Various - Pendragon: 10 Years Of Mystical Mayhem

Renowned London-based underground/hippy trance promoters Pendragon marked their tenth anniversary with this 2CD album, both discs being mixed by the chief of the Pendragon clan, Mark Sinclair. The tracklist includes a range of trance tunes including some of the hardish uplifting variety for which Pendragon is best known, my favourites here being First Strike, Maximum Overdrive, My Own Kind Of Style and Sweet Asylum. In a few places however the set does descend into the annoying whinings of generic hard-dance (e.g. Successful Enter and The Human Form) and also included is an unimaginative (and sacrilegious!) hard-house rip-off of Tim Taylor's hardcore classic The Horn Track. Despite that, the music is pretty good overall and smoothly mixed by Mark, maintaining a reasonably lively 150bpm throughout the album. To me, though, the best bit is the packaging because the typical Pendragon fluoro celtic knot designs are supplemented by photographs from their ten-year history ...including a crowd-shot from the 1997 Brighton Dance Parade featuring my mate Ben and I. :)