Hoo boy, the Politics of Dancing. Now, why did he call it that? No, really. I want to know. Why did he seriously call it that? Because no matter what the mix is made of, one of two things is going to happen: Either it's going to fall way short of the mark, or it's going to bombastically overshoot the mark. What's so political about dancing? Hopefully, Paul van Dyk is going to tell you. Presumably through some cohesive answer imbedded in its 4-to-the-floor instrumental (or, has been the case lately, vocal-based) groove. Which won't amount to much. One could always hope for an actual monologue somewhere that will explain the morose title, which isn't likely given the propensity of mix CDs to have throwaway titles with nothing in common with the content. So at the most, the title is a meaningless attempt at sounding important and definitive. Like a mix CD that is going to shatter everything you thought you knew about mix CDs, changing the very artform of DJing forever-ever-ever-ever-ever *trail off echo*. A good if unoriginal marketing gesture, but the namesake will backfire to those who have no tolerance for bullshit.

The way he's looking just behind him, it's like he's all thoughtful and serious n shit. Almost like a real artist! Also, he appears to be turning into a city. Metroplex look out!

Politics! Dancing! Ooooh! Why don't you just call it The 10 Commandments of Trance, you self-indulgent sycophant. Is there some sort of game you trance DJs are playing, to see who can top the others in exceeding the standard for self-preoccupation? I think you have definitely raised the bar with this one, Mr. Dyk. That is, until Tiesto releases his triple CD mix pack I am Better Than Everyone Else.

This is the sequel to the award-winning, earth-shattering Politics of Dancing 1, which set the standard yet again for DJdom everywhere. Paul van Dyk outdid himself with that release, reinventing the artform of DJing by pioneering such techniques as mixing and not having any breaks inbetween songs. Revolutionary DJ work. It has influenced everyone ever since, like Qbert, Cut Chemist, and Grandmaster Flash.

Seriously though, the real reason behind the title is the fact that Paul van Dyk is in fact a pretty politically motivated person. He gets involved in local political campaigns, and lobbies for lofty world causes like some sort of EDM version of Bono. But there's a tiny problem with following Bono's lead into the world of celebrity-endorsed altruistic philanthropy: Bono is a choad.

The truth is dance music has no politics, and shouldn't ever try to formulate some, because every time it does the message comes out sounding pompous, haughty, inane, or worse. That Paul van Dyk wants something as silly as dance music to obtain a highly-charged "We're gonna change the world! Yeah!" activist faceplate might be the one thing that brings bloated supermegatrance culture to its knees. Now, tha--wait. That doesn't sound so bad at all. Anyways, on with the show. Here is how much Politics Paul van Dyk's Dancing explicates:

CD 1:

There are about 3 or 4 good ideas here. Unfortunately, there are 17 tracks, which means that Paul van Dyk runs out of interesting things to do around about track 5, and it's all downhill from there. And by downhill, I mean a spiral descent into the Heart of Darkness.

CD 1 opens up with a limp-wristed piece of angelic rice cake. Like cold coffee or a painting of one colour. It's not doing anything to raise my spirits about having to endure 2.4 hours of trance.

Allow me to go on a bit of an aside here: In the days of Shakespeare, the Globe Theatre had no curtains, so he knew that in order to get the ruckus audience's attention in order to tell them the play was starting was to start everything off unanounced and suddenly, with a bang. Nearly every one of his plays has something powerful going on in the first act that jars people's attention, gets them to sit up and look ahead. A fight, a death, who knows. It's not important, but opening strong as a means of getting someone's attention in performance art is a time-honoured trick. That is not the case here. Instead, the opening number is a rolling out the carpet for this guy who's going to play other people's music for us. And you know what? That's fucking stupid. Stop making big entrances and exits to your mixes, guys. It's annoying, and the people don't care. Just play your fucking music. We'll be the judge of whether we like it or not.

So yeah. Mr. Dyk could've opened with something stronger. It's kind of hard for one to get excited for anything after being introduced to this calm before the calm. It's something that enduces frustration more than anticipation.

