Last month, through the release of ‘TH3RTY’, his 30-strong-scale artist album, Mark Sherry marked a significant career waypoint (the clue being in the title!). Within five days of release, it’d hit #1 on the Beatport’s Trance chart and had entered the UK Official Album Downloads Charts at #73, but Mark’s never been one to rest on those types of laurels as he releases his new single, ‘Heroes’.
From the outside looking in, ‘making it’ in the electronic music may appear to be one of the toughest nuts to crack. Mark Sherry however would likely disagree as ‘staying there’ is maybe where the hard work begins. Mark possibly did the former inside his first studio trip, taking him to the top 5 of both the UK and international charts.
Carpe Diem, tempus fugit, the fleeting nature of time and life’s impermanence are all music-and-message themes bound up in Peter Steele and Christina Novelli’s first studio gathering. Over the last 10 years, Peter has established himself as a producer, building a reputation through his output on PTR, FSOE, Black Hole, Perfecto and GO Music.
Pavel Khvaleev’s fifth longform takes both name and inspiration from Fritz Lang’s iconic Metropolis - a vision of retro-modern grandeur, meeting expressionist dystopia, high above cloudscraping edifices and stark industrial backdrops. That, however was as so close to a hundred years ago as to make little difference. Pavel, by contrast, only began work on his ‘Metropolis’ after the release of his last two studio albums (‘Inhale’ and ‘Exhale’), back in 2021.
There’s likley a spectrum of reasons why artists create albums, but apparnetly ZOYA never set out to make one in the first place. It began with what is now ‘Eternity’s penultimate track, ‘When Heaven Calls’, a piece she wrote in the aftermath of the most tragic of circumstances three years ago.
When Aaron ‘Fonzerelli’ McClelland debuted back in ’06, he did so in possibly the biggest way. Through Tiesto’s ‘In Search Of Sunrise 5: Los Angeles’ album and the Dutchman’s weekly Clublife radio show, ‘Moonlight Party’ broke significantly, turning it into a European chart hit.
Long players had become par for BT’s course by 2006, with his early noughties works (‘Movement In Still Life’ and ‘Emotional Technology’) having already travelled far from his origin sound. There’s nothing more relative than relativity though and three years after ‘Emotional Technology’, ‘This Binary Universe’ did for BT what ‘going electric’ did for Bob Dylan.
Dennis Sheperd’s apparently been on a journey, and it’s been one he’s documented album-by-album each step of the way. Through title and theme, ‘A Tribute To Life’, ‘Fight Your Fears’, ‘Find The Sunrise’ and 2022’s ‘Onwards // Upwards’ have all touched on, alluded to or out-and-out addressed the area of mental wellbeing.
Black Hole Recordings has just released the latest ‘In Search Of Sunrise’ compilation, its twentieth edition. To acknowledge the occasion, a large edition was required with a six-mix/disc/DJ odyssey, and that’s exactly what the label has delivered.
It’s been a few years since the grouping of The Space Brothers and Mark Sherry released ‘Let It Come’ into the trance scene. Now, Mark, Ricky & Steve are back with ‘Angel’, a follow-up that arrives full of energy.