behind Trance was the unresolved, infinite track, with interweaving elements and layers and a ceaseless beat carrying it along like a metronome.

Like a lot of early electronic music (and like all good electronic music), Trance borrowed heavily from the aesthetics of Minimalism and it disdained the usage of the dull verse-bridge-chorus format of pop songcraft. In the hands of a competent DJ Trance sounds like one long song, unceasing and unwavering, all night long. A single arpeggiating synth lead with phaser sweeps is all it really needs.

That's not to say that Trance does not have hooks or melodies, or even anthems of the next-day-washing-the-dishes-whistling-to-yourself variety, or that it should not have breakdowns. They're just not supposed to dominate Trance to an insufferable extent.

Trance is best when it lives up to its namesake: It entrances you. Anything else it tries to do (like make you cheer on the douche jockey or put your arms in the air) is fucking offensive.

Unfortunately there is a common tendency among critics and historians to find a number of similar attributes in a specific media, group them into a genre, and then go back in time and retcon other things with those attributes as the same genre despite the fact that the people in those eras did not and would not have called it that.

This happens a lot in things like books and movies (for instance: the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope coined in 2007 and then retconned to include Audrey Hepburn movies from 50 years ago) and it also happens in music.

And in electronic music's case it has happened most often with Trance.

There are a lot of things in the past that have been called proto-Trance or indicated as having a great influence on Trance, from Giorgio Moroder's galloping synths to the electric body buzz of Liaisons Dangereuses to the experimental minimalism of Pink Floyd - On The Run to even some Trance forerunners like Psychic TV or The KLF. But none of those are really Trance.

There is also a tendency among music magazines and fans to continuously call something that someone made Trance because they previously made Trance even though it's clearly evident that they have long since moved on from the sound and have no interest in returning to it, like Ferry Corsten's Electrohouse dumbassery, or whatever stupid shit Armin is trying to do, or Tiesto's pitiful attempts at trying to make Trouse happen. But none of those are really Trance either.

This is also why you should stop following these dipshits like they're rock stars. Listen to Trance because you like Trance, not because you hero worship Dutch superdorks.

And then there are the watered down pop offshoots of Trance (including Eurotrance and Vocal Trance) that you often hear in clothing stores at the mall. None of that is Trance either. That's not what this genre is. Ferry, Armin, and Tiesto are not here.

Listen to what real Trance should sound like. Trance as a concept was so fragile it obviously could not and did not last. As with most things in electronic music, things go to shit when the Dutch get hold of it. The descendents of Trance -- Progressive Trance, Hard Dance, Psy Trance, Eurotrance -- all sold it down the river in their own unique way.

When I think of pure Trance music, I really don't think of anything past 1994. There are some exceptions but generally all Trance music has been commercial pop drivel since the late 90s. I blame Oakenfold.

Ish.

Electronic music is difficult to talk about in general, because anything from the synths used to the BPM becomes a differentiator. Did they sample Amen? Automatically it's Drum and Bass. Does it have a 303? Sweet that means its Acid. Slowed down sample? Vaporwave.

With that mindset it's easy to see how people making music these days mix and match based on what they want to create, which in turn causes reviewers to try to point out all the different genres mashed together in a single/album.

Music has a discernible taxonomy, but since it's a universal language of sorts it's easy to get into confusing positions, not unlike the same word meaning something different between two different languages. So while someone might have "true" historic ties to the original Trance genre, is that a requirement for the music they make to be truly considered Trance? Or does it forever gain the lesser label of "Trance-like"?

In a similar vein, if there is a particular musical technique which is somewhat "required" for a track to be in a certain genre does music that skips that technique sometimes get classified as a different genre? Something like Polka has very particular tempo/beat/bassline - how many of those variables can be changed before it's not Polka anymore?

I can understand how these classifications can be handy (especially BPM sorting as someone said it really helps DJs build a set within a few BPM) but the best I can usually do is compare music to something else I know to consider how they are similar and how they differ. I don't usually hear something and immediately consider which genre that sound effect/technique places that track in, so I guess I'm more put off by the rigidity of Ishkur on the topic than anything. Music is fluid and genres are fluid too, and while there are parallels between evolution, DNA, and musical lineage, it isn't nearly as defined as genetics.

When does a genre "evolve" into another distinct genre?

