Psybient

I`m getting into a bit of Psybient, so what are the best albums in this genre?

The ones with the ethnic chanting

Haven't really listened to psybient lately. Kind of drifted away from that psy-trance thing. Anyway, Shpongle is pretty much essential, but you probably know that. If you don't then grab the first two Shpongle albums. Simon Posford is pretty much THE psybient producer (also in Shpongle) so you might want to look what he's been up to. He has a shitload of aliases. I have heard the psy-hippies praise Younger Brother but haven't bothered with it myself.

 

Ott's Blumenkraft is also quite good.

Everything Shpongle and Ott has put out are worth checking out for sure. Although my favourites of both are their debut albums. Ott's remixes of Hallucinogen is also essential. Then the stuff on Ultimae Records is probably also worth checking out. Carbon Based Lifeforms have a couple of nice albums, World of Sleepers and Twentythree, the latter more of an ambient affair. Not much of ethnic woman wailing stuff there. Solar Fields' Movement is nice too and his other material is also worth checking out, some of it is more of a proggy trancey sort of thing. Solar Fields also made the soundtrack to Mirror's Edge, so if you played it you have heard his stuff. Bluetech has a couple of pretty nice albums as well, Sines and Singularities is a stand out for me. It's pretty IDMish at times as well.

 

Come to think of it, the albums and artists that I mentioned aren't really "psybient", whatever that is, but just good electronic albums. Maybe Entheogenic is more "typical" where the goa/psytrance influences are more apparent.

  On 6/7/2012 at 12:36 PM, azatoth said:

Everything Shpongle and Ott has put out are worth checking out for sure. Although my favourites of both are their debut albums. Ott's remixes of Hallucinogen is also essential. Then the stuff on Ultimae Records is probably also worth checking out. Carbon Based Lifeforms have a couple of nice albums, World of Sleepers and Twentythree, the latter more of an ambient affair. Not much of ethnic woman wailing stuff there. Solar Fields' Movement is nice too and his other material is also worth checking out, some of it is more of a proggy trancey sort of thing. Solar Fields also made the soundtrack to Mirror's Edge, so if you played it you have heard his stuff. Bluetech has a couple of pretty nice albums as well, Sines and Singularities is a stand out for me. It's pretty IDMish at times as well.

 

Come to think of it, the albums and artists that I mentioned aren't really "psybient", whatever that is, but just good electronic albums. Maybe Entheogenic is more "typical" where the goa/psytrance influences are more apparent.

Yeah I`m not quite sure what Psybient is[aside from it being more on the chilled out side of things. Psychedelic Ambient and Dubby]but I`ve stumbled across the artists you`ve mentioned and you`re right it`s just good Electronic music. Anyway cheers for the recommendations.

Liquid Stranger have released some good stuff, picked up this album. Its kinda chilled, electronic stuff with deep basslines and psychedelic stock noises. Very nice.

 

Ive seen Slackbaba DJ a couple of times and he plays some great psychedelic chilled breaks stuff.

Edited June 7, 2012 by feltcher

I think there are audiowise differences between "normal" chill out and psybient. Like for example psybient uses time stretching similar to psytrance to give the music a trippy feel. Also the sound is more compressed and dance music like than regular chill out (well, anyway what I've been listening).

 

Also there is a pretty clear thematic undercurrent in psybient: psychedelics, DMT, LSD, ayahuasca and all things related to them when it's not at least so upfront in other electronic music except for psytrance. That's what has been really putting me off from psybient lately. It sometimes sounds like a fucking brainwash attempt by some weird drug addled cult. I still enjoy listening to Divine Moments of Truth though.. makes chills run down my spine.

  On 6/8/2012 at 8:31 AM, mokz said:

I think there are audiowise differences between "normal" chill out and psybient. Like for example psybient uses time stretching similar to psytrance to give the music a trippy feel. Also the sound is more compressed and dance music like than regular chill out (well, anyway what I've been listening).

 

Also there is a pretty clear thematic undercurrent in psybient: psychedelics, DMT, LSD, ayahuasca and all things related to them when it's not at least so upfront in other electronic music except for psytrance. That's what has been really putting me off from psybient lately. It sometimes sounds like a fucking brainwash attempt by some weird drug addled cult. I still enjoy listening to Divine Moments of Truth though.. makes chills run down my spine.

 

Yeah, I've started to explore some of the recommendations in this thread and so far it's pretty strange how insular this scene seems... like looking at this on discogs, who the f are all these artists? (/rant) Geogaddi notwithstanding (lol), it would appear that fans of this stuff are oblivious to material by FSOL, the Orb, global communication, etc. that many a watmmer would characterize as good ambient. Seems wierd but I'll approach it with an open mind nonetheless.

Edited June 8, 2012 by Bob Dobalina

Anyone heard of Mystical Sun? Downloaded his new one [2600]http://earthdance.bandcamp.com/. Only had one listen but it`s top quality stuff, kind of reminded me of FSOL and Roach in places. His previous albums are supposed to be really good as well.

 

Had a bit of a listen to the new Solar Fields album and that was quality. http://ultimae.bandcamp.com/releases

Edited June 8, 2012 by Mindphaser

  On 6/8/2012 at 4:37 PM, Mindphaser said:

Anyone heard of Mystical Sun?

 

Ah, I used to listen to his stuff back in the days of mp3.com. He had a bunch of free tracks available there that I think still have stashed somewhere.

