Mixmag threw together a great little feature showcasing different genres of music as different sports. It’s pretty spot on, and now I can’t think of Armin Van Buuren without imagining him in volleyball shorts. That and Jay-Z as a cloistered, shady darts champion? Classic.
Tag Archives: Armin van Buuren
Album of the Month: Trance Essentials 2013, Volume 1
http://www.armadamusic.com/news/2013/04/trance-essentials-2013-vol-1/
Armada Music has been an institution for a decade now, bringing the best in trance, tech trance & progressive to the people. While keeping up with the 20+ hours of podcasts your favorite DJs put out each week can be exhausting, there are a number of tracks in these sets that always stand out. Armada took 50 of the best trance tracks from late last year, early this year and fired them off, ready to land in your lap and explode in an orgy of sparkle, vocals, chromatic chords, uplifting, massive & progressive bass. The first CD launches with huge tracks, with Nehalennia, The Spiritual Gateway, Kudawudashuda & the MaRLo edit of “Perfectly” hitting your ears one after another. The Love Comes again remix, the Pure Mix edit of Seven Cities by Solarstone & the radio edit of Andrew Rayel’s Musa are gorgeous mixes of recent crowd favorites that have blown up dance floors from Dublin to Dubai & Sao Paulo to Shanghai. They keep the energy going along with a half a dozen tracks in between that you’ve probably not heard but probably should. Superfly by Jorn van Deynhoven is a spectacular hard trance track that pushes the party to a higher level, buy anyone that’s a fan of my writing can tell you that Jorn van Deynhoven can do no wrong in my eyes. The tune is one of 2 dozen that are exactly what trance needs to be right now. Anthemic, big room and explosive with the energy to push back against the forces of trouse and top 40 infused commercial chomp-back that true trance fanatics shake their heads at. New York City by Alex M.O.R.P.H. is of course a favorite and the mix that’s offered at the end of the CD is a great choice for just putting on and leaving on while you dance around in your underwear in your bedroom before hitting the town.
Music I’ve Forgotten About – Gouryella’s Walhalla (Hybrid’s Echoplex Remix)
Every once and a while, I remember a track, an artist or an album that I’d totally forgotten about. While it’s probably an indication of my advanced age/geezer quality, it always makes my day. Some amazing track that completely exited my head and then pops back up years later. A particularly compelling new friend of mine reminded me that a progressive trance group named Hybrid existed and I couldn’t figure out why that name sounded familiar. I brooded on it until it hit me, I’d had a track of theirs on my mp3 player when I backpacked across Europe in 2005. Racing to my computer, I punched Hybrid into my media library. Lo and behold, only one track came up, and it was absolutely critical to my roaming dozens of cities across a healthy portion of the continent.
The track clocks in at 8 minutes, which more than twice as long as your standard dubstep or poplectro tune, something the younglings haven’t really ever seen. This is old school trance. As in, it came out in Nineteen Ninety Fucking Nine. That’s right, 1999, before Y2K and all the other crazy bullshit the oughts wrought. The original track was done by a collaboration between Ferry Corsten & DJ Tiesto, which lasted for a grand total of 6 tracks. Walhalla was the first single of the group and it came with a remix by Armin van Buuren and an “Echoplex” remix by Hybrid.
This Echoplex remix is exceptional, both by trance & general EDM standards. The echo’ing of the original beat, spread over minutes, slowly builds the track to a hushed but fevered pitch. The track maintains the build for easily 3 minutes without getting stilted, boring or annoying. Par for the course when it comes to old school trance I know, but these days, guidos start shouting if there isn’t a breakdown every 120 seconds. Six minutes in, the track peals into the 4/4 beat without thunder or applause, but just gallops along. Keeping pace with your expectations and (hopeful) dancing pace. There’s not a sound out of place, and Hybrid made sure that everything they wanted from the original was there, with them enough to give it their own distinctive feel. Check it out, you might like it.
This is Terry Gotham, see you on the dance floor.
Mix of the Week – A State of Trance 592 – Top 20 of 2012
This is more of a public service announcement than anything else. This week, Armin’s ASOT podcast counted down the top 20 trance (progressive, epic & uplifting) tracks for the year. This 2 hour compilation is a round up of the favorites that were voted on. And because it’s Armin, the votes number in the 5-6 digits from people around the world. I still cannot imagine that this guy has been putting out 120 minutes of Trance weekly for the last…592 weeks. I’m a huge fan of Armin, here’s a track you probably haven’t heard by him:
10 years of trance. And people still assume that the genre is encapsulated by Sandstorm, Children and that one time they saw/heard Oakenfold back in the late 90’s. Armin’s track recommendations have become a staple of the trance community, influencing dozens of weekly/monthly podcasts by other EDM artists, from Ferry Corsten (Corsten’s Countdown) to Tiesto (Club Life) to Paul Oakenfold’s wonderful Fluoro series. The proliferation of regular music/mixes being put out by the best (and the newest) artists regularly is something that we would have killed for back in the days of sharing music over AIM, Napster, NewsGroups and trading beats/midis with floppy disks.
The track selection is definitely a great representation of trance in 2012, with huge favorites like “I’ll Listen” by AvB & Ana Criado, multiple tracks by Andrew Rayel, who almost seems genetically engineered to produce tracks for ASOT. W&W, Markus Schultz, Solarstone and Aly & Fila also made the list with some stunning tracks, plus a new favorite for me, Giuseppie Ottaviani, an Italian trance producer I’d just never heard of before. Definitely someone I’ll have to keep my eye on.
Great mix of tracks for traveling, cleaning up the house before relatives arrive or just celebrating the season.
This is Terry Gotham.
Peace on Earth & Good Will Towards Men.
Terry Gotham 