"Trance for me as a genre refers to the old Oakenfold sound, the warm melodic driving music, not the euphoric cheese with vocals, predictable breaks and drumrolls that you hear now in the charts. There are a lot of different definitions of the genre, but to me it's just warm electronic dance music, anything from progressive to techno."

Writing on the press release accompanying his new mix CD, Dutch superstar DJ Armin Van Buuren is keen to emphasis his favoured musical style as 'proper trance- before it became diluted and commercialised', so it's no surprise that a State Of Trance sounds distinctly retro. Seamlessly mixed and packed with pumping peaks and string laden troughs, both discs explore the territory so successfully marked by Sasha and Digweed in the mid-90s, and its an area that remains as pleasing on the ear as it did in 1995.

Naturally, that means A State Of Trance is anything but ground-breaking but it's as cleverly selected and compiled as anything done by the 90s superstar jocks, reflecting Van Buuren's own status as one of the most popular mainstream DJs of today.

http://www.react-music.co.uk