If you've been following along, the opening track offers this political gem: "Look into the sky" (repeated about 300 times, and accompanied by lots of wailing). The treated vocals are so processed that they become inaudible. It's understandable that the intent is to make them sound like ethereal angel voices from heaven, but the effect is so canned and overproduced it actually sounds, umm, well, canned and overproduced. And whiny. Good thing I got an industrial-sized equalizer to neutralize that effect.

This is your number one DJ, people. Yeah. Now even the short yellow bus kids are laughing at us.

Waiting a few minutes to bring in the 4-to-the-floor pulse drum was a smart move, because people might get tired of hearing it after awhile. You don't want to use it too much, now. Especially in dance music.

Interestingly enough, after dumping that intro track which goes nowhere and does nothing, the next 10-15 minutes are the best parts of the whole disc! Tracks fly by quickly, and they blend seamlessly (this is a studio edit, after all. Not a live mix) that you can forget they are different songs, which is the avowed goal of every self-respecting DJ. I've often said that 15 tracks is a good number for any DJ mix. Any less, and you're not doing enough. Any more, and you get bonus points. You want the tracks to work together as valued parts of a whole, not compete with each other as individual successes shoddily stitched together by throwaway beats. Trance DJs, take note.

Sadly, there's no followup to this, and things sharply veer off around about track 5 (Shiloh - Dream on), which, not coincidentally, is when the first unnecessarily long breakdown occurs. It killed my momentum. Thanks a lot, jerk.

After this point, although tracks still click along at a brisk pace, things start settling into the samey samey "grown-up" trance that has been festering lately. That is, epic trance that's kind of ashamed that it's epic trance, given the excess that the genre has been wrought with the last few years. Of course, saying trance has grown out of its angels fucking lollipops in aircastles phase is a polite way of saying that its ditched it altogether for house. Or house-sounding trance music, which isn't the same as saying progressive, which is in musical limbo.

At this point, PoD2 also adds these heavy-handed issues to its manifest (although its impossible to make out what the lyrics, are, exactly, they being treated beyond all legibility unless you're listening awfully carefully: "There's no one there, and there's no one here to come to." It also instructs us to "run away" about 23 times. Gee, how disconcerting.

CD 1 Tracklist: Alex Gold – String Theory Tranquility Base – Getting Away Calmec – Tangerine Jose Zamora – Transatlantic (Andy Moor Remix) Shiloh – Dream On (Luke Chable Remix) Walsh & Coutre – Burn Thomas Datt – Alone Lolo – Why? Purple Haze – Adrenaline Kuffdam & Plant – Summerdream Filo & Peri – Closer Now White Water – The Unknown Marc van Linden - Forbidden Love Whiteroom – Someday Kyau vs. Albert – Falling Anywhere Mr. Sam – Lyteo Solange – Messages (Paul van Dyk Remix)

There is a 2-minute breakdown in the middle of Thomas Datt - Alone. That's about a minute and 50 seconds too long. Up until now, the mix was slightly adequate, although very much disturbed like still water by the breakdown earlier. But this breakdown was like putting a brick wall in an intersection. Traffic just STOPS. There's about a 4-5 second period where you hear NOTHING. Fuck. That completely killed my buzz. It harshed my mellow. It ruined my vibe. It squeaked my wheels. It caught my line-drive down the third base line. It tore a hole in my condom. It cranked called my house and called me names. It poked a hole at the bottom of my grocery bag. You get the idea. It was like someone literally pissed in my cornflakes. Everything that was built up to this point was reset back to zero, and now Mr. #1 DJ here has to start all over again to get me up to speed. Way to go, nutsack. After a promising start, this mix just keeps getting worse and worse.

Oh, shit. The next song has one of those breakdowns too. What the hell are you doing!? And is it just me, or does Lolo - Why sound an awful lot like Xpander? Xpander wasn't even a very good track to begin with. This is getting aggravating.

Shit, the next track has one too (Purple Haze - Adrenalin). And the one after that has fucking TWO OF THEM (Kuffman and Planet - Summerdream. For the love of god, this one is bad. Do not get this track). It's a good thing I fastforward through all these breakdowns. I'm capable of going through a typical ASOT set in 17 minutes. But this stop-start-stop nonsense does absolutely nothing to help the music or the mix. Again, it's the same problem that affects most trance sets: That the tracks, instead of complimenting each other, end up competing against each other to see which one gets to be the "OMGWTFCHHHHHOOOOON!!!" that millions of trancecrackers will trade ad nausium on file-sharers.

