Mid-Town Records: cat. DVCD 003
Released September 2006

Track list:
Disc 1
1. Loco Dice - Seeing Through Shadows
2. Marco V - Second Bite (Marco's Acid Rock Dub)
3. My Robotfriend - Dial Zero
4. Fedde Le Grand - Put Your Hands Up 4 Detroit
5. Who's Who? - Sexy Fuck
6. Bodyrox - Yeah Yeah (D. Ramirez Mix)
7. Gabriel vs. Nilz - Noize (Gabriel Mix)
8. Sébastien Léger - Hit Girl
9. John Acquaviva & Madox - Feedback
10. Fonzerelli - Moonlight Party
11. Kiko - World Cup 2006
12. Terry Ferminal - Nymph
13. DJ NuSense - Deep Down & Dirty
14. Steve Angello & Sebastian Ingrosso - Click
15. Randy Katana - Plastic Fantastic
16. Yello - Oh Yeah 'Oh Six
17. E-Craig - Home (Dub Mix)
18. Armin van Buuren - Control Freak (Sander van Doorn Remix)
19. Marcel Woods - Advanced (Bits & Crushed Mix)
20. Kobbe vs. Balthazar & Jack Rock - Moonshine

Disc 2
1. Sander van Doorn - Dark Roast (2006 Re-Fill)
2. Chocolate Puma - Always & Forever (Bart Claessen Dub Mix)
3. Mojado - Rezo
4. Divini & Warning - 4LB
5. 4 Strings - Take Me Away (Purple Haze Remix)
6. Re:Locate - Rogue
7. Ronald van Gelderen - This Way
8. Sander van Doorn - Punk'd
9. Fred Baker & Greg Nash - Lunar Eclipse
10. Ferry Corsten - Junk (Flashover Remix)
11. Giel Looijmans vs. Vezzola - Symetric
12. Jan Liefhebber vs. Nimbuz - Sirius
13. Club Scene Investigators - Direct Dizko (Sander van Doorn Remix)
14. Cave - Plutonium (Chris Liebing Mix)
15. Side Dish - Pressure (Marcel Woods Old School Mix)
16. DJ Preach - Broken Inside
17. Vezzola - Thicker Than Blood (Vocal Mix)
18. Gabi & Nilson - Repetitive Rush (Vezzola Remix)


IN BRIEF: Oh look, it’s most of 2006 in 120 minutes.

I wasn’t at Dance Valley 2006. I’ll be honest with you. I’m not even sure what I was doing when it took place. I was probably at a barbecue. I attended an abnormal amount of them over the summer. So I don’t really have the first clue what the official Dance Valley 2006 double album has to do with the festival itself. I imagine more than thirty-eight tracks were played over the course of it, yet only thirty-eight make their way here. Whether it captures the essence of the festival itself… well, only someone who attended could tell you that. If it was Watching England Lose to Portugal 2006 (to the smell of sizzling pork fat) I’d be perfectly qualified to deliver a verdict on its authenticity.

This isn’t a live album. It’s a fairly typical studio mix. And the interesting thing is it’s mixed by Sander van Doorn, and is (believe it or not) his first released DJ mix, although it was followed shortly by a digital release mix a month or so ago. A few years ago, Sander was nothing more than a wide-eyed reveller in the crowd of Holland’s biggest dance festival, so that his name follows the “Mixed by” legend on the psychedelic cover is quite astounding, especially considering how quickly he’s gone from being a respectable Dutch trance producer to a superstar in his own right. Indeed, when we last covered him on TC, I was describing him as a rising star. Now his name is big enough to shift big-name mix albums like this one. His rapid ascent owes much to his prolific production output and some high-profile remixes over the last year as well.

So how does he measure up as a DJ? To be honest, you aren’t gonna find out much on this front from listening to Dance Valley Festival 2006. Because I really do doubt that when Sander van Doorn DJs in a club (or at a festival, for that matter) he will throw down thirty-eight records in just shy of two hours. Because that’s exactly what he does here.

And good Christ, a more manipulative selection I have yet to see than on the first disc. The most packed of the two, with twenty tracks in 73 minutes, it really is a crowded affair- with some tracks barely lasting more than a minute. When you look at the tracklisting, it really is hard not to be cynical about this. Just about every trendy record that comes close to the rough, techy sound SVD plays has been thrown in, in an attempt to hook in as many as possible. So we open with the stripped-down techno bleep of Loco Dice, move through Marco V at running pace and hit Fedde Le Grand’s huge smash hit (you don’t need me to tell you what it’s called) in a scrappy, jarring transition with barely eleven minutes gone on the clock.

