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Originally posted by ThaMaestro i think you mean Jose Amnesia - The Eternal

Yes you are right, I have troubles remembering names.

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Originally posted by Aquarian You sound like you're on E

But he dosent look like a Fool at all.

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I find that the people in this music are split on this "meaningfullness" issue, from what I notice the minority beleives there is something special and spiritual in the music they like, and most others think that songs carry no meaning at all and that any perceived meaning is coming from context and cultural references and stuff.

I like to beleive that musicians can embed meanings and messages in their music, that music is in a way its own language, that songs are made for specific purposes and encorage people to act in certain ways. But many beleive the opposite, that a song in and of itself carries no message, that there is no built-in meaning and that the only way people interperet a track is in the context that the music is played in. This "music has no inherent meaning" side has one good piece of evidence though.

Say you take some music that is from a completely different culture than the one you are familiar with, and they give you a wedding song and a funeral song, you listen to both, do you think you can always figure out which is which without them telling you? If the music carried meanings in the sound alone you would be able to tell them apart, if the only meanings in music come from cultural context then they would have to tell you which song was the wedding song and which one was the funural song.

As much as I like to beleive that music carries special meanings, I tried this myself and got it wrong, I couldn't tell which track was happy and which one was sad. I guessed and picked the funeral track as the wedding track, something as simple as which tune was mournful and which was rejoicing, I couldn't tell by listening.

Context is a bitch! this little excercise has kinda made me rethink some things, perhaps the songs I have been enjoying were never about what I thought they were about, maybe what I am really looking for is a certain context that music is played in rather than a certain sound, perhaps I should be looking for people rather than music if this is really what I want. I wish I had recordings of those songs to try it on other people, it was eastern sounding.

Unworldly, I believe meaning is mostly subjective. I mean people find meaning in music based around their own imagination, their own emotions and experiences and through that, images come through to them. Certain producers might have a completely different meaning for what the tune is about or why it was produced, but with instrumental music, it's left up to the listener to decide. Thats what makes, in my opinion, instrumental music so much richer, in that it allows people to interpret it themselves. We probably shouldn't be debating with this music about what the producers thought making the track, but rather what we think while listening to it, since I would like to think most producers make music not just for themselves, but for other people..their fans.

yeah, I agree that all my interpretations have been coming out of my own imagination this entire time...

If we try and compare this to the usual "not like it used to be" complaint though, then we realize that sound was never the problem, rather it was the way the people acted. The things that they were imagining, that is what has really changed, if the sound carries no message inside of itself then changes in the sound shouldn't make a difference. The experience of partying in comparison to back in the day must have changed(or "died" according to some people) because of the people changing, not the music. Digging for the underground must then be a persuit of people rather than a search for a new sound.

It's a weird paradox, on one side I find that looking for an exclusive group of people is a very vain, stuck-up, bratty thing to do. But at the same time, continuing to follow this same group we currently find ourselves in causes us to notice that the crowd around us is growing increasingly vain and stuck-up and cliqueish. Is there no way to avoid the velvet-rope invasion without becoming those same stuck-up kids that we are trying to get away from?

Idealy I would like to find that place with the mutual partying spirit I enjoy so much, where there is no crowd of "cool kids" judging everyone around them. The appeal of partying for me was the huge release I get when I can go somewhere and act like a lunatic without fear of consequence, when there was no predefined idea of what was "cool" at an EDM party everyone could do anything they wanted and it was great fun. But now trance has a "cool" and it is no longger doing whatever you please, now it's dressing in collered shirts, driving BMW's, and all that gay VIP clubland bullshit.

I first thought it was the music that was encouraging people to grow spoiled, but it was the people themselves, I just get really dissapointed that such a wild radical group can be tamed so easily. That something so enjoyable can just dissapear in favor of the same type of crap the we deal with every day, I find no release in going to those velvet rope trance parties because they are no different from the high school dances. The appeal for me was that trance parties were a releif from my daily life but that releif does not exist anymore, or if it does it is in some obscure circles that I have trouble finding.