Shakti Collective welcomes a legendary DJ and says farewell to a friend

Fractal 2 Forest

Shane Gobi
(Alchemy Records, South Africa/UK) – 3h DJ Set

Shane Gobi is Alchemy Records founder and Label Manager. Originally from South Africa, but now based in London, Shane has been an active DJ since 1997. He was signed as a label DJ to Sphere Records in 2000, and went on to start Alchemy Records a year later. Shane has become one of the leading DJs in the psy-trance scene and has earned himself a solid reputation with a loyal following for his unique morning sets and his technical, energetic DJ style. He has played outdoor parties and club events in the UK, Israel, South Africa, Portugal, Austria, Brazil, Mexico, Switzerland, France, Spain, Belgium, Macadonia, Prague, Holland and Japan, to name just a few. Canadians will remember him for his killer Saturday morning set at Eclipse 2006. At the end of 2003, Shane was voted by the worldwide trance dancefloors on Isratrance forum as DJ of the year 2003. DJ and Producer, Shane has collaborated with label friends Dark Soho on the Groundzero project and is also one half of Whiplash with Rinkadink. Under the 2 projects Shane has released 6 tracks under various labels, Alchemy Records, Ambivelant Records and Nano Records.

gabriel_p
(Quick, Montreal) – LIVE

Gabriel Petrin has been thinking music since out of the womb. Producing since 1999, releasing tracks formerly under the moniker Hidra and delving into hard techno with pounding repetitive beats. He’s played along side legendary acts such as Preach, Vitalic and Joey Beltram. After a short hiatus, he is returning with new live material. Making his Toronto debut, he’ll shake the dance floor up.

Lexicon
(Shakti Collective, Toronto)- farewell DJ Set

Departing for Taiwan for the year, Alex is saying a temporary goodbye to his Shakti family and the Canadian psy crew. He’ll lay down some mean progressive beats so that the partiers won’t easily forget him.

Plan B
(Shakti Collective, Pixie Dust, Toronto)

Shankar
(Shakti Collective, Tribal Vision Records, Toronto)

Chillin Beats

Davey Boom (Kismet, Toronto)
Pondscum b
Mandelbrot (BLA, Toronto)
Quietly Quivering (Kismet, Toronto)

DECO & VISUALS

Julien Seyer (Pixie Dust, Montreal)
Ivygrrl
Waking Dream (Montreal)
Wuzzle
Vj Guy

Saturday, February 9th, 9pm-6am
Reverb Night Club
651 Queen Street West

$20 Before 11PM
$25 After 11P

19+

www.shakticollective.com

More than 100,000 free releases have been downloaded from Ektoplazm since tracking began about six months ago! The new emphasis on direct downloads has really paid off–visitors can now leech gigabytes of free and legal psychedelic dance music without any hassle. It was only last month that I decided to shut down the Ektoplazm BitTorrent tracker in order to focus on providing a much more convenient means of accessing all of the releases in the free music catalogue. Clearly this strategy has worked well–people are downloading more free psytrance releases than ever before!

It is interesting to consider the numbers in the light of the current situation in the commercial psytrance market. Most labels are lucky to sell a few hundred copies of a release these days. The reasons for this are multiplex, but P2P sharing and illegal downloading are only part of the story. Market saturation has never been as high as it is now–there are more active labels and artists than ever before. DJ Core of PsyDB has posted a set of interesting graphs and statistics illustrating this point. Sales have decreased in part because there are so many new labels and artists competing for a slice of the pie.

Many psytrance CDs released today are designed to promote those involved in its creation. It used to be that a band would go on tour to support an album but those days are over; now the band releases an album to support a tour. If the goal is mainly one of promotion, does it make sense to charge money for a release? Manufacturing costs remain unavoidable when it comes to physical media but the digital realm is much more forgiving. Think about the amount of money that would be involved in printing and shipping 100,000 CDs! Ektoplazm has facilitated the distribution of an immense amount of music at a tiny fraction of what it would have cost in the real world. The possibilities of digital distribution are truly staggering–and this is only the beginning.

Thank you all for your sustained support and keep on downloading!