Swedish Goa Trance and Progressive

Various

Swedish Goa Trance And Progressive

Spiral Trax (Sweden)

Spiral Trax were one of my favourite labels, back in the “day”. I loved the way they combined the psytrance output with kick-ass progressive stuff. Tricky bit is, most of my Spiral Trax stuff is on vinyl and, try as I might, I’ve still not found a way to squeeze a 12” into a Pioneer CDJ. Luckily then, we get a slice of genius gap-in-market and gap-in-collection filling in the shape of this corking 2CD set going back over the history of the label. CD1 focuses on the progressive side, and the first thing that strikes you is how good these (admittedly remastered) tunes still sound today. Vibrasphere’s Cactus Point and Mental Bearing are every bit as lucid as they always were, Noma’s Morning Glory mix of S-Range’s high watermark Out Of Range is to die for, and The Source Experience’s Roots FM is still tantalisingly ticklish. There’s a previously unreleased Human Blue track in the shape of Street Pilot that does all you want from Human Blue; also unreleased is a superb Ticon remix of Chris Pointdexter’s Darkness. Where the progressive stuff still stands up well as though it was released just last week, invariably the Goa is going to sound more dated. Antoine’s Flashback takes you right back to that heyday of scandotrance, Lex Rex Perplex and Reflex is Hux Flux at their most twistily inventive, and Logic Bomb’s Innocent Until Caught is a reminder of their dark side that rarely sees the light of day anymore. It’s also lovely to get the Chromosome remix of Test Tones again, anyone who’s missed out on this lovely seven minute wonder would be well advised to check it here. At the end of the day, you’ve got one CD looking back over the (admittedly dated) psychedelic sounds that defined an era… listening to these tunes takes me right back to the old days of psyreviews, tucked up in that little spare room with a pot of coffee on a Sunday morning while my trance-hating then-girlfriend was tucked up in bed. Digression. The progressive CD has the added bonus of still sounding fresh and cutting today, with some staggeringly brilliant moments that would slide very well into the current progressive feel. A wonderful collection.