Various Zoom 2002 Happy People Music (Switzerland)

This is nice stuff and I’m surprised more of this doesn’t get released. Basically, Zoom is a festival-party type thing that’s been running for years, including albums similar to this covering 1999-2001, none of which had reached me in the past. It’s a nice collection of some of the biggest tunes of recent months, all set up to provide a taster for the festival itself. For your money you get Alien Project’s high-watermark Midnight Sun, The Good The Bad and The Ugly’s Mescalito, the obligatory GMS tune (Gladiator, as if it matters) as well as stuff from Lish, Hyper Frequencies, Bamboo Forest and MOS. You also get Ijabab from Psychonaut (dangerously nice and infectious smooth trance malarkey), The Abyss from Sonic Fusion (deep down & dirty technoid stuff) and Flying Steps from Consquencer feat Milque (cute tribal dubby trance with a campfire-disco vibe.) Okay so it’s nothing massively new, and yes the tracks are available elsewhere, but collected together it really conveys the vibe of what must be one of the most positive and undiluted outdoor gatherings in Europe. Plus it’s great value for money if you’ve missed some of the big stuff of the last year or so.