Rediscovering Lost Highs...

Ozgur Can and his Scandinavian buddies have made a good name for themselves in electro house circles, with some crossover hits, the best of which was Klikboxning's demented release on Plejour Audio, heavily chopped up techno, like Justice but actually good to dance to.

His new track, "On A White Day", on the other hand is straight back to the chart trance hits of the 90s, albeit without a vocal. Some nice post-Border Community cut up effects may have come to the party, but they don't spoil a prog tune which is the first record I've liked in a long time which really deserves the adjective "pumping". Normally when I hear music described as "pumping", I'm at work, and it usually prompts me to reach for bad 12s. There's a great melancholy to this though, I guess great prog-house will always make you think of those bombastic videos with lonely figures walking on beaches in raging wind. Did I imagine this or are there a few hundred of these in video history, for all music?

This is no different, a huge sweeping bassline keeps things melancholy, you've got to love the way there are sort of artless or at least faceless versions of the Kompakt/Border Community trendy trance sounds coming out ALL THE TIME now. They just sound like trance/prog! Still great tho, plus you don't have to read the "omg! mayer is so trance" reviews when it's someone like Ozgur Can. We KNOW Mayer is trance by now, we don't need to get excited by that, and something is lost in the knowing. "On A White Day" is definitely THE track to listen to on the beach this winter, preferably with a helicopter circling overhead.

On a similar but more arty tip is Kollektiv Turmstrasse's awesome "Musick Gewinnt Freunde" EP. Been keeping an eye on these guys since their brilliant "Disconnect Me" EP on Ostwind, they're a little like Booka Shade in that they have that big cinematic sound, but a bit more pure sounding, with lots of strings here. Check out "Freiflug" below.

Ozgur Can-On A White Day

Kollektiv Turmstrasse-Freiflug