Trance/Psybient/etc
Feb 9, 2020 11:20:45 GMT -5
Post by andrewwerdna on Feb 9, 2020 11:20:45 GMT -5
I love psybient. I don't consider myself to have a thorough knowledge of it, but I got a good bunch of albums I revisit pretty much every year. And so because of that I'm interested to learn about the genre that came before, trance, so this thread is for all of that stuff, trance, progressive trance, psytrance, goa, psybient, etc.
I was drawn to psybient many years ago because of some activities I was interested in. I don't engage in any of that stuff these days, and now I think it's quite unfortunate that the genre is weighed down by that baggage because I feel like people judge it before even listening and either love it or hate it depending on what they think of the activities being celebrated by these artists. I personally believe that it is some of the most amazing music ever made, and Simon Posford is a total genius (the guy behind Sphongle and Hallucinogen). What is particularly incredible, and what I'd particularly like to point out to dungeon synth listeners, is the way the synths evolve through time. Normally I don't like high production values, makes music sound soulless and plastic, but this genre I think is an example of high production values done right, it's total obsession to make every second moving, evolving, expanding, ornate, and florid like a jungle garden. The amount of work that must go into this music, having personally attempted to implement evolving synths in my music, is mind-blowing. And there's so much of this type of music out there, I've only barely scratched the surface. I would be very interested to see dungeon synth start to go hifi in this particular direction, where all the extra polish goes into this sort of synthesizer ear-candy. Anyways here are some of my favorite psybient albums:
This is probably a good one to start with because it's instrumental and is not inundated with tacky drug references:
This is my personal favorite album in the style, and I usually end up binging on the rest of Shpongle's albums immediately afterward:
Entheogenic is always great, though is sort of a knock-off Shpongle:
I don't know if this counts, might be sort of trip-hop, synthpop, but "disk 2" of this album is really great, starts at 1:16:00. The first half is cool for certain moods, but is that type of aggressive trance that I struggle to get into:
And lastly, this is straight-up psytrance, but an amazingly energetic album, great for exercising:
I was drawn to psybient many years ago because of some activities I was interested in. I don't engage in any of that stuff these days, and now I think it's quite unfortunate that the genre is weighed down by that baggage because I feel like people judge it before even listening and either love it or hate it depending on what they think of the activities being celebrated by these artists. I personally believe that it is some of the most amazing music ever made, and Simon Posford is a total genius (the guy behind Sphongle and Hallucinogen). What is particularly incredible, and what I'd particularly like to point out to dungeon synth listeners, is the way the synths evolve through time. Normally I don't like high production values, makes music sound soulless and plastic, but this genre I think is an example of high production values done right, it's total obsession to make every second moving, evolving, expanding, ornate, and florid like a jungle garden. The amount of work that must go into this music, having personally attempted to implement evolving synths in my music, is mind-blowing. And there's so much of this type of music out there, I've only barely scratched the surface. I would be very interested to see dungeon synth start to go hifi in this particular direction, where all the extra polish goes into this sort of synthesizer ear-candy. Anyways here are some of my favorite psybient albums:
This is probably a good one to start with because it's instrumental and is not inundated with tacky drug references:
This is my personal favorite album in the style, and I usually end up binging on the rest of Shpongle's albums immediately afterward:
Entheogenic is always great, though is sort of a knock-off Shpongle:
I don't know if this counts, might be sort of trip-hop, synthpop, but "disk 2" of this album is really great, starts at 1:16:00. The first half is cool for certain moods, but is that type of aggressive trance that I struggle to get into:
And lastly, this is straight-up psytrance, but an amazingly energetic album, great for exercising: