There's a telling choice in how this volume opens: 'Say Wow' by AYAK (US) is the only cut on the record written in a major key —G major, at 130 BPM— and yet it opens the journey instead of crowning it. Everything that follows is a gradual slide into minor mode, and heard front to back, that early contrast is what makes the rest click: the record doesn't climb toward the light, it sets out from it.
The first descent belongs to Peter Damian's 'Are You Sure': three BPM down —127, the slowest pulse of the set—, A-flat minor and a house groove that loosens the shoulders after the opener. From there the record enters its most introspective stretch: 'DOM' by Dely & Sun, minimal/deep tech in G minor at 129, the moment the album stops looking at the dancefloor and starts looking inward. It's the valley of the trip and its tonal center of gravity, because G minor is the home everything returns to.
'In My Dream' by ABO gets the engine running again —130 BPM, E minor, tech house once more— and sets up the only possible ending: 'Keep it Up' by Fede Aliprandi and Los Canarios, by far the longest cut (6:41 against the five-and-change minutes of everything else) and the only one signed by two names. Aliprandi, a producer based in Buenos Aires according to his SoundCloud profile, steers the finale back to G minor, as if the last piece answered the first from the far shore of the mode.
On Beatport the reference is filed as ISS171 in the Issues catalog, whose Reissues series reaches its nineteenth installment here. The formula is austere —five producers, five originals, an arc of barely three BPM— but the sequencing shows craft: track order tells a story of its own, from the major-key euphoria of the start to the sustained dusk of the finish, and that story reads better with shuffle turned off.
Sources: Beatport · SoundCloud
