Accelerator 4.0

Coming at a time where psytrance is sounding good again, I was looking forward to this. The standard Turbotrance roster gets mastered to glossy perfection by Charles Triptych, but all too often excessive melody dilutes the raw power of some seriously tasty tuneage.

Manmademan’s Escape is smoother than a baby seal’s vulva. A starry-eyed rises in the intro, and forms a cute core that winds and slithers its way through seven odd minutes of pure goan sunrise. GBU do better with Big Tone Blasted than pretty much anything on their recent fullonfest of an album. Tecchy, stripped down, and almost progressive: the sounds are perfectly pitched here, and the teasing electro melodies give it a characteristic, chunky edge. Sad that their recent album didn’t showcase this kind of creativity.

Triptych vs Senix’s Hot Track is a clunky remix of Gwen Stefani’s What You Waiting For, interesting from a compositional perspective, but the sort of thing that makes you want to throw chairs at any DJ that plays it. Shanti’s Flight Of The Phoenix is definite trance-by-numbers, saved by a 303-infused finale that has one thinking of Space Cat (not, thankfully, in a sexual way) before Tranan’s deeper-than-deep In To Paradise does its wormy magic: think vintage logic bomb, with added sparkle on the topend.

Triptych’s remix of Oforia’s Instant Food is semi-likable, but never when other people are present: a guitar loop that somehow sounds like Frankie Goes To Hollywood gets topped off by a dreadfully clean three-note synth riff while a bloke goes “time and space” underneath. Elec 3’s No Time To Chill is somehow similar; there’s fantastic escalation and progression in the track, forming a groove that’s frankly, a bit of a shit-kicker. Then for some reason a nasty, clear-saccharine topend melody comes in, and once again things are too flimsy to be properly rocking.

Prosper’s Crystal Fields keeps the vibe going, but it does better through not pretending to be anything other than powerful, melody-driven trance. It’s not far from something you’d expect MTV to pick up, and while your Derango-loving mates will crucify you for saying so, it’s a well-crafted and extremely effective bit of dance music.

Finally Silicon Sound’s laidback persona gets another outing with a remix of Tranan’s Preacher Boy, seriously good stuff in a slomo, glistening, foot-still-tapping-even-though-i-fell-asleep-half-an-hour-ago sort of way.

All in all then, this is much like you’d expect – half quality, half cheese – but putting it like that is missing the point. Turbotrance are back to doing exactly what their name suggests: big, powerful music using a lot of melody to ram the point home. This isn’t going to change the world, but it deserves to do well.

To sum it up in one word: pleasant.