  On 6/8/2012 at 3:30 PM, Bob Dobalina said:

  On 6/8/2012 at 8:31 AM, mokz said:

I think there are audiowise differences between "normal" chill out and psybient. Like for example psybient uses time stretching similar to psytrance to give the music a trippy feel. Also the sound is more compressed and dance music like than regular chill out (well, anyway what I've been listening).

 

Also there is a pretty clear thematic undercurrent in psybient: psychedelics, DMT, LSD, ayahuasca and all things related to them when it's not at least so upfront in other electronic music except for psytrance. That's what has been really putting me off from psybient lately. It sometimes sounds like a fucking brainwash attempt by some weird drug addled cult. I still enjoy listening to Divine Moments of Truth though.. makes chills run down my spine.

 

Yeah, I've started to explore some of the recommendations in this thread and so far it's pretty strange how insular this scene seems... like looking at this on discogs, who the f are all these artists? (/rant) Geogaddi notwithstanding (lol), it would appear that fans of this stuff are oblivious to material by FSOL, the Orb, global communication, etc. that many a watmmer would characterize as good ambient. Seems wierd but I'll approach it with an open mind nonetheless.

 

People look for the music that trips them out. From what I can tell as an outsider (except for listening to some of Simon Posford's work), this is a fairly large scene, so it makes sense that people who are looking for new music by searching "psychedelic" "psytrance" "psybient" etc. are going to stay within this niche. The same applies to ambient techno from the 90s

OK, this isn't psybient actually but I think this is one of the hidden gems in that kind of the Orbesque, FSOL-like genre: Voices of Kwah - Silver Bowl Transmission , released in 1996.

 

I can only find their more poppy stuff on youtube, so I can't give any examples but the Silver Bowl Transmission is a trippy mixture of FSOL kind of stuff and glossolalia singing. Good luck finding it though..

  On 6/8/2012 at 6:27 PM, Joseph said:

People look for the music that trips them out. From what I can tell as an outsider (except for listening to some of Simon Posford's work), this is a fairly large scene, so it makes sense that people who are looking for new music by searching "psychedelic" "psytrance" "psybient" etc. are going to stay within this niche. The same applies to ambient techno from the 90s

 

Yeah, it's a fairly large scene with it's own huge festivals with maybe Boom being biggest in Europe. It also overlaps somewhat with the backpacker scene and people go to places like Thailand to join full moon parties. Even in the country the size of Finland we have at least one psy festival a year and I remember that some people even tried to launch a psy magazine at some point. But there's Finland specific peculiarities in the scene, like the Finnish underground hip hop scene is connected with the psy festivals and there's a Finnish version of psytrance called suomisaundi or spugedelic trance which is more melodic and acid influenced than the mainstream psy.

I never enjoyed suomisaundi and I thought all those that did were all too much into who could be the weirdest and most fucked up on the parties, that became more important than the music and dancing. Suomisaundi is weird for weirdness sake, not so much because the music needed it. At least that's how I felt. Squaremeat and Haltya were alright, but Texas Faggot was poo.

  On 6/8/2012 at 3:30 PM, Bob Dobalina said:

 

Yeah, I've started to explore some of the recommendations in this thread and so far it's pretty strange how insular this scene seems... like looking at this on discogs, who the f are all these artists? (/rant) Geogaddi notwithstanding (lol), it would appear that fans of this stuff are oblivious to material by FSOL, the Orb, global communication, etc. that many a watmmer would characterize as good ambient. Seems wierd but I'll approach it with an open mind nonetheless.

 

Heh, I am familiar with every artist and most of the albums on that list. But yeah, it seems that people who dig this sort of music rarely veer out of their familiar milieu, they stay to the same labels and artist. Many of those albums on that page share artists, Posford and Raja Ram (Shpongle) are involved with quite a few of them.

Yeah, Shpongle. Shpongle are cool.

  On 6/8/2012 at 8:10 PM, azatoth said:

I never enjoyed suomisaundi and I thought all those that did were all too much into who could be the weirdest and most fucked up on the parties, that became more important than the music and dancing. Suomisaundi is weird for weirdness sake, not so much because the music needed it. At least that's how I felt. Squaremeat and Haltya were alright, but Texas Faggot was poo.

 

I think some of the Texas Faggot stuff is pretty cool. Also I like Tekniset and Huopatossu Mononen with especially Huopatossu having some great game music like elements. But yeah,there are some fucked up elements and the scene is even more insular than the regular psy-trance scene with some people dissing everything that's coming outside of Finland as monotonous tube trance. Anyway, I have had some great times at the parties dancing through the night in a forest.

 

There is also a tendency in the psy scene to look at IDM and related genres as too "artsy" and not enough focused on the party and the more poppy stuff is considered too commercial. That might explain why there is not that much cross breeding between psybient and other forms of ambient and chill out music.

This Psystyle Ambient got into me lately..
 
Just listen to the drop 2 mins in and with the samples my god it is huge!!
 

 

https://darkprisma.bandcamp.com/album/v-a-conundrum-concoction

 

I don't really go for psytrance/psybient much anymore. I used to love this 2CD, though I suppose it may be closer to "psydub" at times. Good music for psychedelics or turning your flat into a yoga studio lol. Still kinda like it but dang if it isn't also a bit corny