The official follow-up to ‘Destiny’ is finally here! Ace Da Brain and Sebastian Ostermann have once again joined forces to bring us another piece of highly energetic trance… Their previous single was an amazing track, so let’s find out if they’re able to do it again!
‘Destiny’, which was released late 2003, was the first collaboration between the two aforementioned producers. Ace Da Brain (Andreas Schmidt) has been producing for many years now, creating masterpieces like Ace’s Delight – ‘Mental Theme’, BACED! vs. Ace’s Delight – ‘Witness’ and loads of other classy tunes. X900 also produces under the name Skydiver, with released tunes including a remix for Pervading Call’s ‘Destiny’ and tracks like ‘Liberation Day’. He also spends quite some time with the guys from DuMonde, resulting in aliases like No Faces.
Time to put the needle on the record!
A-side: Ace Da Brain Mix Right from the beginning, it is hearable that a lot of thought and effort has been put in this track. Starting off in a calm way with some gentle flutes playing, the track immediately unleashes part of its force by not building up endlessly like your usual trance record, but banging straight from the start. Subtle FX have been placed throughout the intro part of the track, creating an unbelievably tense atmosphere. The percussion is somewhat harder than a ‘normal’ trance record, resulting in a continuous burst of energy throughout the whole seven and a half minutes that this track takes. During the build, a very agile synth is being torpeded right into your faces by playing this repeating melody that changes its chords constantly to maximum extent. With a piece of subtle emotional sounding strings emerging right behind this, the overall feel during the build-up sounds very, very well thought out, and definitely stands out from a lot of trance records we hear these days. But the best part is of course yet to come… Ace Da Brain wouldn’t be Ace Da Brain if he didn’t include a wonderful breakdown again, and he did! His trademark piano sounds are first playing a lonely, yet very intense sounding set of chords. The emotion is already flowing out of this, but the ultimate goosebumps moment comes in when a rightfully fantastic combination of both a high synth melody and some amazing strings enter in. This is euphoria all the way! Just imagine yourself standing on a dancefloor hearing this, it can’t get much better! With the mega goosebumps moment slowly fading away, the main synth that’s going to be used in the climax comes in, being accompanied by the tasty piano sounds. Three, two, one… and bang, here comes the moment to go nuts! The loud strings from the break return, but are this time being powered up even more by the driving percussion and bassline. All the melodies have been aligned perfectly, resulting in a sublime experience. With the main climax parts making place for their counterparts, you’d believe that there’s going to just be a repetition of the first break… wrong! Ace has decided to do things the other way around by adding a truely igniting synth sound here, playing a fast but still very uplifting melody. All in all a wonderful piece of work again! Rating: 9/10
B-side: X900 Mix The first few seconds of this mix certainly know how to catch your attention: a very deep bassline accompanied by a strong bit of percussion makes its way through the speakers, almost sounding like a heavy industrial machine banging out loud in a huge factory hall. One very neat thing about the build is that a lot of elements from techno have been used in a very cool way, resulting in various filters, mini-breaks and continuous percussional slamming throughout this part of the track. With a cool teasing synth playing every once in a while, at all of the sudden the main breakdown starts. Part of the melody from the A-side mix has been implemented here, but is being brought out in a totally different way. While most of the emotion is still being retained by using a cool synth and some nice strings FX, a nice contrast is being created by very slowly fading out the melody parts and then to bring in a somewhat filtered version of the main percussion. This is cool stuff! The return of the full percussion is definitely food for the dancefloor because of its overwhelming character and the immensely deep bass injections. Though this mix ís not too complicated, it surely knows how to keep you entertained by playing with the percussion all the time. Numerous gimmicks have been added as well, keeping the pace and variation at a very reasonable level. Thumbs up! Rating: 8/10
Conclusion:
Let’s just cut right to the chase: this vinyl is amazing again. Ace Da Brain has once again delivered an outstanding mix, filled with power, craft and above all a lot of emotion. The piano and string melodies are out of this world again, ensuring this track to be one of the stronger trancers that 2005 has brought us until now. The X900 remix is quite ‘simple’, but does know how to grab your attention by making use of various wicked techno elements and a huge bassline. Go get this now!
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