Loud - No More X

Damn, if I'm not mightily impressed with this album.

I'd ignored it for a while, as I'm not always taken with Nano releases.
When I noticed that Loud is half Eitan Reiter, the artist responsible for one of my favourite chilled albums in recent years 'Places I Miss That I Haven't Been To' I thought I'd give it a punt.

It's freakin' beautiful! Spacious, minimal, musical, deep and, dare I use an adjective seldom seen in association with brash old psytrance, graceful. Graceful trance music. Imagine that.

Think the drive of old X-Dream, the atmosphere of early Vibrasphere, guts of early (pre-prog) S-Range with the production skills of next Tuesday. If that sounds like a no-brainer to you, I heartily recommend you get a copy.

Well impressed, I am.

I was exactly the same, Bez. I wasn't going to bother at first, but decided to take the plunge and I love it! It really stands out as something a bit different (in a good way!) and is not at all your typical Nano fare.
One of those albums that won't wear off very quickly, I reckon.

love it, love it, love it. can't wait to hear it in all it's glory at glade

Middle aged trance ftw

yeah, certainly don't expect the yoot to get anything of this quality

This album is fucking wicked! Been ages since I felt like this about a psy album.. well constructed, not over-produced, engaging... and proper strange. What a pleasure

Just checked out a few tracks on youtube, must be the first trance record ive put on my "must have" list for years!

and you are mid-20's going on mid-30's

Yep, old before my time, and lovin it

Very good album indeed.

Crikey...with recommendations like that, this sounds like a must listen!

Bez, I didn't expect to see you extolling the virtues of Loud...Will check it out.

Things I like about it:
Some sound design is brilliant.
Non 16th, square wave basslines.
Lower BPM.
Overall production.

Things I don't like about it:
Some of the sounds used are too cheesy.
The arranging of the brilliant sounds does not have drive that grabs me.
Veeeeery long breakdowns.
Most of it is all chewed up and ready to digest and gets quite "clubby" at times.

I am not a Loud fan, the only track of theirs I quite like is "You Are Everything", but overall, its good to see people turn towards this direction. Better than israeli full on, innit.

Peace out.

Signs of age dude. This is possibly pipe-and-slippers trance, and I love it

I'd agree with these points, but in context I feel they get away with it.

I guess I really consider it more of a good all-through start-to-finish type of a listen than an album of individual banging tunes, and slightly experimental, or maybe retro-flective in the same vein that Prometheus has explored on his last album or two, and god knows we need as much experimentalism as we can get in psytrance today. A friend of mine described it as a bit too 'urban,' which I don't get at all.

Agreed.
Have to say though that the thing I quite liked from Nano was the Master Blasters and Tristan releases. Its been aaaages since I listened to something that I really like from that label.

Yup - Master Blasters in particular was a fucking atom bomb of an album.

I loved most of the Masterblasters album apart from "Can You Dig It". That sample IS PWEI and therefore lame to use again.
Must say, I'm not blown away at all by the samples of the Killerwatts upcoming album. I'm afraid it sounds like all the worst bits of the typical Nano style and not enough of the good. Too Cheesey full-on for my tastes. (But I'll probably still end up buying it in the end! )

Tune whore.

Hi. My name is Franki and I'm a CDoholic.

+1.
I love Tristan's music, but I don't like Avalon's music. I was hoping that this will go more towards Tristan's deep, aggressive, psychedelic drive that he is known for, but that is not the case....oh well.

Peace out.