Discogs

Have you ever wanted to go for a surprise journey?

This best describes 3rd Cycle, the gem on this release from Limited Area from 1994 when trance was maturing and entering its serious phase and I felt more alive. This bassey, semi-distorted trance track builds from an intro with a series of effects over a never-ending looping acid line with a loud hi hat. The percussion builds and builds until a synth line comes in from another planet that will simply surprise you and move you emotionally if you've never heard this before.

This is what happened to me today when I went looking through old school trance compilations and discovered this track.

By 6 minutes in, I was wondering where the heck this track had been hiding all these years. 8 minutes of pure bliss.

Atmosfear is a massive dance track of the utmost quality from 1990, featuring a massive vocal from Beverlee and a great piano melody over a very funky zippy bassline. The lyrics are also very well written and almost poetic.

Just when you think this track is going to end, it breaks out and then launches back into one final crescendo of piano, rhythm, drums and synth.

Beware of the lower-quality rip off by the group Atmosphere who were around at the same time and released their own version of this called Atm-Oz-Fear. The vocalist is nowhere as good as Beverlee.

What can you say about Relax, in 2009? Although it has its roots in the gay scene, this is a classic dance tune loved by all types of people over the decades.

There have been numerous versions and remixes released, one of the most memorable being by Jam & Spoon with their high-speed trance version from the early nineties and the 1989 mixes.

My recent re-introduction to it was after hearing it as opening music to an episode of the first season of Miami Vice.

The instrumental New York Mix is also quite interesting.

Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters! Although the Ray Parker Jr pop tune is perhaps the most well-known song from this film, several other pop songs appear as well as a couple of orchestrial scores.

The stand out pop track here is Magic by Mick Smiley, a powerful love song with dark overtones that can be easily mixed with Phil Collins' Something in the Air Tonight. In fact, the start of this track is almost identical to that. An intrumental version appears briefly in the film during the Protection Grid shut down aftermath. Why this Mick Smiley artist didn't go on to become a major known artist in his own right is beyond me. I love this track. It will be my wedding song!

There is now also a limited release Varese Sarabonde version of the soundtrack containing all of the wonderful original Elmer Bernstein orchestrial scores. Highly recommended.

My introduction to General Base was via In Trance (General Base Mix), one of his harder offerings at the time. His sounds are very electronic and likes to use a small vocal sample on each track with a strong and busy bassline. Some of his tracks have some really commercial and boring mixes, then there are others that are just great. His First album has some interesting pieces on it but the best mixes are found on his singles. His first track, translating to My God, It's Full Of Stars shows his early German techno heritage in its sound. He was also the guy behind the classic rave anthem THK - France.

This track uses samples from the film of the same name, Flatliners, about a group of uni students who experiment with dying and reviving themselves before braindeath occurs. The track itself is quite nice and the Original Mix is interesting with some great synth lines, opening with a very cool spoken sample. However, I first heard The DOP Remix and that's the one I like the most. The Desirable Dub Mix is quite common thanks to inclusion on the Guerilla comp, but a little less interesting.

A bit of a silly track that sounds sometimes like it’s running backwards, it contains some whacky techno tones, heavy percussion, amusing vocal samples. It also samples the breathing from Kraftwerk’s Tour de France and then demands, “Move your techno ass, bitch!” A bit of fun. I only heard one DJ ever play this, one of the DJs from Perth's old Rhythm Fix radio show on RTR FM, and never forgot it.

Although not so well known in my travels, “Memory” by Memorizer in particular is a very beautiful acid trance track that begins with a slower BPM and increases to a higher speed for the main part of the track. It then slows down for the ending where we are joined by lower synth sounds underneath. Got to be one of the best tracks in its class from 1993. Nice to chuck into a mix.