CD: Paul Van Dyk - Evolution

Berlin’s Paul Van Dyk has remained in or around the top ten of DJ Magazine’s defining annual poll of the top 100 DJs in the world for at least a decade, occasionally making the number one spot. Unlike all others in the current top 20, however, he’s the only one with a pedigree going back to contemporary club music’s roots.

As Visions of Shiva at the dawn on the Nineties Van Dyk can claim to be one of the inventors of trance music, the style that, alongside recent dubstep developments, is at the root of massive American interest in what they laughably term “EDM” (electronic dance music). Later in the decade he consolidated his popularity - during the Gatecrasher era - and has remained at the top ever since, as a DJ, producer of five previous albums, and MD of the Vandit label.

Perversely, like all trance sorts, Van Dyk plays down the trance thing, reckoning it belittles him. However, trance made him and it’s trance he’s still best at. Trance never really changes, except in the manner the technology to make it improves. Its euphoria-raising lush classical keyboard sequences, swimming amidst attacking kick drums, remain a sweet entry point to the rave experience. Van Dyk hits the buttons, delivering perhaps his best album. Nothing feels forced, there are no awful electro-rock outings or hook-ups with unsuitable artists from other genres (the nearest is with US electro-pop act Owl City). Instead he gathers his Vandit mates around for plenty of 3.00 AM action alongside unexpectedly delicious songs such as “I Don’t Deserve You”, featuring US singer Plumb whose voice recalls Sinead O’Connor. There are curveballs such as the twitchy “Rock This” or jazzy prog-house of “If You Want My Love”, but they're enjoyable and nothing derails the train.

By day Paul Van Dyk is a socially engaged individual, completely drug-free, who occasionally appears on the German equivalent of Newsnight discussing political issues, yet somehow he keeps his hand in; the nightworld remains righteously nailed. Good on him.

Watch the video for "Verano" (featuring Austin Leeds)