Posse – Domo Records

Insane Creation’s Can Feel kicks off in wonderful style – smooth as hell, utterly gorgeous progressive with a perfect groove, incredible sounds and a wonderfully simple melodic hook at the end that gets the hairs on the back of your neck tingling nicely. Sonic Soul’s Pornodelica takes things deeper, coming alive about two minutes in with a seriously impressive selection of sounds – slinky and slightly eerie, the drop after the breakdown is serious shiznit, with jaw-dropping layering and some of the nicest production around at the moment. Ace Ventura & Intelabeam’s Nasty Peach is hugely understated, immaculately-arranged stuff – and very individual to boot. Best classified as epic progressive, it evolves so much through its allotted nine minutes. Dropping a melody halfway through, it’s mostly about the percussive stabs and twists, with plenty of noises coming in throughout to form this gleaming patchwork of sounds. Very nice indeed. Sensifeel’s Available I prefer to the stuff on his album – this sounds cleaner, tighter somehow… it picks up some psy-ish sounds and coasts along with them all nicely, and at times sounds as though it’s Wizzy Noise coming thru the speakers. V-Tunes’ 3rd Trial is slinky and funky, reminds me a bit of the car in Knight Rider though I’m not entirely sure why. It’s immaculate this one, just has everything you want in quality progressive trance, that would keep me dancing in the morning sunshine until I fell over. Liquid Soul’s Be Free has a somehow awkward sound to it – the production’s a little more harsh here than on the other tunes, and while in itself that’s fine, it sort of loses its way in amongst the dazzling quality it’s up against here. NASA’s Someone To Watch Over Me is a very tender moment in trance… once it gets going it really gets going. The groove is effective and warm, the layering in the melodies is staggeringly good and, in particular, the end section combines motion with emotion to incredible effect. And now, we have to deal with lyrics. Words. Singing. Ticon’s remix of Sub 6 Feat Michelle Adamson’s 7th Son is…. well, it’s okay. It’s Ticon and it sounds like it – but it also sounds like Sub 6 and Michelle Adamson. Her voice is no doubt wonderful, her talent can’t be shook, but I am yet to be convinced that her voice – or anyone else’s voice – belongs in trance music. Putting this aside, Ticon have done a nice job here. It’s just as tight and as fluid as you’d expect from them… and unfortunately I can’t get past the lyrics, this is a great crossover tune and ought to get played on all sorts of dancefloors around the world. Finally Tomtron & Liesegang’s Song For You, again with the lyrics, and for my money it would be much better without them. The tune itself has this very swimmy, cutup feel through the midrange that makes it very hypnotic, very ticklish, and very danceable… but the vaguely depeche mode-y singing together with a couple of questionable chord changes at the end spoil its effectiveness. Overall Posse shines, there’s some utterly fantastic work here, and only a couple of duff moments stop it from being sensationally essential. Nice work and much respect to the Domo crew.