Set 5

Set 5 is a high-quality progressive psytrance collection from Iboga, one of the world’s top labels. Banel & Emok have gathering a set of top tunes from some of the world’s biggest acts with excellent results. The compilation is aptly subtitled “Summer Collection,” with a clear focus on gorgeous trance anthems for the outdoor festival season. The cover design is nothing special, being a simple inversion of the previous edition, but I’ll let that pass. The tunes are what matter.

Perfect Stranger is the new guise from Yuli Fershtat (BLT), who was last heard on Anything U Want, one of the finest albums of 2004. What’s the Lineup is a typical track in his new style of deep progressive trance. The tribal influence remains, flavouring a set of moderately funky rhythms with spicy percussive flourishes. Floating melodic accents provide a pleasant atmosphere, eventually reaching a scratchy peak for the final moments. Never too heavy, Yuli’s new project is easy on the ears and good for your feet.

Son Kite deliver one of their strongest tracks in recent memory with the pumping electro-trance anthem Catch. Cruising along at 140 BPM, this is a powerful morning monster crafted with immense skill. Shimmering layers of melody sparkle above precise punchy rhythms, interrupted only by one massive breakdown and intelligent return. The arrangement is fairly straight-forward, making it perfect for long mixing DJs. Overall, a wonderful piece of music!

Zen Mechanics remixes Ace Ventura’s Cardiac Arrest into a slick synthetic progressive anthem. The original, released on Set 4, was decent enough, but nothing really made it stand out. Not so with this version, which is loaded with vivid psychedelic atmospheres, strong rhythms, and a few great melodies. The transitions are fantastic as well, perfect for building expectations and teasing the dance floor. I really enjoy deep and powerful progressive trance such as this; it’s a definate winner.

Bye She Said is a typical track from Frogacult, who remain one of the more distinct artists on the Iboga roster. The style is deep and dubby, with light breezy rhythms and luscious chord strikes. Trance for the beach, in other words. It slides by without making a huge impression, but it is nicely composed just the same.

Liquid Soul returns the flow of the compilation to deep and powerful psychedelic progressive sounds. Go Reality is easily the best track I’ve heard from this prolific artist. What a song! The drums are fat and chunky, with a solid backing bass line. The production quality is crystal clear, the arrangement is tight, and it flows like quicksilver. These elements are merely the foundation for a brilliant array of massive surging atmospheres and slick melodies, which continually drive the song to higher levels of emotional impact. Stellar!

Next up, Flowjob provides a teaser from their full-length album Support Normality entitled Wadley. The style is fairly similar to Frogacult’s in some ways: lazy prog-house crossover material with floating atmospheres and an intelligent touch to the arrangement. Nothing really stands out, but I wouldn’t hesitate to slip it into a set if it were going to fit.

Reefer Decree’s Gone For Good, also released on Point of You, is a lovely morning tune that sounds like a significant departure from the group’s older style. There are two reasons for this: several years have passed since the days of Sound Frames, and the former duo is now the solo effort of Oliver Bierlich (Oryx). No hint of minimalism can be detected in Gone For Good, which features a seething funky underbelly and plenty of wistful organic melodies. The drums are all pleasantly crispy, with all sorts of tricky little hooks designed to get a dance floor shaking. The saccharine mood is an unexpected delight, pushing this song across the threshold into greatness.

Luna Spice, one of my favourite progressive producers, closes the compilation with Eclipsed’ay. Intricate rhythms churn and cycle, backed by the satisfying sound of tribal toms. Resplendent atmospheres drift and float in time to the crafty groove, accentuated by moody sounds that swipe across the stereo field. Deep into the breakdown an excellent sample about the eclipse experience plays through, and then the track makes a sublime return. I doubt it was intentional, but this smooth finale sounds like a well-balanced merger of the power-prog of Liquid Soul and Zen Mechanics with the beach-friendly sound of Frogacult and Flowjob. In essence, it is another excellent piece of sophisticated progressive psytrance.

Set 5 is the most consistently excellent release I’ve heard from Iboga, marking a significant improvement on the late winter compilation Set 4, which was already quite good. Every single track on this CD is a delight to hear, even if they can’t all be stand-out favourites. Banel & Emok have done a fantastic job selecting extraordinary music for the sweet days of summer. There isn’t much more to say! As long as one enjoys depth and melody in trance, Set 5 is going to be a hit. Highly recommended!

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