Sola Sonorum - Spirit Zone

This rather tasty compilation from Spirit Zone ought to have your tastebuds jumping up and down…. Compiled by DJ Antaro, it’s eight tracks of immaculately produced, mostly unreleased, and always steaming trance. Bamboo Forest’s Brazil kicks things off, a layered and balanced bit of semi-full on that has melodies you would sell your grandmother to be with, floating over an electricity-rich bottom end. Lysergic tweaks and jawtooth stabs gently let this down and it’s one of the best ways to spend eight minutes without taking your trousers off. Echotek’s Somophonic is an atmospheric and highly individual tune, with deep-pitched deep-space bass and barely audible pads. It drags you right in, like a more hypnotic Wizzy Noise, and the effect is staggering. Precision from K.U.R.O. is a mechanical, tokyo-future bit of science friction, the sounds and beats conspiring toward paranoia as the escalating, fear-and-loathing vibe gets those insects crawling up your spine. GMS’ wonderful Shrek still sounds as awesome now as it did when we went all batty over it a few months back, one of the biggest tunes of the summer with “that” sample, “that” creak and “that” top-end. Safi Connection’s Schizo is a comfortably-paced, nicely-balanced tune that draws its energy from smooth percussion, up to a huge break at which point it’s a crashing bit of genius as the cascading sounds mount up in a nicely emotional way. Next up… and you’ll never believe this… but Space Tribe’s Olli Wisdom teams up with Electric Universe’s Boris Blenn for Alkaloid Experiment. Olli’s fluoro boots and mad melodies jostling with Boris’ smooth melodies and measured German knob twiddling? Never. Anyway here it is, and there’s more going on here than you can shake your arms at. Acid lines build up and fall down, melodies and filters harmonise, mad acid rebounds, lysergic madness sets in, samples are daft but effective… it’s a mad celebrity deathmatch of styles. It works perfectly, it’s brilliant and can we have an album please. Yum yum. If that wasn’t enough, psychedelic anthem-generator S-Range’s Microchip 23 is a wonderful bit of driving, atmospheric semi-morning trance with one of the longest, cutest flufflybreaks in a long time, getting those hands in the air before the 303-bounced final run seriously gets those feet moving. A succulent, fluid compilation with an excellent selection of tuneage, this deserves to go a long way.