Tao – Soular

The States will be one of the countries to watch out for next year: long a fragmented outsider in the global trance scene, there seems to be a lot of connection and cohesion happening at the moment which is going to see it go thru some interesting changes. The first CD in this doublepack is an ambient one – and by this, we mean “proper ambient”. Stick it on, and things get very drawn in, dark, brooding and almost desolate; the fourth track (Sea Of Awareness) sees the first flecks of melody start to appear, but pretty soon the journey sees them edging away. The highlight for me is Ah Kali, a great piece of 91bpm trance/triphop/dub fusion, perfect for a hotboxed room on a Friday night. CD2 is a different kettle of fish: confident, ballsy psytrance that edges slightly towards the dark and crunchy, but never loses its funk. Opening up with a bloke who chants “bom” and “boom shankar” amongst other things, we’re then straight as we mean to go on: Shiva Sha is all snarling bass, punchy punky layer-based stuff that’s got more balls than Wimbledon. Primal Essence has a nick-doof-like rise and fall vibe, Aspire has a classic 3DVision-ness to it, and Mind Lightening has one of the tastiest layered-acid runs in a long time. Track of the bunch though is Focus, which challenges Azax Syndrom to a fight in a pub car park, and comes home with clumps of his hair underneath its fingernails. At times the psytrance tracks get a little cluttered, but the energy’s still there and for the most part this is blistering stuff.