Nine and a half minutes of acid trance at 163 BPM against a two-minute-eight flash: between 3NV3LOP3's 'Dancing On Acid' (Remix X) and Fahjah's 'Vamos' sits almost everything this eighth volume has to say. The former is both the longest and the fastest cut on the record, an endurance test in E major; the latter, a mainstage outburst that barely gets going before it's gone. This compilation reads better through its collisions than through any straight line.
The tempo axis opens a 38 BPM chasm: from the 125 floor shared by DBLS' 'Lift Your Hands High' and Ketov's absurd 'Wormwormworm on the Moon' up to that 163 ceiling. The finer contrast, though, lives inside the genres: the tech house block is tight and disciplined, never straying from 125-133, while the main floor trance contains its own extremes, from the easy roll of Acid Flavor's 'Excuse me' at 129 to 3NV3LOP3's stampede. One genre that can both warm up a room and finish it off.
The voice of 'Right in the Night' among impossible aliases
The sharpest clash is in the names. 'Finest Thing' is signed by PLAVKA, the vocalist who fronted Jam & Spoon on 'Right in the Night' (1993) and also sang with The Shamen; here she operates in the record's calmest register, a 128 BPM tech house cut in G-flat major. 'This Is Miami' comes from Alex Guesta, the Milan producer whose 'Lethal Industry' remix made it into Tiësto's live sets back in 2009. Facing that pedigree, a row of aliases with no visible track record: 3NV3LOP3, BloodDropz!, PG2. Legend and nursery sharing one folder, no hierarchy.
That the closer is 'Wormwormworm on the Moon' — the most unhinged title, the lowest tempo — says plenty: after twenty-four tracks of ascent, the record chooses to land floating. On a volume built on extremes, ending at its slowest point may be the definitive contrast.
Sources: Wikipedia · Last.fm
