Goa Trance - classic or dud?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Thought i'd post a topic for a change (if I'm allowed)...

Personally, I'd say classic; but then I'm not the best person to ask. I love the stuff... that, and I run the psychedelic trance board here on Lusenet. (plug alert! ;) But then, I live in the US, where critics haven't had a chance to accept - then reject - it as a fad. So, what do you Brits think?

― Snow Dog, Tuesday, 23 January 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Not a Brit, but it's quite popular in Australia because we have the weather for outdoor raves. Neither classic nor dud, as it's an entire genre and has it's fair share of both highs and lows.

On the other hand, in many ways I think Goa trance is a style of diminishing returns. The first time I heard a really good track (say by Hallucinogen or Astral Projection or Cosmosis etc. etc.) the complexity is quite stunning and I thought "Wow, how do they do that?" But after a while it just seems run-of-the-mill no matter how accomplished it is.

― Tim, Tuesday, 23 January 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Thanks for the quick response. Just to clarify, though, what I mean is the really old-school Goa (Hallucinogen, Juno Reactor, et al.) and not the entire psy genre.

― Snow Dog, Tuesday, 23 January 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Personally I think it's shite. Most of my friends are crazy about Hallucinogen, I think it's boring (strange how they say the same thing about my beloved Basic Channel ;) Anyway in a club with some grade A pill turning your body into the sun lighting the universe with love, even Goa can be good, although even then I felt an emptiness in the music, the empty joy of pure function or something like that.

― Omar, Tuesday, 23 January 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

It strikes me that the probably-good-in-a-club argument is kind of moot when talking about trance music ;)

Anyway my playing habits speak for themselves. I have one Goa compilation, from 96 or 97 - it had some huge simurg creature on the front. It all sounded quite pretty and took up walkman space for a few weeks and then I got a bit bored of it - interestingly at the time I was mad for the Basic Channel stuff so maybe these two styles are simply incompatible to the human brain. I'd like to hear some more but unless I can sort out an FTP on my speedy work connection it seems unlikely.

― Tom, Tuesday, 23 January 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

----- It strikes me that the probably-good-in-a-club argument is kind of moot when talking about trance music ;) -----

True Tom, although don't underestimate the way trance is used outside the club-context, esp. as a soundtrack to driving a car, programming, going to the supermarket. I like the incompatibility theory re. trance/B.C. Must be true ;)

― Omar, Tuesday, 23 January 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

BC is minimal techno, yes? I think Tom has a good point there... while I own some CD's of that nature (Plastikman, Mills, ect.), in general techno depresses the hell out of me. I can see the merits in it, but I just don't have the mindset where I could actually *enjoy* such music. I think minimal techno is more for intellectual types, who can derive emotion from the absence thereof (this may also explain why IDM people hate FSOL... they leave nothing out).

― Snow Dog, Tuesday, 23 January 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Mmm, techno depressing? Well yes and no, esp. with Basic Channel/Maurizio et al words thrown around to get to the music were: empty cities, dark corners of Berlin, heroin, valium, drowing, X-ray house. Not to sound like the Nick Cave of Dance but these things i like in music. Then again I have heard minmimal techno that was close to something like lover's techno, everlasting sighs of angels over bubbling beats. Minimal techno in a club can be quite boring unless you have a good DJ who plays around with it, like Jeff Mills or Richie Hawtin. I tend to play these cd's everywhere, it's pure soul music for me, quite unpretentious also.

― Omar, Wednesday, 24 January 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I don't think it's very helpful to talk about BC music in terms of emotional states anyway: all this heroin house stuff was quite amusing but had nothing to do with the actual mental/physical impact of Maurizio et al. The only BC release which hit me emotionally was Monolake's first album, and that because it was so lush and exotic and beautiful, more so because of its economy of materials.

When I think about basic channel I think about the claim you often find mathematicians making, of the abstract beauty they find in the patterns and solutions of their work, a kind of beauty separate from the elicitation or exercise of 'emotions', though it may cause extreme emotional states.