The next track has some more political nuggets of wisdom: "I see your face in the eyes of something something" oh I don't fucking care anymore. The vocals are treated beyond recognition, the track is a soul-sucking turd, and there's nothing of substance anymore. WHERE IS THE POLITICS!?!

And it gets worse. The rest of the CD is like a sharp spear shoved through my spleen and twisting slowly. I am trapped in epic trance hell at this point. More breakdowns...WITH VOCALS!! AND ANTHEMS! Help! The horror!! Madness! Madness is all I see. A shadow grows long over the conviction of my desire and other tragically poetic things. Beating me down. I can feel it cut. I can feel it burn and freeze. It pierces my insides. I am struggling to get out, but I cannot see the way. Betrayal. Sin. Lust....crushed beneath the anvil vocals of Kathleen Fisher. Weakness and depression. It hurts. All that I know, all that is good and right, and worth fighting for in the world, being covered by the dark and evil spectre of the trance music. It has come to an end. I am drowning. I am drowing. Beneath the abyss of anguish and torment. To dwell forever in the fiery inferno of washy pads and saw-wave leads and rotten fucking poptart vocals. My lifeforce grows dim. Like Sauron's forces slowly consuming the good peoples of Middle Earth, nothing is spared. I feel weak. And cold. The bony hand of the dark side, threatening, reaching out, swallowing the embers of musical appreciation. Life..........dim........can not survive much longer.

CD 2:

(at this point you may go get yourself a drink. I'm already way past the red line)

One decent thing about these two mixes: all of the tracks are mixed relatively quickly and in short order. For trance, that is. There are only two tracks on the entire tracklist that breach six minutes. Except for one, which is cheekily played out in its eight minute and fourteen second entirety, just for you to bask in it. What is so special about this track that gives it more plastic space on the CD than the others? Well, it's by a guy named Paul van Dyk. Perhaps you've heard of him?

Yes, CD 2 opens up in the worst way imaginable: by a not-so-subtle schill of our esteemed DJ's own work. And we have to listen to the entire thing. And it's not even a very good thing.

It is a pop-rock remix number. Now, this is something that annoys me about electronic dance music. Do you think you're paying some sort of homage, or a nod and a wink, to the youth of yesteryear who took to the guitar as the symbol of their musical generation with this milquetoast reprisal? Do you think you're being clever here? You think you are reaching out to the legions of rock fans who think that electronic music is some "gay pussy shit"? That you will convert them to the awesome power of the superior trance music in one deft stroke, like that episode in CHiPs where Ponch and Jon convince a gang of unruly punks in less than five minutes that "hey, this Disco music ain't so bad after all!"

CD 2 Tracklist: Paul Van Dyk – The Other Side Jose Amnesia vs Serp – Second Day (Martin Roth Remix) Steve Angello & Sebastian Ingrosso – Yeah Simon & Shaker – Make It Yellow Blackboard – Superfly (Andy Moor Remix) Giuseppe Ottaviani – Linking People Marco V – More Than A Life Away Thomas Bronzwaer – Close Horizons Mark Norman – T-34 CJ Stone – Shine Santiago Nino – Believe (Max Graham’s Sidechain Remix) Perasma – Swing 2 Harmony (Deserves an Effort Remix) Dallas Superstars – Higher Wellenrausch – Carry On Holden & Thompson - Nothing

If you really think that you're bridging some kind of generation gap between today's youth who take to turntables, synths and samplers and the last generation who grew up with guitars and drums by merging it into a cohesive one love tribefest for everyone to dance to, here's a tip: Stop thinking like that. You're not a grand unified field theory of youth-marketed music. You are a pretentious twit. So stop it. Stop raping rock as some kind of universal connection to all youth everywhere, for all time. Especially when that rock number has a sequenced beat underneath it. What you end up saying instead is that you have taken the old and replace it with the new, improving and upgrading it to a more modern form for a more sophisticated audience. So misguided youths who haven't seen the light of your glorious trance music can relate to it better. Is that what you're thinking?

