Star-X Prepare To Fly Com.Pact

Yup, this is one of those releases that comes from nowhere, you don’t know anything so you aren’t expecting anything. So, slide it into the stereo and wait for a couple of minutes and see what comes out. The result, folks, is a delight – progressive trance that’s not too progressive, not too slow, not too fast... not too anything. Production nice, tunes fluid... result. And we’re smiling. Add in some great little samples, a couple of sonic drops that take the floor away, and you’re really cooking. Output stands out like a turkey in a carpet factory, the mid-album downtempo Shooting Stars is a submlime, infectious bit of chilladelica, giving way to M-Trick shich suggests a promise o everything getting a bit weird and kicking again. Time Keeper and What Does It Feel Like? take things a couple of notches up the knees-up scale, and by the time the closing chimes of the anthemic Dingo ring through your ears, it’s all a rather likeable buzz of a rather nice album that sounds rather delicious all in all. Yes.

Israelis got a new sound, kicked off at the start of the summer with Tip’s Nu Clear Visions Of Israel. With more than a covert nod to Space Cat, the melodic wiggliness was hohned to crystalline perfection on Melicia’s Running Out Of Time, was littered with samples (Panick’s Rocket Pocket), given a dirtier underbelly (Dynamic’s Dynamix), and finally coming full circle with late summer’s Nu Clear Visions vol. 2. Psydrop,  Jirah’s Outer Access and Eskimo’s Can You Pick Me Up may have been overshadowed by the summer’s bigger releases, but like Frequency Surfer’s Respect, they showed that the new sounds could be combined with some rip-roaring movement and developing, wide-open vibes, while Gattaca took it upon himself to take it a couple of steps crunchier. For which we thank him. Yes we do.

Talamasca’s Zodiac provided, via Aries and Virgo in particular, slices of particularly loveable dancefloor euphoria and a pretty neat album from the springtime. Alchemy’s Virtual Memory compilation was so damn everywhere for a few months, it seemed impossible to be more than thirty feet away from it. The GMS remixes album was a lot better than we expected, and Spun records carried on into wicked form with the hugely superlative Pressure compilation.

And where are we without making mention ofCosma. His death earlier this year was one of those chilling moments when life catches up with you. You can’t reationalise, you can’t compartmentalise – there’s no reasoning behind anything that happens on this fucked up planet, and yet Cosma’s album seemed to acknowledge this in a chilling way – Non Stop, don’t stop, the party doesn’t stop. Make the most of it.

Maybe that’s why we danced so hard this year.

Progressive crowns have belonged to Vibrasphere’s Lime Structure, a huge panoramic view of an album with melodies and runs that set the hairs on the back of your neck on end and to Ticon, whose  Aero proved to be one of the most cohesive and inventive trance albums yet seen. With new stuff from Atmos, Son Kite and recent legends-in-waiting Star X, there’s a firm body of evidence that this slice of the trance pie is still dong the business.

It’s been a good few months then, really. And it culminated in some pretty sweet parties. Yeah so the cops at samothraki were a downer, but it didn’t stop this boy from dancing. The people got more and more gorgeous as the week went on (except those that nicked the butterflies from the chillout) and that wonerful triumvirate of sea, dancefloor and mountains was sweeter than a skip full of donuts. We do our best to keep the spirit of the island in our hearts, and the spirit of the salmonella-spewing chip butty stall in our farts.

----- Did you have a good time while psyreviews was away? Psyreviews certainly hopes so, and wants you to tell us about it. Each week, someone random will say random things about random events from this summer – if you want to have a stab, dont ask just splurge some words onto an email and encourage it to move in the direction of info@psyreviews.com