Goa Generation

Look at the cover again, please. Then check your calendar. You will see that although things look decidedly pre-1999, we’re actually in 2007.

It’s a cheeky optical illusion, but I’m not sure whether it’s also a sonic illusion that has you transported to a time when psyreviews could use phrases like “this would tear the leaves off the trees in Anjuna” without irony.

Certainly, Space Buddha’s sound makes more sense when packaged in a heady mix of Ganesha and the Samarkan font: the BPM’s aren’t so offensive, and his undeniably familiar formula is more like an old friend than something to be offended by. Which is more than can be said for Toast3d, whose Slayer is a far cry from their promising early stuff. Its final melody is the worst I’ve heard all week, which – sad but true – is definitely saying something these days.

Cyber Cartel’s Fragile Mind has a relentless bpm that, in technical terminology, “takes the piss.” On top of this pace, there’s wibbles, flurries, nice melodies, arms-in-the-air-moments and a massive – and I mean bloody huge – final run. Is that true? Or is it retrodden soulless cliché layered over a kickdrum? It’s this bloody cover art, it makes it impossible to tell.

Bamboo Forest were good back in the day (the original back in the day, that is). After that they disappeared, then half the duo came back, and was then shit. Modeled Waveform Synthesis is pretty shit, made shitter still by the name: it’s basically eurotrance mixed with Dino Psaras but slightly less shit.

Spinal Cord’s Kill The Groove is one of the better bits of Israeli trance around at the moment because it (a) shows restraint, (b) has an interesting and original midsection and (c) “goes off” at the end without getting excessively cheesy.

Opium Of The Masses (Space Buddha & Cyber Cartel) do pretty well with True Reality; it’s big and it’s burly and it’s over-the-top melodic – but by Christ it would tear the leaves off the trees in Anjuna.

Shit – I said it. Bugger.

Electric Universe’s Def Con proves that he had something too shit for even his dreadfully shit album, Beat Hackers are still trying to sound like Infected Mushroom, and Bio Tonic’s We Are Snakes is pretty nasty, but has one of the funniest Izraeli-accent-through-a-megaphone vox samples in the history of recorded music.

All in all this is far from an essential purchase, only really a must-grab if you’ve just finished a ten-year stint in an Indian prison where you only listened to a DAT of Astral Projection.

But in amidst of everything else around at the moment, I sort of like this: and besides, three decent tracks is way more than you commonly get on your average comp.

What’s also interesting is how fairly generic music somehow sounds better with a picture of Ganesh on the front. Maybe the spirit is alive after all.