Various – Goa Vibes Vol. 2

I'm not even super big on R&R goa (that stands for resonance and reverb), but his comp is a great slice when I need something in that style. As a whole this tops the first Goa Vibes because of more consistent sounds and better sequencing. This comp is also very collector-friendly as most of these tracks are either exclusives or vinyl only (or appear on lesser comps).

The MFG track was produced in Astral Projection's studio with Astral's synths, they might even be uncredited engineers on it too. That's probably why this is one of the best sounding and well developed MFG tracks. The MWNN remix is solid, it is what it is. His remixes are basically just replace original timbres 1:1 with MWNN sounds. It's never going to be bad, but rarely going to blow me away either. It does well as track #2 though and is well ed by the surrounding pieces. I like that tracks 3 and 4 feature past and future of Prana. The Rhythmystec track begins deceptively traditional, but has really out of the box ideas coming forward as the track progresses. It's no surprise considering the kind of stuff Castle and Taylor would make later on. The Guthrie and Tristan track is quite visceral too, I think 3+4 is the best one-two punch on this comp.

Also contains a Blue Planet gem, which is one of their most typically goa sounding tracks ever. Take that as you will. Has neither the retro simplicity of their earlier acid works nor the deep inspiration behind Cyclothymic/Crystal or the other tracks from their LP. I probably wouldn't have known this was BPC if I didn't hear the Cheetah MS6 on there.

The comp loses a little steam at this point because the next track is XDream's Do You Believe which usually gets skipped because I have it on their album, and a very similar alternate mix on their Tunnel B-sides comp. Grest track but I hear it sooo often.... So from there is the two weakest tracks by Transwave and Etnica. Kind of vapid stereotypical Goa that doesn't really impress me. Good enough to not be noticeably bad, but simply dragging notes around a phrygian scale very linearly on a computer screen just does not invigorate me. I LOVE Alien Protein but Tribute is probably leftovers from those sessions. Once they figured out they could have success by putting basic phrygian melodies over stock drum beats instead of writing actual songs with expert harmony, distinct structure, and melodic portions with counterpoint inspired by fugues and shit... that was their downfall.

The final track is an alternate mix of Astral Projection's Radial Blur, which is actually the second AP/MFG collaboration on this comp; probably made in the same session as Shape The Future. People are calling it a downtempo mix which I'm not sure I agree with. The overall tempo is similar, they just shift the snare from the 2nd/4th beat to the 3rd, making it more like a psybreaks or techno track. The drums hit kind of hard too, so calling it downtempo/chillout doesn't feel right to me. Anyway, a pretty cool song which I think I enjoy more than the main mix.

One of the best trance compilations ever made until this vety day.

This is an absolute cracker of a goa trance compilation. Highly recommended.

Incredible collection, even more incredible that I'm the first to review it!

The tracklist speaks alone here. MFG, Blue Planet Corporation, X-Dream, Transwave, Etnica, Astral Projection and the famous Platipus records artist Art of Trance remixed by Man With No Name all on a compilation released in 1995. All tracks by these artists have appeared a thousand times elsewhere so I’m not going to discuss them again. There are hardly any other collections released in the same year with all these famous artists together.

The lesser known artists here are Rhythmystec, an artist with only two 12" releases on Matsuri but whose tracks appeared on a good number of compilations and the quirkily named artist 100th Monkey whose track Spritus is absolutely fantastic and unique. Transwave’s Rezwalker is obviously one of the classiest tracks but the mix appearing here didn't make it on much CD's, though of course the original and the even better London Live mix are better than the rare version here.

You can have all these tracks elsewhere, except track 9, and this is the main purpose of my review. Radial Blur is not the version that appeared a year later on Astral Projection’s groundbreaking album “Trust In Trance”. Instead this is a downtempo/ambient version similar in style to the ambient version of “People Can Fly” (titled Still Dreaming) on the same album.

The exclusive version of Radial Blur doesn’t make this release a must have, but for Goa fans having all titles already there’s still an excuse to buy this.