Alien Project

One of the first things I found when I ventured out into the torrent world was a 16.7 GB collection of psytrance from the first half of this decade. Hundreds of records, sad that I can't find it again now that demonoid is dead. Pam thought this was easily one of the most insane acts of my insane music collecting hobby. When she asked me what I was going to do with 16.7 GB of one kind of music, I answered that I only really wanted to get a flavor for the genre.

I loved a lot of the techno of the early 90s but really hadn't kept up with it, so I was happy to take a week to download this sucker. I only ended up keeping maybe a fifth of it. Most techno is just a mindless thump-thump-thump with maybe one boring hook dropped on top of that. God I hate that. I'm to the point where if any song starts with thump-thump-thump, I'm gone before the third thump.

But when the mindless techno thumping comes along with good melody, it will probably keep my interest. I find it fascinating that psytrance is very much not mainstream but thrives in odd corners of the world like Goa, Sao Paulo, Johannesburg and Tel Aviv. I found I gravitated towards the Israeli bands in the collection.

Although I only found a portion of that torrent worth keeping, there were a number of real gems in there. You'd think with a title like Don't Worry, Be Groovy! and the ghastly cheap anime cover, this album would be one of the first not to make the cut. But then I've been listening to Donovan for the last three days so I am fully prepared to defend groovy. This album is particularly melodic and happy. Happy is a requirement for me - who wants cynical dreary dance music? I mean, really. Don't worry and be groovy indeed.