Butschi “Clouds Over My Mind” – A Pro and Contra – Frohdroh – Electronic Music from Leipzig

A few weeks ago, the debut album of the Leipzig trance act butchi appeared. In our new-in editorial team, there are different opinions that we would be happy to share with you here.

“Clouds Over My Mind” is the name of the first album from Butschi, a compact eight-track album that, according to the press information, unites the “old” and “new” Butschi-not only softness, but also a certain melancholy. In our current edition of New in Radio, we have already spoken a little more detail about the album and trance in general. It was so exciting that we also two parts of the album – in a Pro and Contra. To get in the mood, you can listen to the album yourself.

What do you think of the album? Like to tell us!

David says: Butschi manages to harmonize two adolescent worlds with emo and trance

Actually everyone should be happy. After long years in the strange shadow world of electronic dance music, far from the contemporary discourses and critical success, a generation of young producers rediscovered: inside. After the (pop, sub- and at all) cultural caesion of the Covid 19 pandemic, this actually works logical; It is about hedonie in post-epidemic times, a simple, democratized participation in subcultural life; An overly understandable need of the generation, the subcultural world of experience was completely put on hold at a critical time for a short time.

And isn't it history that repeats itself here? In his first bloom in the early nineties, there was a trance, thought here as music, but also as a set of cultural practices, which now simply as scene are summarized, especially primarily euphoria. Celebrate 25 hours in the UFO in Frankfurt, simply to make the most extreme conceivable contrast. No thought of tomorrow, even more chemically reinforcing the moment, a kind of ecstatic carpe diem. So can you blame the post-pandemic generation to revive exactly these levers?

And I feel sorry, but I think we have to talk about gatekeeping at this point; I am afraid of a generation ditch here, where we should take a closer look. The trance of the early nineties was partially shaped by people, but the impact of which went far beyond marathon-raves. Visions of club culture, femininity in the producer: interiority, political expression forms and the dissolution of various resistance-all of this can be found in the trance time spirit of the 1990s, and today we do not know much of it as a mere after-effects, but as manifestations. In other words, many achievements of this time seem to us today. One should not forget: the Love Parade in Berlin was the first topic in the Tagesschau in 1996; A mass phenomenon on the Internet. Most of the protagonists of the current trance Renaissance were not even born.

But, and that may be the decisive factor: we have to remove the idea that the protagonist: inside and Butschi have an interest in continuing this story. You can listen to your tracks – Butschi brings a very own, very genuine, and – I admit, I hate that I write it for various reasons – a fresh one because boy Perspective in his music. Clearly tends to serve classic trance patterns with 140 BPM upwards here as a canvas, but with a nonchalance that can really be explained primarily with youthful carefree, he places a melancholy in its type of trance, which almost creates a kitschy romantic energy as it is emotionally agitated: inside and urgeons: inside. Or to put it another way: somehow he found a way to harmonize two adolescent worlds with emo and trance. And, not to despise: as a producer, he also succeeds in the self-confident big room moments; The big gesture sits.

This challenges genre conventions, but this challenge also creates more stimulus and friction than about technically perfected epigones.

Basically, only an ancient pattern of subcultural transfomation is repeated here: the currently loudest generation is something that does not belong; and adds your own dimension. Do not find everyone: R great, but that in turn (!) Our young visionary is allowed: don't be interested in the inside. And I am confident that it doesn't. The debate per se has been many times and the positions have been distributed as clearly as they are asymmetrical: the contemporary witness: complain about betrayal and disreputing, the current protagonist: at best find this entertaining and are otherwise not worried – and yet have still done it well.

Does that mean that the music from Butschi picks me up? Not complete. I find passages on the plate that I like, others let me cold. In fact, I find the subcultural moment incredibly exciting, because such moments are always an expression of a rebellion against established conventions.

Nils says: “Clouds Over My Mind” is too uniform and structured

Trance was my first love. And as it is with the first love, she never really lets you go. You like to think back (hopefully) and she is also something like a guideline for future loved ones.