No, Mr. van Dyk. This is not in anyway a Good Thing^TM. This is the trance equivalent of Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden"....it's worse than wrong, it's just insulting. Any form of mish-mashing cross-generational music like this trying to make some sort of authoritative statement--especially as an intro track--is doomed to fail because you end up bastardizing one, compartmentalizing the other, ruining both and advancing neither.

For those of you who have just joined us, the cumulative political mentality of the mix so far seems to be: "See you on the other side, when I close my eyes and I reach the light." Ummmm...yeah, I guess that's political. And by political I mean melodramatically stupid.

Track 2 is run-of-the-mill trance. Nothing special. Ironically, the most interesting parts in these trance mixes are the tracks that sound the least bit trancey. I guess that should say something about the sorry sack of shit state trance is in these days (and no, things were not better in 99. They were the same, you just grew out of it). So the next few were somewhat tepid, if aimless, but at least they weren't painful. For once, Mr. van Dyk is in the black!

But then everything comes crashing down soom afterward with--you guessed it, more pointless breakdowns. The annoying thing about this is there are actually some good tracks here, like Yellow Blackbird - Superfly, that are completely ruined by these annoying, minute-long breakdowns placed in the dead center of the track for no reason whatsoever. Seriously, you guys. Stop doing that. It serves no purpose. It kills the moment. You are ruining the knack of a good groove and a hook. It's hard to get people willfully moving, and once you do, you want them to maintain or advance that state. Why you would snap them out of something they were enjoying with a fucking idiotic breakdown? Do you guys understand nothing about tension and release?

Here, thus, we finally come to the full Politics of Dancing, courtesy of Marco V's Born Slippy rip-off More Than a Life Away:

Saturday moring 8:45
Light shines off the white walls into your eyes
The kitchen sink throws a pitiful smile
You're way out of time
You're way out of time
Sit down coffee blue cheese and cereal
Living today is a god given miracle
Live in the moment is more than a life away
It's more than a life away

That's it? That's the fucking politics of Dancing? Living the moment? Carpe fucking diem!?? FUCK YOU, Mr. Dancing the Politics of fucking Dancing Life Dancing Political man. I could've told you that fucking shit when I was twelve. Here I was expecting a great speech on how to fix the world through dancing, and you tell me to live my life the way I want to. Well thank you so very god damn much for this genius insight. Now that its handed down to me from the holiest of trance gods, I finally feel relieved. Holy living fuck, I don't even know why we listen to you idiot DJs. Half the time you sound like retards in interviews anyway.

There is really no point to keep listening to the music at this point. It's just a lot of fucking anthems, and a lot of fucking breakdowns. There's no cohesion, no form, no thought or care into any of it. It's like Mr. van Dyk stopped caring at this point too, now that the big message was out, and just picked the first eight records he saw to fill up space on the CD. They're not even mixed very well, which is pretty sad for a studio edit.

So, in final: Is this seriously the best trance music that's out there these days? Mr. van Dyk, are you sure you scoured long and hard for the right music to put on your mix? I don't believe you. This can't represent the current state of trance. It's too pitiful. There's gotta be stuff out there easily way better than this. Go back and find some good trance for your next one, you cypher. And don't call your mix anything nearly as pretentious, like 'Tranceway to Heaven' or 'Worship Whatever I Play'. And as for the music itself: What the hell's happened to you, trance? You used to be cool. Now you're like that guy who hit his prime back in highschool and can't get over that fact.

PROS: It is well-mixed. And I do like the fact that he at least tried to use semi-obscure artists. Nothing I hate more than a big-name DJ using his mix as a shameless excuse to promote his own label's and his friends' labels' tracks. However, he also gets a knock for this, as the longest track on the double CD is one of his own. That wasn't a very subtle BSP, Mr. Dyk you whore. hehehehehehe....I just called a Dyk a whore. Ha ha.

CONS: It's not a DJ mix, technically. It's a studio edit. And some of the tracks are really really REALLY fucking bad. So for a studio mix, it wasn't put together as creatively as studio mixes CAN be. There's also no politics. Unless you count the Marco V statement, but if you're gonna live your life that way, you might as well just follow the Born Slippy mandate instead, since that's where it all came from. Choose not to accept anymore stupid bullshit trance mixes.

Best track: The first half of Yellow Blackbird - Superfly (up until the breakdown)
Worst track: Just about everything else.

SCORE: