Solarstone & Activa - Pure Trance V8

It's come a long way, baby! When the first 'Pure Trance' album was released in November of 2012, the genre's landscape was a remarkably different. Nefarious hands had again been at work - cynically drip-feeding poppy-pollutants into trance's system. Inorganic quick-hit sugar highs that threatened it's otherwise rich ecosystem, someone had to stand up, blow the whistle and become the countermeasure. Eight years on and while that peril's not passed, it advance has been blunted, with many of it's chancers moving on in search of something else to commercialise. As such the movement - forged and spearheaded by Solarstone, and having long since matured to include global club events, a much-loved weekly radio show and a triple-record label arsenal has, almost imperceptibly, transitioned. Vindicated - a battle largely won, it's become less 'mission' and even more focussed on the music itself. Fresh from the release of his '3' and 'One' albums, our Pure Trance sentinel Solarstone delivers his eighth annual, bringing another fitting close to this P.T. year. Joining him for 2019's edition is a DJ & producer whose re-emergence is - essentially - a living, breathing result of the movement itself. After almost a decade away, Activa's reactivation is as sure a sign as any of the scene's brighter days renaissance. He commits an astonishing second disc of energized trance elevations to complement Solarstone's assured-as-ever selection of the purest. Solarstone's mix initially lies in the hypnotically languid, super-tranquil waters of 'Beautiful Surface' by Super-Frog Saves Tokyo. Taking it's time to make those cool overtures, it features Solarstone's own Retouches of Allende's newie 'Essence', 'This Side of Paradise' from Romania's Claudiu Adam and Oliver Imseng's entrancing 'New Dawns