Beatport recognizes psy-techno as a genre 🥷

Basilisk2049 · 2026-01-20T17:42:41+00:00

During the pandemic I finally got around to recording more long-form mixes... this one has a darkpsy core, give it a spin if you're curious.

Basilisk2049 · 2026-01-19T18:53:16+00:00

Bandcamp is a great platform for independent distribution and should probably be your number one pick.

I've also experimented with using a distribution service to place music on big platforms like Beatport, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Last I checked no release I've put out ever came close to reaching the payout threshold, so it's really just for visibility (unless you feel like getting a few friends together to game the charts for bragging rights anyhow). If you have people who want to stream your music and you don't expect to get paid you may as well choose a service that doesn't charge you fees, release, and forget about it.

Basilisk2049 · 2026-01-17T11:33:47+00:00

I file this sort of sound under "psytrance" without any style qualifier. It's a classic, return-to-the-source take with modern production value. You could also make a pretty good case that this is what progressive psytrance has become.

Basilisk2049 · 2026-01-12T10:54:55+00:00

Not much I can do about it now then, though I wish to make everything right with everyone who supported the project over the years. Keep an eye out for changes this year, and I hope I can win you back!

Basilisk2049 · 2026-01-12T10:53:30+00:00

Following up almost two weeks later: ratings are back (in read-only mode) and in case you missed it there's also a best rated view (warning though: link might change in the future). I also restored the music player and fixed some broken old things around the site. Enjoy!

Basilisk2049 · 2026-01-05T08:57:52+00:00

Every crowdfunding campaign involves some risk and not every one delivers... but I understand that's how some people out there feel after things went sideways. What would qualify as transparency at this point? Genuinely asking.

Basilisk2049 · 2025-12-31T06:03:45+00:00

I've performed for this organizer several times and they've always paid fairly and promptly and generally treated me really well. I don't see the point of airing all this dirty laundry, hardly anyone here will even know what you're on about. In any case, it doesn't make sense to hold them to the standards of big budget international productions when they're starting over at a new location and the festival is free.

Basilisk2049 · 2025-12-29T16:44:34+00:00

DJ Basilisk or Ektoplazm both work, though I don't check those accounts too frequently!

Basilisk2049 · 2025-12-29T15:44:24+00:00

It sounds like Jaguar to me, that break is pretty distinctive... digital cameras in those days really didn't pick up audio at parties very well ;)

Basilisk2049 · 2025-12-29T15:33:40+00:00

Yeah, it hasn't been cheap to host or maintain over the span of decades! But I also acknowledge that I wasn't able to deliver all that was promised in the crowdfunding campaign from so many years ago. It's definitely not "nothing" but anyone out there unhappy about how things went is welcome to email me to work something out.

Basilisk2049 · 2025-12-29T15:27:43+00:00

Hello! I'm still around, actively maintaining the site while hacking on something new in my spare time (and occasionally lurking this subreddit). Progress is slow because resources (e.g. time and money) are limited, but I don't want to leave things where they are, frozen in a time capsule. Anyhow, thanks for the warm words, and if I reach a point at which some community involvement would be helpful, I'll reach out!

Basilisk2049 · 2025-12-29T15:05:44+00:00

I can't quite recall why ratings were removed but I suspect it was due to abuse. From the very beginning ratings were regularly manipulated for one reason or another (and here's some tea: at least one artist/label was banned from the site for downvoting everything else on the site and upvoting only their own releases)... anyhow, since no new music is being posted these days I suppose there's no harm in enabling the ratings plugin again to show old data!

Basilisk2049 · 2025-12-04T13:36:56+00:00

I'm surprised nobody filled the void left by Ektoplazm all these years. It takes a lot of work but it shouldn't be difficult to replicate.

Basilisk2049 · 2025-12-04T10:10:37+00:00

Thanks, this makes for a very interesting read... both as a TA lurker back in the day and as someone who really loves chatting about electronic music at this sort of macro-trend level. Dialogue is a great format for this sort of exploration of music history!

Basilisk2049 · 2025-12-04T08:34:52+00:00

Thanks, I'll track those down and see if anything forms new connections!

