Solarstone presents Pure Trance 7 Album Review

Track List

Disk 1

Elixir of Life – Neptune Project
Parachuting – Mike Saint-Jules
Meridian – Paul Sawyer
Crenshinibon (Dub Mix) – Elfsong
Tidal Force – David Broaders
In the Room – Mark Found
One Person at a Time – Nick Silvestri
Jitter – David Broaders
Isle of Formentera (Ciree Remix)
Awakening – Revolution 9
Journey to Gravity (Kristina Sky’s Resurrection Mashup) – BT & Attila Syah
Beyond Gravity – New Ordinance
Sunset – Shacada
The View From Apollo D’Antan (Kristina Sky & Randy Boyer’s Edwin van Cleef Resurrection Mix) – Danny Stubbs & Kindred Spirits
Awakening – David Gradwell
Radiant – Tim Verkruissen
Like a Waterfall (The Blizzard Remix) – Solarstone & JES
Where We Dream – Solar Movement
Sueño – Alex Wright
Ocean Flame – Roger Shah & Kristina Sky
Indica (Solarstone Pure Mix) – Pink Bomb
Something Out of Nothing – Bryan Kearney

Disk 2

Heart Connected (Solarstone Reconstruction) – Vadim Zhukov
Underwater World (John O’Callaghan Remix) – Ibizarre
Sinners [Aren’t We All?] – Effen
False Memory – Allend
Turbulence – EDU
When Faith Fades (Solarstone Pure Mix) – Dark Matter
Step Outside (Matt Darey Trance Mix) – Matt Darey
Beyond Time (Neil Bamford Remix) – Reorder
What Lies Between The Stars – Astrosphere
Motif (Robert Nickson Remix) – Solarstone
All Comes Back to You (Solarstone Pure Mix) – Reorder
Whopper (Solarstone Edit) – Sam Mitcham
Jewel (Craig Connelly Remix) – Solarstone and Clare Stagg

Disk 3

Forever – Lostly & Katherine Amy
Without You (Instrumental Mix) – Simon Bostock
Paradigm Shift – Leroy Moreno
Strandloper – Factor B & Lostly
Reflection – Lostly
Voyager – EverLight
Carbon Paper – Giuseppe Ottaviani
Tides – Scott Bond & Charlie Walker & Lostly
Back Home – Sneijder
Remember Me (Allan Morrow Remix) – Liam Wilson
One Step Back – Indecent Noise
Distant Shores – Lostly
Together As One – Tempo Giusto & ToneArts
Trans Karoo (Allen Watts Remix) – Lostly
Cosmic Spirit – Lost In Noise

Split across three disks, Solarstone’s Pure Trance 7 is an intimate, dreamy and far reaching journey into the sounds of trance music. While trance music has adopted its own set of sub genres and sounds, including Armin Van Buuren’s commercially charged ASOT and Above & Beyond’s more progressive style, Pure Trance 7 feels like a much more grounded and raw sound.  With three different DJs mixing each CD, Pure Trance 7 boasts a unique trance flavour for each disk whilst clinging to that old school feel of long breakdowns, big crescendos and euphoric pay-offs.

Each of the CDs showcase a different style of trance, beginning with chilled, progressive beats on the first disk before slowly increasing the tempo and warming up for the second half of the CD. Tracks like Awakening by Revolution 9 really stand out because of this, bridging that gap between chilled and euphoric, teasing what’s to come late on. It’s not until the latter periods of the disk that the euphoric vibes start. With limited use of vocals throughout the CD, tracks like Like A Waterfall work far more effectively because of this. All of this continues along, bowing out with the fast tempo of Ocean Flame, ready for the next mix.

The 2nd CD anchors the entire mix to that Pure trance sound Solarstone manages to achieve so effectively. Quieting the people lamenting trance’s lost roots, Solarstone’s mix weaves a delicious blend of dreamy synths, big-room vocals and driven basslines into a sublime hour of trance euphoria. Personal favourites here include Indica by Pink Bomb, Beyond Time by ReOrder and Jewel by Solarstone himself. Although these tracks in particular stand out for me personally, the level of quality evident through the harmonic mixing and various tracks are sure to garner different favourites among trance enthusiasts.

The 3rd Disk is arguably the weakest of the three, offering up a dose of harder trance with tracks like Carbon Paper by Giuseppe Ottaviani really hammering home this emphasis on the harder basslines and minor key synth sounds. Still, even with a faster tempo and a harder sound, Lostly does a great job rounding out the three disk set and showcasing some of the raw, authentic trance sounds that have been lost over the years.

For all those people bemoaning the lack of old school trance tunes, this 3 disk set is well worth checking out. Having never listened to the previous Pure trance disks before (which I may well do after listening to this), Solarstone manages to reach that authentic trance sound that seems to have become lost and muddied over the years. While there may not be any songs here that become as immortalised as other, more popular tunes in this genre, Pure Trance 7 is a timeless reminder that the old school sound of trance is not lost or forgotten – it’s buried in the heart of Pure Trance 7.