Yet another instalment to the tidy trax regime is a superb double compilation album from the man of the hard house scene at the moment, Lee Haslam.
Having recently pushed the tidy compilation to a new level with the FC Annual Release, "Resonate" is a personalised presentation from Lee, and features some of the finest hard trance and hard house tracks around at the moment:
Tracklist
Disc 1.
1. DJ Spoke - Ignition (S.H.O.K.K. Mix) 2. DJ Virus - All Your Bass (K90 Mix) 3. Lee Haslam - Music is the Drug 4. Jon Doe - NRG 5. Steve Blake - I Get a Rush 6. Guyver - Serious Sound 7. Jon the Dentist vs Ollie Jaye - Feel So Good (Guyver Mix) 8. Abel Ramos - One More 9. Yoda - Definitely (DJ Scot Project Mix) 10. The Riot Brother's - Flashback 11. Yoji Biomehanika - Ding a Ling 12. D & A - Demons 13. DJ Vortex - Incoming 14. Guyver - You'll Know It
Disc 2.
1. Nu Nrg - Dreamland 2. Mat Silver vs Tony Burt - Teardrops 3. Dutch Courage - Slammin 4. Guyver - Funky Ass Beats 5. Signum - Coming on Strong (S.H.O.K.K. Mix) 6. The Riot Brothers - Ripped Out 7. DJ Hinx - El Viendo 8. Psyclone - Good Side 9. Arome - Hand's Up (DJ Scot Project Mix) 10. Marc Dawn - Expander 11. S.H.O.K.K. - Isn't It All A Little Strange 12. The Riot Brothers - My Star Control 13. K90 - Red Snapper 14. Eamonn Fevah - Your Turn
Disc 1
Look interesting? Well, it definitely is, and one of the key things is that the track selection contains some of the best from earlier this year, as well as some current favourites such as S.H.O.K.K's remix of Signum and Mat Silver & Tony Burt's "Teardrop" blending across a hybrid of trance and hard house.
We kick off with the immense S.H.O.K.K. Mix of Ignition by the massive DJ Spoke, and we see the usual intensely furious hard trance from Reverb and DJ Giotto in their S.H.O.K.K. guise, tearing up the dance floor and your speakers and definitely setting this compilation off with a big bang..
What do we get when we mix a bit of German trance with some hardcore UK remixers? K90's remix of DJ Virus' "All Your Bass" is just that. With All Your Bass recently released on Germany's Blutonium Records, the Telica boys, K90 do some fine work on the old remix action keep the pounding beats flowing through your speakers.
Next up is Lee Haslam's very own "Music is the Drug" one of th biggest tracks at the moment in the hard house arena, and it highights Lee's production skills as well as his mixing abilities in Resonate. This release is one of the many releases out on the Tidy Trax offshoot "Tidytwo" to appear in recent months, and the next track which follows is one which perfectly complements John Doe's "NRG". This pumping track, grinds and grinds your speakers till the verge of explosion, teasing the borderline of hard trance and hard house by injecting some melody and superb arrangement.
Keeping it fired up and pumping is Steve Blake's "I Get a Rush". Steve has been in the Tidy Trax and Tripoli Trax regime for much of the past several years and his past productions including "Expression", "Adrenaline", and "Feelin" are an excellent representation of his consistency to provide the best productions at the high-end of trance and hard house.
More to come on the excellent Tidy Two label is Guyver's latest track, which is exclusive to this compilation, and reminds you of the epic hard house from the mid-late 90s seen at Trade and Sundissential, with an added dark touch with a subtle european acid-techno touch to it.
Having just heard Guyver on the production tables, we have him putting in a nice remix of "Feel so Good", a track which has had plays for several years, originally pushed out on Tidy Trax and receiving much support from the usual crew. This time, Guyver adds a more driving and deeper sound to it which truly rocks the speakers to destruction and the vocal supplement to the track has yet again proved to be superb, pushing it closer towards the trance genre rather than hard house.
The next 2 tracks from Abel Ramos and Yoda, definitely prove that hard trance is still in the liking and especially Scot Projects remix, which puts it into a nice little pounding hard trancer which ventures on the darker side of things, but the melodies are still there and the productions prove to be interesting and thoughtful.
As we near the end of the first disc, we have already seen that Lee Haslam's mixing and track selections have proved to be flawless, covering a diversity of tracks and styles, and Riot Brothers' Flashback adds to the pounding bass and classic style hard house/hard trance tuneage.
One of the tracks from earlier this year which proved to be truly superb is from Japanese cyber-producer Yoji Biomehanika, and his "Ding-a-Ling" which definitely rocked my speakers when it came out with the Scot Project Remix, and this addition is no exception as it proves once again that its still one of the top tracks of this year.
