There is a figure on 'New Reality (Suanda 500 Anthem)' that looks like a typo and works like a statement: 70 BPM, exactly half the 140 stamped on several neighbouring cuts. That metadata wink sums up this compilation better than any press note: it is a record of poles. The most visible one is length: 'Millennium Falcon', the meeting of Alex M.O.R.P.H. and Roman Messer, stretches out to 7:26, while Michael Milov's 'Be There' wraps up its idea in 3:27. Nearly four minutes apart, and two philosophies: the long haul with room to breathe versus the straight jab.
A monolith with coloured cracks
Twenty-four of the thirty cuts sit in main floor trance, and there lies the second contrast: the uniformity of the block against its satellites. 'Summer Rain' slips into dance-pop in under four minutes; 'Let Me Go' bends the grid towards breaks; 'Esperanto', by Vadim Spark and Tim Air, tightens things up in psy mode; the rework of 'Moonlight Sonata' drops to 128 in melodic house territory; and Rospy's 'Love At First Sight', at 125 BPM, is the true slow pole: seven minutes of progressive at the calmest point of the record. Even language joins the game: 'Осколки лета', in Cyrillic, sits next to English titles, which feels natural on the label run by Russian producer Roman Messer, also an A&R for TranceMission, whose releases have drawn support from Markus Schulz, Paul van Dyk and Armin van Buuren.
The final contrast is one of presence: Messer signs or co-signs ten of the thirty cuts — a third of the record — while more than twenty names appear just once, from 'The Lonely Pianist' by Aleksey Gunichev, Sergey Salekhov and Andrew Mirt to the closer, 'When I Hear Your Voice' with Jennifer Rene. Tonally the scales tip openly too: twenty-four minor keys against six majors, melancholy as the official language with luminous exceptions like the G major of 'Now We Are Free'. Beatport credits Suanda with nearly a decade covering practically every modern style of trance; this yearly roundup confirms it without a speech: here the extremes do not compete, they split the job.
Sources: Illustrate Magazine · Last.fm · Beatport