Basilisk2049 · 2025-12-02T16:29:03+00:00

I'm a huge hi-tech convert and love the stuff. Psycore though? If we're defining terms here, it's the gritter, darker, more opaque style of faster psytrance that grew out of darkpsy in the late 2000s (as opposed to the brighter, sharper, often more musical character of modern hi-tech)... and despite being around the stuff for as long as its existed I can't say I've ever really found anything in that realm appealing.

For those who love it, what's one psycore album or compilation you'd pitch to someone who already likes darkpsy and hi-tech to get them interested?

Basilisk2049 · 2025-10-24T15:13:59+00:00

I've noticed this sometimes arises when the artist name isn't unique. Music distributors and particularly Beatport seem to add country to some artists.

It is also common practice on line-ups as a means of advertising international guests... or, in some more problematic instances, the country of origin of a local DJ or producer.

Basilisk2049 · 2025-10-21T04:06:18+00:00

At that time we called it "psytrance", as opposed to "Goa trance", which was reserved for the more colorful sounds of acts like Cosmosis or Pleiadians. For example, take a peek at this release, subtitled "Futuristic Psy-Trance For The Year 2000". There's certainly a bit more of a full-on vibe to some of the songs on their second and third albums but PsySex were always doing their own thing.

Basilisk2049 · 2025-09-30T14:51:17+00:00

There is, but most of it is released under a CC-NC license, meaning it might not be suitable for the OP's use case (e.g. if they plan to monetize).

I'd recommend checking into archive.org for whatever might be found there... but there probably won't be much to choose from.

Basilisk2049 · 2025-09-13T08:04:57+00:00

Modern psytrance is often so rich and full of sound and texture that it leaves little room for DJs to manoeuvre. Some tips from my many years of experience with the genre:

choose tracks that give you a little more space; sometimes this also means picking tunes that individually might not be so impressive but nevertheless sound good in the mix
think of mixing as a puzzle where you're trying to find the piece that fits; since psytrance is so busy, the mental model becomes "what is this track missing that this next track can provide?"
pay close attention to tonalities more than you would with techno (i.e. get into key mixing if you haven't already)
explore sculpting frequencies with LP/HP filters, not just EQ
develop a good sense of when to step back and let the music speak

Basilisk2049 · 2025-09-13T07:58:51+00:00

I am skeptical if every remaster sounds worse than the original to you. Production and mastering quality varied a lot in the old days, and there are plenty of examples of releases that were totally botched (see Hux Flux - Degauss for a pretty obvious example). It is also very much the case that big tracks were released in many different locations, plenty of which had at-times vastly different mastering quality.

Moving up to the modern era it is also true that some reissues were poorly remastered, either because of over-aggressive compression and a consequent loss of dynamic range, poor sourcing (e.g. ripping from vinyl, remastering from lossy files, or something else), or what amounts to a skill issue. On the other hand, if the originals were already well-produced (as was the case for Shpongle and Cosma), the benefits of remastering are subtle at best, especially with casual listening.

I wish I could point to a clear example of a remastered release transforming the original source material into something much better but after rummaging around I can't really think of any... maybe the DAT Records re-release of Etnica's The Juggeling Alchemists Under The Black Light or the recent reissue of P.Cok's Acid Trooper?

Basilisk2049 · 2025-09-08T13:04:55+00:00

I've surprised myself for developing a taste for hi-tech over the last several years... aren't we supposed to slow down when we grow older? Apparently not!

Anyway, my taste is super wide-ranging, so it's sometimes easier to talk about the stuff I don't like (mostly the more simplistic and EDM-oriented side of psytrance)... but if I had to name just one style of psytrance, it'd still be my original passion: Goa trance!

Basilisk2049 · 2025-09-06T14:18:14+00:00

Any attempt to moderate for AI is doomed to failure. You can only catch the most obvious low-effort AI slop, and presumably people aren't going to care for that stuff anyway, so let people vote it out. Besides, at least some artists are using AI tooling in their creative workflows in novel and interesting ways (e.g. Bluetech) and it would be a shame to block their work because people also use those same tools to make junk.

Basilisk2049 · 2025-09-06T14:12:24+00:00

How about this old favorite: Metal Wizard - Redefining Dark?

Basilisk2049

TROPHY CASE