video review: 'a town called paradise' by tiësto

Well, glad I got a chance to handle this - only wish it had been better.

Next up is Ab-Soul, so stay tuned!

album review: 'a town called paradise' by tiësto

So here's something you might not know about me: I listen to a lot of trance.

See, there was a brief period for me in around 2009-2010 that I started delving into this melodic brand of EDM, mostly out of a desire to find out was else was in this musical landscape beyond drum & bass, dubstep, and my appreciation for The Chemical Brothers. And with its melodic focus, mid-tempo energy, and sweeping production, I came to like a lot of trance music and listen to a decent bit even today.

So why haven't you seen me review many, if any, trance records? Well, you could put it down to an overloaded schedule and the fact that I still struggle somewhat with reviews of instrumental albums, but the truth of it is that I just drifted away from the genre. A lot of modern trance got more glitchy and staccato and began co-opting elements that took away from the soaring, melody driven trance I tend to like. What's kind of hilarious in hindsight was that even as I was moving away from that particular brand of EDM, the larger genre in general was moving towards the mainstream faster than ever with the success of house DJs, the rise of dubstep, and the general acceptance of EDM on this side of the Atlantic.

So with that in mind, let's talk about Tiesto, who started releasing trance albums in the early 2000s before drifting into darker, electro-house territory, which culminated in his 2010 release Kaleidoscope. The funny thing with that record was that you could see the shift towards a more pop-friendly sound already in the works, with shorter, more conventionally structured songs, and the biggest arsenal of vocal collaborators outside of an Armin van Buuren album. So when I started to see Tiesto songs cropping up on the lower ends of the Billboard Hot 100 chart his year, I wasn't exactly surprised - with EDM becoming more mainstream, it wasn't a surprise that those that would crossover first would be the most accessible to a pop audience, not to mention to a critic who has difficulty reviewing EDM. So on that note alone, I figured I'd give A Town Called Paradise by Tiesto a look - how did it turn out?