Full Tilt - Gareth Emery - Northern Lights (2010, Garuda)

As Gareth puts it, Full Tilt is “essential to the flow of the album. It’s a divider between the first half, which is a bit more on the housey, progressive side, and the second half, which is pure trance. On the outset you may think it’s a straight-up progressive [house] record, but it does kick-off properly in the middle”. And kick off it does, that is one hell of a build up. It’s quite possibly the best track on the album. For an in depth review of Northern Lights check out my review on inthemix.

Arrival (Feat. Brute Force) - Gareth Emery - Northern Lights (2010, Garuda)

In a genre often derided for being predictably formulaic and lacking artistic merit, Gareth Emery is at the forefront of a new wave of trance DJs and producers creating an intelligent, futuristic new sound, with a strong progressive house influence. Gareth has been making waves since around 2002, but really starting gaining prominence in the last couple of years with hits such as Metropolis and Exposure. It’s been quite a wait for his debut LP, Northern Lights, but it’s worth it. The album exhibits the same thought and forward-looking sound that Emery has become known for with his previous productions, but on a larger scale. It’s really quite refreshing to hear a trance album which is that, an album, not just a collection of singles

Northern Lights is thought out, paced and ordered, quite unlike most trance artist albums. It begins with fresh, driving progressive house tracks. Things start to move more with Full Tilt, a sort of segue in between the progressive house and trance halves of the album, and it continues to the end with the kind of forward-looking trance Gareth is famous for. In other words, it’s like an Emery DJ set in an album, a continuous build through progressive house and trance, but this time all of his own production.

He hasn’t done too many vocal collaborations at all before now, and the ones on Northern Lights really aren’t too bad. There’s an interesting collaboration with his sister Roxanne on Too Dark Tonight, and Sanctuary, featuring Lucy Saunders, has already proven to be a hit. But they end up being the weak point of what is otherwise a strong album. I mean that continuous reverb echo trick is cool once, maybe twice, but in every vocal track on the album? It gets more than a little wearing. And I’m not sure about Fight the Sunrise. By the end it sounds awfully like Kylie Minogue given a trance makeover, except to be honest Lucy Saunders doesn’t really have the same cachet.

No, the instrumental tracks are where Gareth really shines through. Stars, a collaboration with progressive house talent Jerome Isma-Ae, is an atmospheric opening track that keeps building to a euphoric high. Arrival is a definite highlight of the album, a pulsing and swirling track with a haunting bamboo flute solo courtesy of Brute Force’s Akshay Kalawar. Full Tilt is another highlight, a driving mix of house and trance. Citadel is Emery back on form in the style of last year’s single Exposure, and the album finishes on a high with All Is Now, a collaboration with uplifting trance heavyweight Activa.

Northern Lights is a very strong album, especially considering the quite often-mediocre competition in the scene, but it’s not faultless. However, it shows that, in the right hands, trance can still be an innovative and worthy music genre, and it could well be the best trance album to come out this year.

Sanctuary - Gareth Emery feat. Lucy Saunders (2010, Garuda)

Gareth Emery has just released his first new material since last year’s massive Exposure/Metropolis EP. Sanctuary is the lead single to his long-awaited, eagerly anticipated debut album Northern Lights, due out on the 23rd of September. He’s spent the last year or more bunkered down working on the LP, and judging by the new material I heard him play on his last Australian tour a few weeks ago, it’s going to be well worth the wait.

Although he usually produces instrumental tracks, Sanctuary features Gareth doing a rare vocal collaboration with London based vocalist Lucy Saunders. It has a breezy, almost progressive house vibe which suits Saunders’ vocals beautifully, but once that distinctive synth riff drops at 3:40 there is no doubting whose track this is. It’s something a little different, but yet again another awesome track courtesy of Gareth Emery.

Smoke - Ashley Wallbridge - Smoke/Rhythm (2010, AVA)

Ashley Wallbridge has been building quite a reputation for himself in a relatively short amount of time. His tracks started being released in 2008, but things really started picking up for him in 2009, with his collaboration with Andy Moor, Faces, becoming one of the most popular trance tracks of the year, as well as releasing tracks such as Masquerade and Shotokan, which garnered support from big names in forward-looking trance such as Gareth Emery and the owner of AVA recordings, Andy Moor. His last release, Harmonies/Melodies, came out a few months ago, and contained what was in my opinion the best track he had made so far, Harmonies.

After a few months of intensive touring as a highly in-demand DJ, and releases of popular remixes such as his version of Andy Moor’s She Moves, he’s back with the first of a whole barrage of new tracks he has lined up for release. Wallbridge often has a hard time choosing names for his tracks, but this one he found easily, after the demo version of the track blew up the new monitor speakers in his studio on its first play-through. Smoke is an excellent track in the vein of Harmonies, a very futuristic progressive trance track, with one of the most insane buildups you will hear.