Psytrance is basically Zumba, but only in nighttime forest settings while quite high on mushrooms.

I learned I like psytrance this summer.

Very cool. Would love to see this for other (closely related) genres e.g. Jungle, Drum n Bass, House, etc.

I’m looking all around this website and haven’t found the works of Syd Dale anywhere

This is a treasure trove and I am immensely grateful for your sharing it.

This is the sort of project the world needs more of, thank you OP!

I have a couple of these recommendations on vinyl. Great guide!

I prefer psychill and chillout over lofi for work/chill.

Great breakdown of the genres!

DI.fm has good amount of psytrance genres…

Great! Reminds me of Ishkur’s guide

the number of arbitrarily segmented subgenres is absolutely ridiculous and hints at a highly snobbish musical genre

I was hoping for more music theory.

Where is Infected Mushroom here?

The main feature of psytrance music is the copious amount of psychedelics you're supposed to consume to enjoy it.

It may have started that way, but I enjoy it sober :). Hopefully our world doesn’t always need intoxicants to enjoy this style? But if you want to enjoy the intoxicants for the sake of the intoxicants, by all means!

Relevant xkcd - https://xkcd.com/1095/

I miss ektoplazm...

The site is still online [0] although there haven't been any new releases since 2018. The site's FLAC releases have been preserved on archive.org [1] for posterity should it ever go offline.

[0] https://ektoplazm.com/

[1] https://archive.org/details/ektoplazm-flac

oh wow i built a script years ago to rip it but basilisk asked not to use up all his bandwidth and offered to let me send him a hard drive for backup but i never got around to it... glad to know it's preserved thanks for the tip!

This is the second such guide to ambient-vicinity I've seen here today. But big names. Boards of Canada. Tycho. Casino vs Japan. Amboy. Brian Eno... I do not see them in their lists. Where do they come in?

They aren't under the psytrance tree. The author does include chillout.

The artists you listed are more electronic, so down tempo, shoegaze, electronic.

