Twenty-five tracks make up 'Trance Infinity, Vol. 08', but its story can be told in four. The first is the opener itself: 'NIGHTSHADE' by KAEL and BLOOD MAGICK, one of only three raw/hypnotic passages on the record, 5:21 at 138 BPM in B minor that favours shadow over euphoria. That Nothing But — a label devoted to compilation series running from trance to drum & bass — chooses to open a mostly main-floor volume this way says something: here the light is not handed out, it has to be earned.
The counterpoint arrives early. 'It's A Dream (Trance Version)' by Fraktal is the fastest cut on the record: 156 BPM in F minor, a pulse brushing against hard trance that no other track dares to touch on a tracklist gravitating around 138-140. 'Overdrive' is its mirror image: the longest cut (7:36), a six-handed effort from Eloquentia, Gayax and ShoMa (JP), patient main-floor trance in B-flat minor that builds in layers instead of punching, with room to breathe between one tension and the next.
'Air', the familiar name
The name with the longest track record appears near the end. 'Air (Elite Electronic Remix)' brings together Aurosonic, Zara Taylor and Elite Electronic: Aurosonic is a Russian project active since 2005 whose material has circulated through the sets and radio shows of Armin van Buuren, Markus Schulz and Tiësto, as its Last.fm biography notes, and the original 'Air' appeared earlier this year on the project's own label, Aurosonic Music. Here it arrives in compact form — 3:40 in G minor — condensing the melodic hook without an extended mix's runway. Four tracks, four corners: the dark one, the fast one, the long one, the known one. The rest of the volume moves inside that map, and anyone who wants to grasp the whole thing would do well to start from these coordinates.
Sources: Last.fm · Beatport · Nothing But