Solarstone & Gai Barone - Solarstone presents Pure Trance 4 Expanded

Collected and mixed by Solarstone himself, alongside Italy’s Gai Barone, in November 2015 he brought us the fourth volume in his acclaimed ‘Pure Trance’ series. FFWD five months and in best-possible-news for Trance Puritans, the world over, ‘PT4’ is heading back to the frontlines, now in its new ‘Expanded’ version. 

Never a man to do anything by half, Solarstone has spent the last 3 months developing a vast expansion pack for the album. Designed as an all-encompassing update to the original mix-comp release, ‘Pure Trance Vol. 4 – Expanded’ features all 35 of her progressive, pure & uplifting cuts in their unedited, full-length, start-to-finish glory. 

Giving it an altogether different outlook too, Solarstone tasked a representative cross-section of the contributing artists to create some “less vertical, more horizontal” versions of their work. Thus, this release also advances 12 brand new beach-ready remixes of some of the album’s favourites. Making up ‘PT4’s Ambient Collection, included among them are ‘downtime’ rebuilds of Solarstone & Gai Barone's ‘Fata Morgana’, ‘Paper Dreams’ from Bjorn Akesson, Chicane’s ‘Ibiza Strings’ and others. As if all of that wasn’t quite enough for you, Solarstone has fashioned ‘PT4’s new Ambient Collection into a blissed-out end-to-end mix - one which will take you to some very special places indeed.

The original Gai Barone & Solarstone mixes, a new, enhanced Digital Booklet, all the extended versions, 12 new chillout versions AND an ambient mix. It all adds up to a criterion edition no self-respecting lover-of-Pure will want to be without. ‘PT4’ gets ‘360°d’ from today!

Pure Trance – Past to present: a half-decade ago, and the expression ‘Pure Trance’ was no more than one artist’s encapsulation of his own output. Over the course of the following 12 months that solidified into his mission statement, before he catalysed it into a scene-wide, ‘brighter day’ battle cry. It tapped into the fans shared consciousness, caught the current and nailed their prevailing mood: Pure Trance became pure zeitgeist. With rolling-boulder momentum, it gathered pace, hijacking Trance’s central agenda. Now, (still, at just the tender ‘age’ of 4), Pure Trance has established itself as the genre’s new bedrock… And a firmer one, few could hope for.

At the centre of this singularity is Solarstone, the man who sketched the blueprint, wrote the manifesto and set said boulder in motion. Through his ‘Presents Pure Trance’ series (co-mixed to-date by fellow P.T. laureates Orkidea, Giuseppe Ottaviani & Bryan Kearney), the albums’ have established themselves as the wiki of 21st century trance purity. 

On becoming the latest Pure Trance co-mixer, Barone said: “There are so many aspects to consider when you mix a session: great tracks, amazing producers and a perfect flow!! I’ve tried to blend all these elements into my mix on this compilation, creating a mixture of deeper Pure Trance gems! I’m sure you will fall in love with this set, getting lost, as I have, in the harmonic details, tune after tune and beat after beat!”

Solarstone meanwhile said: “The Pure Trance Movement is an organically evolving concept, & recruiting Gai is the logical progression for Vol. 4. Following on from Bryan Kearney's full throttle mix on Vol. 3 I wanted to showcase a deeper, more progressive side of the Pure Trance Sound. Gai's intuitive selection on Disc 1 is the perfect balance to my uplifting and driving selection on Disc 2; together they create a sonic journey which is my favourite of the series so far.”

Throughout ‘Pure Trance 4’s tracks you’ll find the most rigorously refined, pure filtered trance music available to man or beast! Amongst them comes elevating audio from collectives like Above & Beyond, Röyksopp and Aly & Fila, as well as lone artisans including John O’Callaghan, Chicane, Sneijder & Giuseppe Ottaviani. There’s also plenty of box-fresh studio-ware from Solarstone’s own label nexus too, with music from Touchstone and Pure Trance Recordings artists like Liam Wilson, Forerunners, Basil O’Glue & Ciaran McAuley. You’re also in line for much exclusively-featured purification from the DJs’ own production desks, including the pair’s first ever co-production, ‘Fata Morgana’.