Kamil Polner is a very missed former trance artist, who carved out a sound that sat between the basic sound design of mid-later 00s uplifting trance, but with song arrangements that captured the melodic, hypnotic repetition of structured emotion that is what trance was originally about, and what it still is at its best. So a number of years back I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that he released a whole album of the stuff under his b-alias. Here is the trance that members of this forum would have called "generic" when it came out, but which holds as both dated and fresh today - which, honestly, is what some of the best uplifting trance sounds like in my opinion.
Basically every cut on this has some going for it - the first three progress from the melancholic sound of a cold dawn on "Beginning of Life", to the fiery intensity of "Trance Explosion" to the incredibly catchy vocal riffs of "Dance Forever". We have a short-form sequel to his "Earth Protector" single on "Earth Lives", which is IMO the weakest cut but still builds into something pretty interesting over its five and a half minutes. "Whiteglow" is more of a reprise of track 2 on steroids than anything (and I don't mean the pejorative towards the massive kick drums of later trance; there's absolutely none of that on this record). But things calm down a notch with "Aura" and its sunniness, and the heat starts to turn back up with the cool blue of "Ocean of Fire". The energetic peak of the album is probably "Paleoris", but things kind of take a left turn for more classic trance sounds with "Storm", and "Groundside" feels like being brought back to Earth, but maybe not in the most satisfying way - it's just there. All that being said, the album may not be the most masterful experience, but it sure is a very consistent and enjoyable one throughout.
Full album, albeit in rather low quality and without track separation:
And here is my custom artwork, which I made with my admittedly second-rate GIMP skills, but I felt this captured the whole "cheap and quick" artwork vibe of a lot of smaller trance releases, while also capturing some of the images this album brings to my mind.
Basically every cut on this has some going for it - the first three progress from the melancholic sound of a cold dawn on "Beginning of Life", to the fiery intensity of "Trance Explosion" to the incredibly catchy vocal riffs of "Dance Forever". We have a short-form sequel to his "Earth Protector" single on "Earth Lives", which is IMO the weakest cut but still builds into something pretty interesting over its five and a half minutes. "Whiteglow" is more of a reprise of track 2 on steroids than anything (and I don't mean the pejorative towards the massive kick drums of later trance; there's absolutely none of that on this record). But things calm down a notch with "Aura" and its sunniness, and the heat starts to turn back up with the cool blue of "Ocean of Fire". The energetic peak of the album is probably "Paleoris", but things kind of take a left turn for more classic trance sounds with "Storm", and "Groundside" feels like being brought back to Earth, but maybe not in the most satisfying way - it's just there. All that being said, the album may not be the most masterful experience, but it sure is a very consistent and enjoyable one throughout.
Full album, albeit in rather low quality and without track separation:
And here is my custom artwork, which I made with my admittedly second-rate GIMP skills, but I felt this captured the whole "cheap and quick" artwork vibe of a lot of smaller trance releases, while also capturing some of the images this album brings to my mind.