In the mid -1990s, techno, house and trance had arrived in the mainstream and between the music videos on Viva and other music stations were advertising for various compilations. After initial bandages with hardcore technology and gabber as well as the matching Thunderdome compilations, I quickly noticed that it was above all the more melodic and flat parts in the tracks that I liked-and so the path to my first trance compilation was not far.

If I read the “Trance Nation 95” tracklist today, I have to say that numerous tracks can be found on the compilation that are now considered a classic of the genre. Pieces by Emmanuel Top, Resistance D, Sunbeam or Lazonby are (in my ears) very well aged and prepared their way for my love for electronic music in general, but also for a never -ending slope to “trancy” music. In recent years, my interest in the genre, but especially in productions from the 1990s on labels such as Eye Q, Superstition and Le Petit Prince, has been flamed again.

With benevolence I also observe a return to the Golden Years of the Genre in productions from DJ Metatron to Nthng. Sometimes there are even direct references to the trance music of the 1990s (take DJ Metatron's “Oh Ah”, for example, in which the almost unscrupulous DJ Dave Davis' “Transfiguration” is sampled, a hardtrance classic on the Label Bonzai).

Trance is not only an issue in the so -called underground. No, it also seems to have arrived in the mainstream. But I let myself go to the thesis: Trance is not just a trance. I only find it logical to say that on the one hand there are (as in any other genre) qualitative differences and, on the other hand, different tracks should and also want to reach a different audience. One often hears trance polarizing, the spirits differ on this music that trance is something for young people. And I think the question should always be asked, what kind of trance do we are talking about? Trance does not necessarily have to be simple or simple, trance can have depth and touch you.

And to finally make this huge arc on the review of Butschi's “Clouds Over My Mind”, we get in with the information text for his debut album. An album with eight tracks that programmatically divides into two parts. Two scarf panels that are supposed to represent the sound of the “old” and the “new” Butschis. The party and celebrations face mental exhaustion and exhaustion. I have to admit that I haven't known the old Butschi yet, but a look at Soundcloud tells me that butchi with edits of well-known pop songs (“Empire State of Mine”, “Video Games”, etc.) and own pop trance tracks that have been able to generate an incredible number of clicks seems to have his fan base.

The fun and seductive on edits of well -known pop songs fully owes me. You are at a party and suddenly comes a hook that you know from a different context and you can continue to celebrate the track in the new guise. I personally find such edits or raviges versions of popping songs or hits terrible and quickly feel reminded of the downside of the Rave Revolution in the mid-1990s, as “Somerwhere Over the Rainbow” or Blümchen the charts and also partly dominated the raves. And these are still the tolerable examples from this ERA. The “old” Butschi is not for me and I stand this kind of music for about ten seconds.

Let us turn to the current plate and listen to it from front to back completely impartially. It should stand for a new and melancholy sound. And she actually does. I listened to the album twice from front to back and didn't have to stop on the way. I find the titles amazingly unepish for trance at the first list. In the press text, references such as the Eye Q label are listed, which shaped the sound from Germany from the beginning to the mid-1990s and on which numerous, very deep trance classics appeared.

The productions of Butschi actually remind me of the sound of the late 1990s and the 2000s, when artists such as Kai Tracid, Talla 2xlc, Paul van Dyk and Future Breeze dominated the scene. Despite the technically good production, I lack depth and also a sound that could be identified as a trademark of the producer.

Many titles sound very similar. The beats seem to be generic, everything seems to run at the same speed and really every track has the offbeat bassline on two to three tones.

For me, depth does not arise from a female voice sample or two organ chords in Moll. The tracks are all very uniform and structured. Every sound is audible. There is no dirt. On the one hand, this indicates good sound understanding of the producer, on the other hand I lack that certain something in the titles. The characteristics and the sounds of trance are there, but as I tried to make it clear: Trance is not just a trance!

Despite everything, I would like to state that the plate goes in a much more pleasant direction than the artist's previous productions. I also support it 100 percent that a new generation to DJs and producers: Inside, to rediscover and explore this genre for themselves. For me, this album is a plate of a producer who goes a new way, but it will be possible for a while for the tracks to reach the references mentioned in the info text such as Eye Q.