More Tidy Two to come, from D & A (The producers who brought you tracks such as "What I'm Dreaming", and "Into the Sun") with their superb "Demons", which has just been pushed out on Tidy Two with Space Corn and Club Trance Remixes, and helps to complete the first disc of Resonate.
But before we reach our finale, one of my favourite tracks of the year from DJ Vortex & Arpa's Dream is "Incoming", a blindingly pummeling bass-driven hard trance tune from Tidy Two yet again with a mesmerizing breakdown in the middle of the track which blends euphoria and uplifting together at its best.
Our final track on Disc one is from Guyver yet again, just to show that this producer is one not to be messed with, and "You'll Know it" is a devilish hard trance production which ends the epic journey of disc one and leads us off to imagine what disc two brings.
Disc 2
What surprised me was the choice of Nu Nrg's "Dreamland" being chosen as the introductory track to disc 2, perhaps suggesting that a more trancey disc 2 is to come. And the trance breakdowns and melodies which attracted DJs such as Paul van Dyk to choose Dreamland in their sets is superb and many have voted this to be one of the best trancers of 2002 so far.
Further fueling the trance saga is Mat Silver vs Tony Burt's "Teardrops", an epic journey into euphoric trance and definitely brings in a brilliant start to the second disc as we have evidently seen more trancey elements beginning to form.
Dutch Courage's "Slammin" is an interesting track as it seems to act as it seems to act as a transitional track back into the harder and more bass-driven tracks, and Guyver's "Funky Ass Beats" does just that.
The harder and bouncier basslines come in with a seemingly house influenced edge to this track as we hang on to our chairs as what has been a big track in the past is heard to come in.
Signum's "Coming on Strong" was originally pushed out onto Tidy Trax in 1999 and gained huge support from DJs as far as Tiesto, Fergie, Lisa Lashes and Ferry Corsten, showing the fine borderline between trance and hard house which this track represents. The brand new S.H.O.K.K. remix brings up the hard pumping driven basslines and melodies which have made S.H.O.K.K. so famous in the past year. The fiery grooves and basslines truly suplement the brilliant vocals we have heard from Coming on Strong and is definitely an excellent remix, if not one of the best tracks of the compilation.
Carrying on the hard trance tradition which Lee has began, the Rio Brothers' bring out yet another production of theirs, with "Ripped Out", another ferocious monster unleashed on Tidy Two, showing the quality which we should match with the Tidy Two label, and this track has been causing huge reactions from this side of Europe to the other.
DJ Hinx and Psyclone are the next 2 acts which we have coming up and although I have not seen much from them in the past, these 2 productions have put them in good books. "El Viendo" is a blinding track which came forth on Above the Sky Records with a superb Martin Eyerer Mix. This is the original mix but shows no mercy on the speakers as it brings out a pumping German style trancer, which blends superbly into Psyclone's "Good Side" which is aimed for a released during the middle of this month on Tidy Trax.
Arome's "Hands Up" has been a big favourite with the DJs and the crowds for much of this year so far, and with Scot Project bringing in the inevitable remix of the track, which is out on Overdose Records, we witness a dark and driving bass track which borders trance and techno and is definitely the most pumping of all the tracks on disc 2 so far, if not the entire compilation, as expected from Scot Project.
We have seen Marc Dawn's "Expander" create atmospheric vibes since it was released with its Flutlicht Mix earlier in the year.
One of the best tracks on Overdose for the past several years in my opinion is S.H.O.K.K.'s "Isn't it All a Little Strange", which truly blends a ferociously blinding bassline with some awesome melodic driven background. Hard Trance at its best and definitely one of the best from Germany's Overdose records; bringing it in as a superb addition to the compilation.
The Riot Brothers appears again, with their "My Star Control", which was the b-side to "Ripped Out", and yet again brings up the typical nature of pumping grooves and beats from THe Riots Brothers. Catchy riffs and mad vocals is all I can say about this tune, which is nothing but addictive!
To say that this compilation is a collection of all new tracks would be outrageous as K90's "Red Snapper" is a superb revival of one of their finest tracks, which brings up the penultimate track of the compilation, and Eamonn Fevah's Your Turn, is something of a wonderous finale to an already heart wrenching compilation which is not intended for the faint hearted, and to me, Tidy Trax have proved to be one of the finest labels in the world, with Lee Haslam placing himself amongst the best in Hard Trance and Hard House.
One of this year's finest compilations, if not the finest, with a superb collection of tracks and awesome mixing from Lee, simply superb! 9/10!
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