Back catalogue: Uplifting Trance

Review: Armed with analogue and modular synthesisers, Southern Italian producers Marco Cassanelli and Deckard take you on an emotive journey inspired by geometry and symmetry for T.A. Rock Records - a small indie label out of sunny Trani, Puglia established 2010. The Splitted EP starts out with the desolate dub techno textures of 'Abandoned Town' while the spaced-out cut 'Triangle' and the hypnotising 'Rectangle' (part 1) make for more experimentally minded tracks.

Review: Concept Werkstatt is an experimental project, not defined by identity but by pure sound and vision. It offers a space, say the eponymous producer behind the beats, where music exists for its own sake, free from ego and expectation. The first transmission is a useful one that taps into tool-like techno. The opener is in a hurry to get you under its spell with dusty drums and fluttering percussion. 'Stahlwerk 102' is more raw with unsettling vocals beaming in as if down a badly tuned radio and two flip-side cuts keep things wonderfully weird.

Review: Kevin de Vries collaborates with rising stars Y do I on his latest EP and it is a three-track journey showcasing the signature Afterlife sound. Merging emotionally charged moments with driving basslines and electrifying energy, the duo strikes a balance between light and dark while cooking up grooves that resonate deeply. Each track embodies the label's ethos of fostering close dancefloor connections through rhythm, emotion and vibration. This is evocative, painstakingly designed melodic techno with pristine synth work and sleek drums that carry you into all new worlds.

Review: A deliberate exercise in Y2K aesthetics and cyberpunk electrance comes in the creative output of DJ Natural Nate - his latest EP for Hoodwink Recordings, 'Notes To Jiggabot' - which consists of four tracks eulogizing his cybernetic partner-in-crime, Jiggabot (several releases from this pair have come out since mid 2018) and seemingly the object of his fantasmic affections. Whether the likes of new numbers 'Chasing The Rhythm', 'I Will Shine For You' or 'Far Away' originate from some angelic conceptual otherworld or this banal material one, it's hard not to love the signifiers poured into the EP: US freestyle jaunts, pure femme vocals doused in reverb-reverbs and melismatic hums; hyper-compressed, lightsabre-sculpted beats and visual cues reminiscent of childhoods spent lost in postmodern futuristic fantasies, such as those of Deus Ex or Blade Runner.

Review: Grown-up techno label Kompkat has always served up its most dancefloor ready sounds as part of the Speicher series and it is now up to an impressive 129 installments. This one kicks off with Hunter/Game & U S H N U's collaboration 'Reload' which is an electric cut with bright synth lines shimmering about the mix next to thunderous claps and dark future vocals. On the flip, Bawrut cuts loose with rave stabs over dense percussive grooves with vocal snatches adding to the unsettling and boisterous mood of 'Clapa', which does indeed also have plenty of claps.

Review: Sex Tapes From Mars come back a year after their last EP with a third one on the small but well-formed label and this one is handed over to Jata. Opener Stutter '(I)' is pure funky techno and mind altering cosmic synth work for the peak time. It's a bright and vivid sound world that's as good for the head as the heel. 'Midstate' then gets more dirty with warp synth riffs and smeared chords over industrial tech beats. It's restless and kinetic and another dancefloor bomb. Last of all comes the wonky closer Stutter '(I)' which is full of trippy effects and freaky little synth motifs over squelching basslines.

Review: The superb Philoxenia Records, which is spearheaded by Luigi Di Venere and Neu Verboten, here unveils a coveted addition to its collection with the the super limited Last Place On Earth EP from Vilnius-based Dovydas Platakis aka Jokios Kulturos. It's a cinematic work that immerses listeners in a dystopian realm that blends avant-garde tones with manga-inspired cyberpunk vibes. Each track serves as a gateway to a world where technological progress intertwines with societal decline, which is of course often the focus of classic cyberpunk literature. Di Venere and Verboten also combine under their Affekt Unit alias to deliver captivating remixes and bring trance and tribal techno elements to the party.

Review: Paul Oakenfold's classic Southern Sun from 2002 gets revisited here at a time when trance music seems to be very much back in fashion from the old-school parties that never went away to the new-school techno kids adding it with trendy twists to their sounds. It is the trance titan Tiesto who steps up first and keeps it deep and emotive on his version. The chords are Balearic and sun-kissed with a hint of melancholy that will surely appeal to DJs and dancers across multiple genres. The Gabriel & Dresden unplugged remix is more driving and hard-hitting, with snappy snares and a train track-like groove that builds up and sweeps you off your feet.

Review: A collaborative project from Ute cornerstones Mikkel Rev and Oprofessionell, Omformer is the twinned result; their latest EP on the label is a cathartic, almost manic exercise in uplifting trance, containing four spiritual trance excursions peeled directly from various former live sets and jam sessions. Faster than most trance and indulging more creative sonics than most, our highlights are 'Point Of No Return' and 'Yengo 3AM', which succeed in far greater immersion than normal while also not sacrificing the most important dynamics.

Review: Remotif is a fast-rising star with a sound being called 'trance fusion.' He makes his mark again to that end with a new one on Especial that brings more of his modern-day ethnic styles to the driving breaks of techno following outings on the likes of Coymix and Space Lab and sets everywhere from Fabric to Berlin's Warning parties. This one kicks off with 'U 15' which is a busy blend of shimmery timbres and sharp perc, spaced-out pads and psychedelic synths that are ever on the rise. More trance overtones define 'Glint's Pursuit' and 'The Elevated Place' is slick and sleek, ascending and always rising. 'The Sunken Place' shuts down with more slow and percolating dub mutations to round out a superb EP.

Review: BOY Records reissue an early example of legit new beat robo-trance, Time Modem's 'Welcome To The 90s'. The German duo of Joachim and Ulrich Wilhelm first dropped this deathly cold, wan emotion-stripper under the ZYX Music subsidiary shortly following 'The Time Of The Gathering', their debut EP. 'Welcome To The 90s' proves it: most of the cultural collective mind who experienced the transition into the last decade of the Millennium knew ahead of time that this would be the decade that defined dance music. Just one look at the waveform of this future-gothic grinder - as thin as a too-savoured fishbone sucked dry - reflects the loss of affect that was to be expected of this new bionic-sonic era. We hear a faint robotic voice over the title track's tannoy, speaking on themes of deterioration, futility and renunciation; it glides above the track's unpassable early stab lines and end-stop stomps. 'Intensive Worlds', meanwhile, extends the Gregorian voxsynth to underlie a rather flat, detached description of a future Frankfurt street scene, narrated by a female interloper. A historic slab of wax, reproduced for a new age.

Review: Of course everyone knows Chicane for the epochal chart trance hits 'Offshore', 'Don't Give Up' and 'Saltwater', but the prolific producer has a catalogue which travels well past those hits of yesteryear. Given his last studio album topped dance charts globally, it's a fine time to catch up on some of the incredible music he's crafted in the more recent phase of his career. Spread across two CDs, extended mixes of instrumental club tracks like 'Hiding All The Stars' and 'Going Deep' sit alongside the vocal talents of Christian Burns on 'One Thousand Suns' and Senadee on 'No More I Sleep'.