#songbender part 25 – Astral Projection – Kabbalah
time and time again – long time, no see
but we were due this one, and i was actually thinking – there wasn’t even a real goa song throughout 25 parts and that can not be. ’tis not allowed.
cause this indeed has its part and the reason i chose this one is not actually because it is the best goa song in the world. it’s indeed not. but never mind. this was the first one that got MY attention back in the day.
you see, it’s kinda a hard thing with these 4/4 based fourtothefloor genres because they all share the basic beat and if that doesn’t work, then you’re basically screwed. now, my personal biggest problem with this all is that this genre is just like everything else (as George Carlin said about kids) – a few winners, a WHOLE LOT OF losers!!!! and it’s true. the worst part is that there are some performers from this era of goa that would actually be awesome – but for some reason they can’t nail the fkin bass drum right. and it’s infuriating and pathetic and mindblowingly sad at the same time. I personally threw out so many compilations of trance and goa and psy and whatnot because it just HURTS your brain listening to a crappy TYOOP TYOOP kinda bass drum for 6+ minutes. I mean come the fck on. there are millions of tracks that have horrible drum sounds and that kills the whole thing.
because, you see, goa is actually something you can have in the background! (i know i tend to post a lof of shit that is exactly the other way around) but as with all these 4/4 stuff, it has a nice place in the background, like when you are doing other stuff anyway, and just as a complimentary background thing, it is perfect. it DOES require attention, ooooh yeah it does, and someone like me can not even NOT hear the little things, but otherwise, this is meant for long drives, tedious work, repetitive stuff that you must do but need to keep the energy up. and it does that perrrrrfectly.
now, back to the point. why this one, why now, why whatever. well, goa is a territory in india, i’m sure everyone knows that. also that for some reason it influenced the electronic scene so much, that it got the name for a whole genre! and it used to be guitar-based! and there’s really not that much of a difference between a distorted guitar and a synth if you really look into it!
yeah like wow, right?
no.
i’m not going into that, it’s a slippery thing and i don’t really care that much, ok? let’s just stick with the fact that these israelis for some reason have a knack with this genre, and i can’t really say why or how, but it shows. Like they have WAAAY better drums (all of them) than the musicians from Germany from the same period?!!? i mean, HOW IS THAT possible?
so let’s erase everything again. this thing is interesting because of the complexity. because of the melodies. goa is different because it is melodic. it always has a leading melody or theme that comes back, goes away, comes back again, it’s a simple genre but it’s really hard to nail if you think about it. How is it different from trance, you might ask? It isn’t, my answer would be. It’s a sub-genre of trance. OK, you say, how is it different from house? IN EVERY WAY possible and thank whichever god for that, is my answer. oh jesus christ don’t let goa ever be “popular”, please. (so far it hasn’t happened so we’re good).
so the thing is, especially with this song, and it’s a good example, that how long can you keep the listener’s attention up, if they are interested in the basic beat. because if they aren’t, you have no chance.
but let’s say they are – and as i said, this was the first real big hit for me, personally, because it kept on piling themes on top of each other, and when you thought there’s no more, another one would come.
and once again – this whole album is genius, they have done soooo many great songs and stuff from the 90s onwards, and even last year they started up Ozora here in Hungary, and this could be a great video but i have this weird frightened smile looking at it from here, that, yeah, ok, that looks like, er, fun. sure. hehe. please kill me.
but back to the song – with today’s standards this may sound repetitive, boring, and not exactly polished. but this is from almost 30 years ago. so all of that is bullcrap. this is historical, a masterpiece, a true ambassador of this genre, and i can promise that we will come back to Goa in this series, as this has a special place in my mind, but there are many many more aspects we can investigate.
I just love how it vibes, how the melodies are taught, how they complement each other, and how varied the spectrum is. and there’s spoken text (even though not that significant) but this whole thing was waaay ahead of it’s time.
whoever doesn’t survive the whole song does not earn a cookie, and actually you need to get used to this to really appreciate and discover the nuances.