Into Clouds – Luttrell Album Review

Track Listing

After All
Out Of Me
Still Dreaming
Into Clouds
Windowscene
Layover
Quiet Even Dark
Haunted Jungle Cruise
May 25th
Outro

Weaving a dreamy collection of deep house vibes, Luttrell’s Into Clouds is a beautifully written, relaxing dive into the world of progressive trance. With a mixture of different influences and string segments throughout, Luttrell’s album is a tightly produced, thought provoking and oftentimes hypnotic journey from start to finish.

The album opens with After All, setting the tone for the album to come with a slowly rising tempo and an eventual short burst of euphoria as echoing female vocals come into the fold. The next track, Out Of Me, is my personal favourite of the album. The string segments, the short vocal samples and crescendo midway through the track which opens up the vocals to a larger sample all come together harmoniously. When everything crashes back in during the final 90 seconds or so, the slight key changed strings work incredibly well.

From here, the rest of the album mixes vocal tracks with simple instrumental bites, all wrapped up in a deep cloud of progressive trance. While some may lament the lack of variety here, especially with the way the composition of each track follows a conventional format, there’s enough here for progressive fans to chew over nonetheless. 

With each track unmixed on the album, the fluidity is lost slightly by the decision not to beatmatch these together. It’s a minor gripe and given the differing tempoes between each song, given their placement on the album it’s little wonder why this wasn’t done. Still, it would have been nice to really get lost in the music in much the same way Grum’s Anjunabeats Worldwide 7 managed to achieve.

Still, despite all of this, Luttrell’s Into Clouds is a gorgeous, tightly produced journey into the world of progressive trance. There’s enough here for fans of both the Anjunadeep label and progressive enthusiasts to take to with some great stand out tracks along the way. Personal highlights here include the aforementioned Out Of Me but Into Clouds, Layover and Haunted Jungle Cruise all stand out for me given their distinctly different takes on this vast genre.

Into Clouds is a really well worked album. The compositions are tightly produced, the beats suitably deep and the flavour sickly sweet with progressive trance influences. While there are better progressive options out there, Luttrell’s album is a fine addition to the genre nonetheoless and a great way to start the deep vibes going for 2019.