Download began as an outgrowth of the infamous Canadian industrial band Skinny Puppy. Furnace, their debut album, was released as the group was being torn apart by creative differences and personal tragedy; band member Dwayne R. Goettel died of an overdose shortly after primary recording was complete. Against the backdrop of this bleak origin story this album spans…
Union Jack is a UK trance act formed by Simon Berry (Art of Trance) and Claudio Giussani (Terra Ferma). Their debut full-length album gathers up several of their peak-time dream trance hits as well as an assortment of downbeat and chill out tunes. The production style is quite simplistic and not particularly detailed, but there are many moments…
I’ve never been much of a fan of Etnica’s debut album—most of it sounded too tinny and insubstantial for my liking—but the deluxe re-issue on DAT Records in 2018 made me reconsider my long-held view that this album isn’t very good. Even though it was rapidly eclipsed by Alien Protein (1996) and especially I.F.O. (1997, under their Pleiadians…
Before Shpongle there was The Infinity Project’s Mystical Experiences, a full-length exploration of realms of sound that would eventually become “psychill”. Although ambient and downtempo electronic music was nothing new, seldom before had it been expressed in such a multi-dimensional fashion, with the sounds of galloping horses and samples about objects drifting through outer space vividly conjuring specific mental…
Boris Blenn’s only full-length release as Paradise Connection features an assortment of analog sound experiments spanning an enormous tempo range. Much of the album dwells at the deeper end of trance, with simplistic arrangements that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the ambient techno labels of the early 1990s. Highlights include the euphoric 160 BPM adrenaline rush of…
Hypnotic, tribal, and richly atmospheric, this pioneering techno-trance album from Danish producer Kristian Thinning remains one of the classics of the genre. There is an alluring softness to this album, a haunting sense of mystery that keeps me coming back year after year. Sampled chants, drums, and instrumentation give this album a worldly feel (ages ago we would have…
The First Orbit is the debut full-length release from Planet Rhythm Records, originally founded in Sweden in 1994. Gathered here is a solid collection of hard trance and fast, upbeat techno, most of which had already been released on vinyl. The track listing might seem unfamiliar at first—but behind these projects are some of the biggest names in Swedish…
Koxbox’s debut album Forever After is a beguiling collection of space age techno and psychedelic trance that transcends time. From the very second the needle drops on Point of No Return we are cast into the void between worlds, drifting on waves of warm bass and dazzled by alien melodies. There isn’t a weak track on the album, and…
Here we have an extremely rare compilation absolutely stacked with classics from some of the biggest names in Goa trance. Transwave appears here with two of their best, Cycles of Life and Rezwalker; Pleiadians provide three solid tracks (including their eponymous debut), of which Boarding Pass to Balangan is the highlight; while Rainbow Spirit (Boris Blenn…
Indoor was an early Israeli trance project uniting Avi Algranati (AKA Space Cat), Ofer Dikovsky (Oforia), and Marko Goren (most famously part of Tandu). Progressive Trance, their only major release, captures an innocence and naivety seldom heard in the genre today. Although the production quality is raw and the arrangements are often uneven this album still…