Hi!

Goa Trance is one of the best electronic music sub-genre ever.

It mixes engaging electronic beats with some of the most trippy and layered synths melodies.

This genre really blew me away when I first listened to it, the first song was Mahadeva by Astral Projection, and man what a blast!

I was actually quite grow up when I got into this genre as I spent my youth listening to the most extreme Death/Black Metal and Grindcore (gonna make a similar posts soon). Goa Trance really opened the gates to electronic music to me, together with another amazing sub-genre that is Jungle/Drum & Bass (and derivatives such as Breakcore).

Back then I was super lucky to have won some 30 cheap 2nd-hand LPs straight from Ebay UK for a great price, that huge pack contained most of the stuff you’ll see down here.

At the same time I was trying out my friends’ hardware drum-machines and synths and later one I bought a few on Ebay (Korg er-1 and Yamaha RM1X).

I didn’t really mastered them but that gave me the idea on how much it’s complicated to create this kind of music (nowadays… imagine in the 90’s), the ability to hear all the different layers and to have an idea on the various instruments, filter and effects used (thanks also to the other old-school electronic music I was listening).

If you like the genre I strongly suggest you to get your hands on a Digital Audio Workstation or just a software Synth/Drum-Machine to try out how it is to create music and to be able analyze the different rhythms and layers that compose these tracks.

On GNU/Linux there are plenty FOSS, I’m just trowing a few here:

DAW, etc.: Ardour, LMMS, Rosegarden, QTraktor, Muse, MilkyTracker, Sonic Pi, Carla, Sunvox.

Drum Machines, Synths: Hydrogen, ZynAddSubFX, Helm, Calf, Alsa Modular Synth, etc.

So here are 10 classic albums embedded in no particular order, all straight from the 90’s, the golden age of Goa Trance.

Pleiadians – IFO (1996/1997)

Dimension 5 – Transdimensional (1997)

Hallucinogen – Twisted (1995)

Cosmosis – Cosmology (1996)

Juno Reactor ‎– Beyond The Infinite (1996)

Doof ‎– Let’s Turn On (1996)

Total Eclipse – Delta Aquarids (1995)

Color Box – Train To Chroma City (1997)

X-Dream ‎– We Created Our Own Happiness (1996)

Etnica – Live in Athens 1996

You know what? Screw that top 10 list limit! here are more masterpieces ;)

Zirrex – Lost In Time (1999)

UX ‎– Ultimate Experience (1997)

Asia 2001 – Psykadelia (1997)

The Infinity Project ‎– Mystical Experiences (1995)

Shpongle ‎– Are You Shpongled? (1998)

ps: I know that there are some great albums missing here, unfortunately they were not available on BandCamp (to embed them here), hopefully I’ll update this post soon :)

TA SALÜDE