Back in stock: Uplifting Trance

Review: DJ Nobu's avant-garde Bitta label looks to fellow Japanese great in Osaka-based Erik Luebs for its next trick. As always with this fine imprint, the sounds are about balancing transcendental synths with deep tech rhythms. They are masterclasses in economical arrangement and on the surface don't do much, but when you tune in properly, they are mind-melting trips, starting with the mystery of 'Granite Monolith'. 'Irradiated Body' has loopy synth sequences unfolding at great pace with pristine accuracy and 'Coming Up For Air' gets a little more extroverted with dubby kicks and the sound of overloaded AI machines getting ever more frenzied. 'Facing The Horizon' is a flickering, optimistic and mildly euphoric sound for dropping when the sun peaks through the blinds and you celebrate getting through another night of darkness.

Review: 2025 to 1996 has marked enough time to look back on the techno / hard trance project The Montini Experience, who for their initial run of the single 'Astrosyn: My House Is Your House', went, for some reason, by the name The Montini Experience II. It's as if this historic hard trance moment was too potent to be borne by the original name, so to keep its weight held, they had to synthesise a second version of themselves. Though the original track dealt in immediacies of reverse-crashing trance lines and cheese-strung offbeat stabs, with a central, this modern version by Thomas Schumacher brightens and flambes the mix, sacrificing opening drum machines for a burgeoning prog-trance buildup.

Review: Talla 2XLC and German composer, producer and songwriter Torsten Stenzel (who is still best known for his work as YORK) revive the 1997 trance classic 'The Wave' by Sosa with a big new remake that realigns it with contemporary sounds. Landing on bright coloured vinyl via Technoclub Retro it has two extended mixes that reignite the energy of the original with brilliantly euphoric flair. On Side A, York's 'Back to the Roots Extended Mix' has already been getting heavy plays in clubs and on festival stages around the world with its high-octane melodic rush an utter thrill when played nice and loud. Side B brings an exclusive new remix by Talla 2XLC that is only available on this pressing.

Review: Given that he's been active as a producer since the dawn of the 90s, it would be fair to say that Sven Vath is well worthy of an authoritative, expansive retrospective. That's certainly what we get here on this quadruple-vinyl mix of classic productions and fresh, eye-catching remixes. It's the latter that dominate the early stages of the collection - see Adam Port's hypnotic, didgeridoo-sporting revision of 'Ritual of Life', Speedy J's acid-fired stomp through 'Ballet-Fusion' - before Vath showcases some of his choice cuts. There's naturally to set the pulse racing, from the twisted, sub-heavy thump of 'Cala Llonga' and the tactile hypnotism of 'Sounds That Control Your Life', to the electroclash-meets-Kraftwerk flex of 'Dein Schweiss' and the ambient techno excellence of 'The Day After', a 21- minute epic from 1995 produced alongside Steffen Britzke as Astral Pilot.

Review: Iowa's Zuul hand modulates the proverbial Pressure Control with a five-track slab of tightly wound menace, shifting gears from his earlier appearances on Exarde and White Scar. As head of Laik, Ollie Burgess has previously shown a taste for precise, brooding rhythms; but here, he leans rawer, drawing on EBM, new beat and the wave-inflected electronics of the late 80s, invoking spirits of early Frankfurt and Ghent while keeping an eye firmly on the functional demands of contemporary sets. There's a nitty tension running through each cut, making them as suited to murky warm-ups as to teeth-gritting peak hours.