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• Goa / Psy-Trance
• Progressive / Psy-Trance

Slum (2) - Make Rainbow In Your Slum - 23-Feb-06 01:08 AM
In 2004, a pair of Japanese psy-fanatics surprised many with their shockingly good debut album which seemed to come out of nowhere. Phi caught the attention of many with their own unique blend of modern full-on power coupled with a full assault of old school goa madness. What the album lacked in sonic clarity was more than made up for in pure energy, which they called “Nu Skool Hard Goa”. In 2005 the duo parted ways to work on their individual solo projects and Shuji, one half of Phi, has now resurfaced under the name Slum with his debut album titled (in his typical Engrish style) "Make Raibow In Your Slum", on Japan's Elf Music. Some artists, when branching out on their own, try to completely sever themselves from their previous work, so it will be interesting to see what happens here.

With in 10 seconds of the start of Future Is Ours starts is clear that Slum seems to have fully embraced the sound he helped develop in Phi and is trying push it into new areas. Comparisions with Phi are simply unavoidable. The bass is back, the kick is back, the slightly shuffled hi-hats are back, the thick dirty synth leads are back and the general madness is back. That is not to say that Shuji is simply covering old ground though. The production is much clearer and there are a number of new elements introduced into what he now calls the "Hard Gore" sound (on a side note, this is simply a play on words as Goa and Gore are pronounced the same when rendered into Japanese pronunciation). The most obvious difference to my ears is in the "supporting" sounds. There are more "clean" sounds in the mix here, from pads, to squeeky mini leads. The sound isn't quite as layered and thick all the time and the flyby effects, pads and general weird noises are a lot more spaced out and clear, where as in Phi there was a general assault of thick, morphing and pitch shifting stuff going on most of the time. The breaks and builds are also generally a lot bigger and badder (in the good sense of bad), a classic point being the track Make Rainbow In Your Slum, which has a wonderful lead and a big break down that is sure to bring any dancefloor to full boil.

I Can Eat All Of Earth and Emog gives us a mess of atonal noisy blasting leads while Never Runaway Never has more of Shuji's trademarked dirty guitar-ish styled synth tweakage. Why You Have My Beer? No Problem has some nice delay tweaking on a lead that is straight from the gosspel according to Phi. Sneak, Beneath My Notice goes hard and focuses on a wide range of cool, dark and evil fly by noises to keep things driving. Follow Me pulls out back out of the depths of hell sonically while keeping the same driving feeling going while Trust Youth Days is probably the thickest track sonically, with lots of layers and and ever changing array of leads, pads and effects to attract the ear. Over The Revolution brings things to a close as the only vaguely chill like track here. Rather than trying to be some sort of downtempo number though, this one works by being a deeper mid-tempo track that you could both chill to, or dance to depending on the situation.

As I said before, comparisions with Phi are simply unavoidable, but luckily those comparisions are all good here. All and all Shuji has obviously taken the experience he gained performing live the last couple of years to create an album that will definately storm on the dancefloor, but at the same time still keeping the music well above being simply dancefloor filler. Fans of Phi will find plenty to love here, but this is an album I'd recommend to anywho who wants some good pounding music that doesn't sound the same as everything else out these days. Highly recommended.

Space Tribe - Collaborations - 07-Jan-05 10:16 AM
Space Tribe�c. Up until recently it seemed like Olli Wisdom was about the only keeper of the old school flame. Not to say that his sound never progressed, as he did indeed take the better elements of the full on sound, but he always maintained that wonderful dirty squelchy old school vibe that we know and love from Space Tribe. This new release, the first from Space Tribe Music and released in Japan through Solstice, features a nice collection of Olli Wisdom�fs more recent collaborations with other artists. There is a lot of work with the current full on crowd, so I suspect this release will be a lot more �gcurrent�h than some of Space Tribe�fs work. So without further ado, lets jump in and see just what we have here.

3rd Eye (Spacebase Mix) sees Olli team up with GMS. While I have been a bit harsh on GMS in the past, but I have since made my peace with them, realizing their clones were giving them more of a bad name than they themselves were and thus I am able to objectively look at this track and say I like it. It�fs got the typical GMS bass line, but it�fs held a bit back in the background, which enables the synths to do their thing. We have a nice contrast between some cleaner exotic sounding synths and a nice mixture of Olli�fs dirty melodic leads and GMS�f dirty grinding leads. All in all the Olli squelch factor helps kick the GMS sound up several notches into a nice thumper of a track here. Full on, yes, but good full on.

Next up Olli teams up with a more recent full on master, CPU, to bring us Single Dose. In this case,, CPU does seem to overpower the Space Tribe sound a bit, but they do compliment each other well, even if CPU does seem to have had stronger influence on this track, especially in the bass and percussion areas.
Continuing on, we have a match up with Electric Universe for The Acid Test, which is truly the highlight of the album.. This track is a couple years old now and a meeting of two great old school masters, but this track outshines the newer, supposedly better (in some people�fs minds) tracks by far. Massive leads, super powerful stomping, squelching galore�c It might be old, but it will wipe the floor up with 99% of the new, supposedly �gkilla�h tracks out there. Great stuff here.

