SkeletonMan, May 21, 2006
The Emperor's new clothes?
Listening to a record like this I can't help thinking whether the psytrance community is kidding itself. Is this good?! Infinitely far away from the midnineties psychedelic trance/dance music this type of music stems from, it's possible to love the one genre and hate the other. No straight forward melodies. No easy recognizable themes to associate with each track. No straight, full-on dancing codes to decipher. Just relentless sound attacks, dark monotonous basses, creepy samples, disturbing moods. Psytrance's equivalent to death metal. How is this enjoyable?
Well, I believe two things are given. Firstly, this music only comes to its fullest potential when experienced at a festival/party. This has to be played LOUD on high-end equipment. Secondly, it has to be played at the right hour when I'm ready for tricky, hard digestable, highly psychedelic, multi-layered, aggressive music. At the wrong hour, it might make me elope the party all toghether.
But then this music could supply the ticket to psychedelic Nirvana. And the recipe I would prefer for this trip is firstly Ka-Sol's Just Another Riot. The bass here is killer like not much else around, the sounds creepy and scary, the track constantly developing and changing, the mood infinitely deep, dark, scary, and psychedelic. Or Zalabim's Jiggsaw Tonic setting out with a scared girl's voice. If you want to try this on psychedelics, you better be among friends to supply warmth and comfortability! When you are able to follow a track like this through all the way, you may come out a changed person. Likewise something like Traskels's Unknown Speaker could change your perspective on life and reality.
Picking a track, though, is hardly worth the effort. All tracks here provide the same type of musical experience, and if you're able to get on the boat, what at first may seem as a less appealing track, may prove in the end to be the most rewarding one.
Grading this album is therefore almost futile to me. At the right moment this could be THE 6/5 star album if there ever was one. At the wrong hour I could angrily pronounce this to be the most shitty and reserved music ever to have been published. In a close battle with Derango's Tumult.
The Emperor's new clothes or not, it surely makes you take a stand.
4.2/5 (