The rest of the disc proceeds along a similar route, with slightly-glitchy, very-bleepy, rough and raw house and techno being carpet bombed, punctuated by the occasional big hit (the D Ramirez mix of Yeah Yeah, Plastic Fantastic, the 2006 update of Yello’s Oh Yeah, AVB’s Control Freak… they’re all present and correct). It’s all shoved down our throats in a breathless rush to get all the tracks that will help shift the mix out of the way. Most of the tracks that haven’t been played out by every trend-chasing jock in the known galaxy are lacking in ideas and often little more than annoying. A prize example of this is Gabriel Vs Nilz’s Noize, which is a generic piece of new-electro where the “gimmick” is an incredibly irritating sample of some dull European producer blabbering on about what he wants when he makes a track. Yeah, fantastic idea: put a music interview about a guy striving for innovation into the part of your track where the innovation is supposed to be. Clowns.

The first disc does pick up as it progresses, especially when you get a few solid tracks between you and the slapdash opening. However, the mix lacks a genuine run of excellence, with one substandard track or another always throwing a spanner in the mix just as it gets into its stride.

I can appreciate that the big hits that saw action in the festival should probably get a look-in on the official album, but the way they’re crammed together and sandwiched amongst some very forgettable material means this is hardly the ideal way to hear them. Granted there are some good moments on the disc that don’t come from the obvious tracks, but the tracklist could do with a considerable pruning to get the best out of it.

The second disc is somewhat more interesting, because it appears to be where Sander flexes his muscles and indulges in himself. This disc is predominantly tech-trance, with little of the rampant and random genre-hopping of the first disc. There are also three less tracks, so each featured track gets chance to breathe a little more.

Case in point: Sander’s own Dark Roast which opens the second disc and plays out for about seven minutes. It’s a clear sign of things to come: seven minutes of throbbing, pulsing tech-trance, filled with synth riffs, chunky breaks and big builds. Okay, it may owe something to Purple Haze - Rush, but it’s no great complaint to say that Sander is getting the most out of a working approach to solid, thumping tech-trance, and the other SVD productions (and there are a fair few) on this compilation are different enough to stop it sounding like the same track over and over.

This second disc is definitely the superior of the two, offering a solid high-energy tech-trance mix from start to finish. True, the highlights aren’t in huge abundance and the mix is not notably well-structured, but the mixing is consistent, the momentum constant and the standouts suitably bosh for it to satisfy and entertain. One of the few complaints is Sander’s own update of 2001 trance monster Take Me Away by 4 Strings, which destroys the graceful hook of the original by forcing it to fit into a grating synth voice. That aside, there are very few tracks that are poor enough to damage the mix. Even Ferry Corsten’s misguided rap update of Punk (Junk) manages to appear in a credible form, courtesy of Ferry’s no-nonsense Flashover mix.

It’s a compilation of two halves, then. The first disc feels disjointed and rushed, attempting to please all parties by cramming in the tracks and genres at the expense of cohesion. However, it has to be said that if there are individual highlights to the compilation, most of them are found in the second half of this first disc. Meanwhile the second disc is consistent and unspectacular, offering few stand-out tracks that really soar, but hardly ever putting a foot wrong.

I suppose the real talking point should be the man behind the decks. As a long-awaited foray into the world of mix compilations it’s not really the perfect start for van Doorn, and I doubt this will be looked back on as a classic in years to come. However, credit must be given to him for managing to pack in the hits and still come away with a whole disc that shows what he’s about as a DJ with little compromise. Despite it being the face of a major dance festival, it still feels like Sander’s mix, and yet the relatively liberal use of his own productions doesn’t ever feel like blatant self-promotion. Indeed, by putting all the smash hits on the first disc, he’s managed to make it appear as if he was forced by the label to include them, which is a sly way of having your cake and eating it.

Ace Tracks:
Terry Ferminal – Nymph
Sander van Doorn – Dark Roast (2006 Refill)
Ronald van Gelderen – This Way


Written by SYSTEM-J for TranceCritic.com. May not be reproduced or republished without the consent of TranceCritic.com. © All rights reserved.

Title: Sander Van Doorn - Dance Valley Festival 2006
Category: Compilations/DJ Mixes
Sub Category: Miscellaneous
Reviewer: SYSTEM-J
Related Link: SvD Homepage
Added: November 29th 2006
Viewed: 2489 Times
Score:
Options:  
  

[ Back to Reviews Index | Back to Compilations/DJ Mixes Index | Post Comment ]