Twitch!!!!, made with Psywalker is next on the hit list, and again we have another thumping track here. Kind of full on, but more old school to my ears. Again, we have the squelchy grrr-ing leads, balanced with more recent full on sounding dirty atonal zippy noises. As is common in a lot of Space Tribe tracks, there is a lot of sampling going on here. Some people find some of his sample work to be a bit over the top, but so far there has been nothing too extreme on this release. This track becomes perhaps a hair too �gtypical full on�h for me, but its still fairly good

Next, Olli meets Safi Connection for Dinner With God. We get tricked into thinking there is a big intro coming, only to be suddenly thrown right into the track. If there is one lead sound I have a hopeless weakness for, it is squelchy leads with a strong �gvocal�h quality to them. This track has the psycho robot desperately trying to communicate with us sound that I love, so I�fm totally into this track. The change ups are pretty nice too. Again, pretty full on, but not surprising considering the collaborators, and its good full on so...

Wacko teams us back up with CPU. A typical Space Tribe sample opens things up for us. We have some CPU whirr-ing noises and then the bass kicks in. For a change it�fs not the usual full on fair here and I dare say a bit groovy. We get a nice change up with some congas and the bass changing around a bit to be busier, but not loose the groove. We get a nice total silence break and then some more CPU percussion, filter work before sliding back into the stomp. This is quality stuff here and probably my second favorite track after The Acid Test.

The second team up with GMS has a hard act to follow here with Alternate Future. The intro is cool and moody, but it unfortunately building into a bass line than just seems too bright for the mood the intro set. This track doesn�ft really stand out too much for me. The break goes back to the intro mood and gives us some good stuff for the last two minutes, but its nothing groundbreaking really.

Tall Poppy Syndrome teams us up with Psywalker again. Start out dark and distorted and drop into some thumping buzzy full on with out much fuss. This is another winner that makes up for the previous filler track. Very full on again, but it�fs just dirtier and better than the usual bright. squeaky clean, polished but all to often boring full on we get these days. Sometimes dirty is good, and this is a great example of that. Good beats, good sounds, good development�c. I know a track�fs good if I end up sitting here bouncing to it and not writing anything and this is the third track on this CD to do that for me. Great stuff.

Last up Space Tribe meets the ever morphing psy-legends X-Dream for Turn On/Turn Off. This one drops out of the 140 bpm range to the 110 area. Even more interesting, it�fs a breaks track!!!! Here we have a lot of the Irritant era X-Dream industrial distorted sounds going on with breaks action. As a fan of the long dead psy-breaks movement, I dig this a lot. That said, it�fs so far away from what Olli usually does, it�fs really difficult to imagine what he did on this track. A good track is only because it�fs so different.

The end result - Given the collaborators Space Tribe worked with here, the heavy full on vibe of the CD is no surprise at all. Having said that, there are 3 or 4 excellent tracks here, together with a bunch of other solid effort tracks. Only one track really struck me as a throw away track, which is a lot better than many CDs I have purchased recently.. All and all a nice mixture of the new and the old, with a total WTF moment at the end.

Phi (3) - 06-Nov-04 08:01 AM
One thing that has often confused me is the fact that psy-trance is very healthy in Japan, yet there seem to be next to no Japanese psy-trance artists releasing music. Phi is one of the new generation of Japanese psy-artists and their debut album starts things off right for these future monsters.

While the general "style" of Phi is full on, the term doesn't really do them justice. The full on power is covered with a heavy dash of acidy goa lines and the term "new school hard goa" that was used in a lot of the Japanese press about this album fits very well. Imagine modern full on beefy basslines dripping with a mixture of full on leads and thick acidy old school goa leads and you have a good idea of where Phi is.

All the tracks are quality here. Henro starts us off stomping right out of the gate and things only get crazier from there. Afrobad is a monster track that should destory any dancefloor with its steady throbbing bass line and nasty busy leads. I Don't Need Your Justice kicks things up even higher (at a full 148 bpm) and mixes all the best of full on with the best of old busy goa.

Its only the last track on the album, Desert Legend, that I have any issues with at all. Desert Legend is a bit of a down"er" tempo number (its not downtempo by any means) and in an of itself is it s very nice track. However with the pure madness of the rest of the album it does some a little bit out of place. That said, it is really a minor point on what is otherwise a fantastic debut for Shuji and Shin of Phi. Keep an eye on these guys, there's something good a brewin' here.

Highly recommend

Total Eclipse - Aliens / Sound Is Solid - 26-Oct-04 07:01 AM
Another record from the vault of early goa by early masters Total Eclipse. Aliens is a very nice and beefy track, especially when one realizes this bad boy is from 1994. Lots of melody and harmony lines going on for fans of melody over purely weird noises and an almost groovy bassline to go with it. While a lot has improved in production quality and variety in todays psy-world, one cannot but feel a little sad that the scene has evolved to a point where no one can even think about making tracks like this anymore. Sound is Solid is...well... solid. Sometimes clean and floating, sometimes dirty and acidy, this old school track is another one of those ones that makes you earn for days of yore.

Oldies but goodies

Baba G - Dig A Jig - 26-Oct-04 07:01 AM
Here we have an uber-rare oldie from Simon Posford together with one "Chester". Outside of being cool purely on old Posford reasons, this track will also be of interest to Celtic Cross fans (another Posford related project) as the Da Shannon remix contains the violin work made famous in Celtic Cross' Darshannon, but in a completely different sonic setting. I can only describe the Da Shannon mix as a psychedelic barn dance howdown from space. People without a sense of humor might find this mix to be cheesy, but personally I enjoy its entirely playful nature. The Dragonfly Kundalini Trance Mix is more of a straight up goa track and is typical of the period in question here. The quality isn't "Twisted" level, but it is a decent old school track with lots of the Simon-esque gated voices and sounds that is sure to bring back memories of the old days.

If nothing else, its just plain fun

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