― Tom, Wednesday, 24 January 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

With danger of going off-topic ;) Yes Tom, i know that cold mathematical beauty your refering to, personally I don't see it in BC&co (Plastikman, Claude Young, Surgeon are closer to that sort of thing). I think that the dub-techniques give B.C. a fluidity that short-circuits a mathematical rigidity. Or maybe my emotions have deteriorated to the point where I believe that there's more soul in Maurizio's 'M7' that in the collected works of Al Green. Which again differs from the strange icy beauty of Various Artists, there's a glacial/arctic feeling in music that i still would like to qualify as emotional, see for instance Nico's 'Marble Index', Suicide, Kraftwerk's 'Radioactivity'.

― Omar, Wednesday, 24 January 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

five months pass...

my views could be biased because where i come from, milwaukee, no one has heard the word goa. its all hick rock and the first techno i heard i became infatuated with as a long saught release of something i really loved, it was some keoki tracks i found on napster, and now ive tried everything i can find and find Raczynski's random electronic sounds and Oakenfold's incredibly synced beats the greatest stuff on earth... sitting alone with a five hour oakenfold mp3 blasting from my stereo gives me a feeling that i have decided what must be when people talk of trance. okay im off topic now. and dont remember where i was going in the first place. i dont even know what most of what you guys are talking about is! its so damned secluded in a shroud of the f***ing eighties around milwaukee. i hope some of my words could further some part of this conversation...

oh yeah, i was going to say how heavy rythmic long lasting beats from trance music with escalating climbs and breaks fits with human nature and it just feels good listening to something so primal, then our brain is intrigued how something so technological can be something so primal, or am i overthinking it and you guys just think trance is a new type of music like acid rock circa 1985.

― Zel, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

I was just playing "Octagon" (Basic Channel) last night.... and. My god. It's not euphoric, or optimistic. It's dystopic warm-wet clank music. But there's something that feels so alive, squirrely, unformed, crying for food in a wordless language. Zel, why not test our theory that love of Basic Channel and love of Psy Trance are mutually exclusive? Dunno if it's possible in Mil-wahh-kee but try using the web or something and track down the Basic Channel mix CD; it comes in a metal box. See whatcha think.

I can't really get into Goa Trance because I start to feel cheeply manipulated, like in a Lars Van Trier movie.

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

slightly ashamed to say ive never heard of Basic Channel, but ill track down a cd, estores are good if you know exactly what to look for.

also, ive found J-Pop has the same sort of euphoric thing, its basically dance music so it has some of the same sounds, but the fact that you have NO IDEA at all what they are even trying to say makes it more trancey, you jsut get the sound of a happy persons voice without thinking about the incredibly lame and cliche things she could be saying, heh im jsut being lame and inadvertantly changing the topic repeatedly.

ill find some basic channel

― Zel, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

BC is a label from Berlin. The mysterious people who run it have got some other labels too: Rhythm and Sound, Chain Reaction, Main Street, Burial Mix; their superstar seems to be a guy named Maurizio who has an incredible series of records M1 thru M what? 8? Others in same vein if u like - Monolake, Pole, Kit Clayton, Swayzak blah blah etc. BC is total class. If you like that kind of thing. Minimal and very complex all at once.

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 18 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

Maurizo btw is one of the members of Basic Channel. The compilation of his M work is absolutely essential. One of the great dance albums of all time.

(btw on The Wire site there is a brilliant article on Basic Channel in the archives. Essential reading)

― Omar, Wednesday, 18 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

four months pass...

I first heard Maurizio M1-M7 a couple of years ago...I suggest firing up a fattie and then sit down and listen to M7...you'll be floating I promise!

― MrMagoo, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

twenty-one years pass...

bump cuz of other recent "Maligned Genres" thread

post good goa trance trax here plz

― broken breakbeat (sleeve), Saturday, 20 May 2023 19:39 (one week ago) link

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.