Markus Schulz, Gabriel & Dresden and Andy Moor - In Search of Sunrise 14

Mkay. You’re having a decent summer. Things are fine. The weather’s playing ball (mostly), your vacation’s edging closer and you‘ve some fest tickets stashed. Something summer though ‘aint quite right and you’ve not been able to put your finger on it. We think we’ve got the answer: it’s the search for ‘In Search Of Sunrise’. Yes, that perennial starting-shot for hot-season, its categorical GO! moment has been MIA for several years and things, frankly ‘aint been right since!

Well call off the search, the Big Kahuna of all trance compilations, (the one that MIXMAG no less hailed “the greatest trance series of them all!’) is on the comeback track. And it’s had a bit of a refit!

Get ISOS 14 here: https://isos.choons.at/vol14

Following the mix tenures of Tiësto and Richard Durand, series guardians Black Hole have shaken up its system and retooled the ISOS DJ dynamic. They’ve secured the services of three spinners whose credentials in the realms of sunrise soundscaping are beyond question. Markus Schulz, Gabriel & Dresden and Andy Moor have all picked up the ISOS mix mantle and have each embarked on their own forays for sunrays. Cumulatively this has resulted in an album that draws on the music of many a mainstay - Above & Beyond, Dakota, Cosmic Gate, Solarstone, Ferry Corsten, Paul Oakenfold and Aly & Fila among them. Naturally this is assimilated into much of the DJs own studioware (often exclusively) to deliver you an immaculate break-o’dawn, summer summarising soundtrack.

We’ve all been there, and many times over. That singular moment when, for the first time, the sky above the party lightens, the DJ catches its thematic thermal and you have element & music in perfect synch. There are few feelings to beat it and encapsulating that alchemy has been the unending quest of ‘In Search Of Sunrise’.  

First to make his pitch is a genre polymath for whom no trance discipline is beyond mastery. Markus Schulz begins his quest with the translucent ‘Hymn of the Replicant’ - an exclusive overture born of recent studio sessions with Jam El Mar. From there it cruises on to Above & Beyond & Justine Suissa’s ‘Cold Feet’, lifts again with ‘Something About You’ (his Dakota pairing with Arkham Knights), before marking its median through Solarstone’s homage to ‘Midsummer Nights’. Travelling onwards it hypnotises with the mantra of Corsten x Oakie collab ‘A Slice Of Heaven’, before delivering new perspectives (from Johan Gielen and Elevation) on Schulz/Suissa classic ‘Perception’ and Moogwai’s ‘Viola’.

Like ISOS itself, Gabriel & Dresden have done their own fair share of rematerializing of late. Josh & Dave transition darkness to light through the likes of Naden’s epic ‘Submersion’, the ethereal vocalism of Eelke Kleijn’s ‘Home’, elegiac elegance formed by Lucas Rossi’s ‘A Part of Myself’ and Estiva’s sonorous ‘Space Dust’. Denoting daybreak, the pair brilliantly sequence a run of their own material. Their recent G&D reworks of Dirty South’s haunting ‘If It All Stops’ and Above & Beyond’s ‘Is It Love?’ prefaces their most recent single ‘Over Oceans’ and Cosmic Gate’s exceptional revision of ‘Only Road’.

Our final mixing debutante (for 2018) is Andy Moor, who begins his expedition with Paul Thomas’ chilling of Aly & Fila/Scott Bond/Charlie Walker collab ‘Shadow’. He progresses mix matters with Stoneface & Terminal’s cyanic take on Thrillseekers’ ‘In These Arms’ and Omnia’s sun channeling rework of Lange & Sarah Howells’ ‘Out Of The Sky’. Contrasting remixed anthems with classics in the making, he feeds Airbase’s lavish ‘Vermillion’, the symphonic ‘Beacon’ from Mike Saint-Jules and Andy’s Becky Jean Williams team-up ‘The Real You’ into its system. Seeing this sunrise to its ultimate zenith, he builds comp-exclusive versions of ‘Proteus’ and ‘Bioluminescence’ from Neptune Project in, before delivering its astounding coup de grace, the ‘Broken Wings’ inspired ‘Supernal’ from Supernal.

ISOS:14 is not ‘DJs delivering their “takes” or “interpretations” on the originally-modelled-by-Tiësto sound’. This is the real deal - a wholehearted connection, direct to its original vision.