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Records]=galacticgrooverecords.bandcamp.com [Geomagnetic]=beatspace-geomagnetic.bandcamp.com [GloOm Music]=gloommusic.bandcamp.com [Goa Madness Records]=goamadnessrecordsofficial.bandcamp.com [Goa Records]=goarecords.bandcamp.com [Grasshopper Records]=grasshopperrecords1.bandcamp.com [Hadra Records]=hadrarecords.bandcamp.com [HippyFlip Records]=hippyflip.bandcamp.com [Hunab Ku Records]=hunabkurecordings.bandcamp.com [Hypnotica Records]=hypnoticarecords.bandcamp.com [Hypnotique Recordings]=hypnotiquerecordings.bandcamp.com [Iboga Records]=iboga-beatspace.bandcamp.com [IONO Music]=ionomusic.bandcamp.com [Insomnia Records]=insomnia-records.bandcamp.com [Insonitus Records]=insonitusrecords.bandcamp.com [Intermind Records]=intermindrecords.bandcamp.com [Iwazaru Records]=iwazarurecords.bandcamp.com [Ka-Sol]=ka-sol.bandcamp.com [Kali Earth Records]=kaliearth.bandcamp.com [Kapala Records]=kapalarecords666.bandcamp.com [Katayy Records]=katayyrecords.bandcamp.com [Krapul]=krapul.bandcamp.com [Krembo Records]=beatspace-krembo.bandcamp.com [LaH NaRRaD]=lahnarrad.bandcamp.com [Looney Moon Records]=looneymoonrecords.bandcamp.com [LuneCell]=lunecell.bandcamp.com [Lycantrop Records]=lycantroprecords.bandcamp.com [Magus Nexus Records]=magusnexusrecords.bandcamp.com [Mamomam Records]=mamomamrecords.bandcamp.com [Maniac Psycho Pro]=beatspace-maniacpsychopro.bandcamp.com [Mistikal Records]=mistikalrecords.bandcamp.com [MultiFrequency Records]=multifrequency.bandcamp.com [Multidimensional Music]=multidimensionalmusic.bandcamp.com [Nano Records]=nanorecords.bandcamp.com [Nataraja Records]=nataraja.bandcamp.com [Neogoa Records]=neogoarecords.bandcamp.com [Nightmares 420 Records]=nightmares420records.bandcamp.com [Nova Tekk]=novatekk.bandcamp.com [Nutriadance Records]=nutriadancerecords.bandcamp.com [OSOM Music]=osom-music.bandcamp.com [Ohmnium Records]=ohmniumrecds.bandcamp.com [Omveda Records]=omvedarecords.bandcamp.com [OrganiK Circus Records]=organikcircusrecords.bandcamp.com [Ovnimoon Records]=ovnimoonrecords.bandcamp.com [Parvati Records]=beatspace-parvati.bandcamp.com [Phantasm Records]=phantasmrecords.bandcamp.com [Phototropic Records]=beatspace-phototropic.bandcamp.com [Phrenetic Tales]=phrenetictales.bandcamp.com [Post Modern Music]=post-modernmusic.bandcamp.com [Pralayah Records]=pralayahrecords.bandcamp.com [Psybertribe Records]=beatspace-psybertribe.bandcamp.com [Psymbosium]=psymbosium.bandcamp.com [Psynon Records]=psynonrecords.bandcamp.com [Pukkawallah Records]=pukkawallahrecords.bandcamp.com [Purple Hexagon Records]=purplehexagonrecords.bandcamp.com [PsyUnity Music]=psyunitymusic1.bandcamp.com [PsynOpticz Records]=psynopticz.bandcamp.com [Quadrivium Records]=quadriviumrecords.bandcamp.com [Random Records]=beatspace-random.bandcamp.com [Religare Records]=religarerecords.bandcamp.com [Resina Records]=resinarecords.bandcamp.com [Reversible Records]=reversiblerecords.bandcamp.com [Rudra Mantra Records]=rudramantrarecords.bandcamp.com [Sacred Technology]=sacredtechnology.bandcamp.com [Samana Records]=samanarecords.bandcamp.com [Sanaton Records]=sanatonrecords.bandcamp.com [Samaa Records]=samaarecords.bandcamp.com [Samyaza]=samyaza.bandcamp.com [Sangoma Records]=sangomarecs.bandcamp.com [Santo Grau Records]=santograurecords.bandcamp.com [Schlabbaduerst ReKkords]=schlabbaduerst.bandcamp.com [Shunyata Records]=shunyatarecords.bandcamp.com [Snee-Nee-Iq]=snee-nee-iq.bandcamp.com [Sol Music]=beatspace-solmusic.bandcamp.com [Sonic Chakras Records]=sonicchakrasrecords.bandcamp.com [Sonic Dragon Records]=beatspace-sonicdragon.bandcamp.com [Sonic Loom Music]=sonicloom.bandcamp.com [Sonolumineszenz Rec.]=sonogang.bandcamp.com [SpaceBabyRecords]=spacebabyrecords.bandcamp.com [Spiral Trax]=spiraltrax.bandcamp.com [SquareLab Music]=squarelabmusic1.bandcamp.com [Stone Age Records]=beatspace-stoneage.bandcamp.com [Sun Station Records]=shop.sunstation.ru [Suntrip Records]=suntriprecords.bandcamp.com [TIP Records]=tiprecords.bandcamp.com [Temple Twister Recs]=templetwister.bandcamp.com [Timecode Records]=beatspace-timecode.bandcamp.com [Timewarp Records]=timewarprecords.bandcamp.com [Transubtil Rec]=transubtilrec.bandcamp.com [Treetrolla Records]=treetrollarecords.bandcamp.com [Twisted Sibling]=twistedsibling.bandcamp.com [UP Records]=uprecords.bandcamp.com [Unreleased Goa Records]=unreleasedgoarecords.bandcamp.com [Urban Antidote Records]=urbanantidoterecords.bandcamp.com [Vanderson]=vanderson.bandcamp.com [Vantara Vichitra Record]=vantaravichitrarecords.bandcamp.com [Yellow Sunshine Explosion]=yellowsunshineexplosion.bandcamp.com [Yggdrasil Records]=yggdrasilrecords.bandcamp.com [Zodoma Records]=zodomarecords.bandcamp.com [ZuluTunes]=zulutunes.bandcamp.com ) ```

Just to name some...

Ups for posting bandcamp links, get the artists some

Is there a reason this is in a bash array? I assume so you can use mpv or something to play each artist's catalogue straight from bandcamp.

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