Slowstyle Essence vol. 1

August 28th, 2012 / By: Andrea Doerner
Rating:

This compilation was created by the members of the Slowstyle.it forum, who create ‘music for passion and not for profession’. Proceeds from the sale are mainly being used to cover the costs of running and improving the functionality of the forum. The request for demo tracks came October 21, 2011 and selection was closed March 19, 2012. It was then up to the Slowstyle staff, Dean DJ, DJ Fole, Vindes, Lybra Terence, Silvio Fei (The Melody Guy), Gfx909, and Angelo Ciaravola from A.C. Records to sort through about 40 submissions and select the best ones. 17 tracks made the cut, in a large variety of styles, from 80 to 115 bpm, to round out 80 minutes of pure lento bliss. After an extensive preview by DJ Fole on Italo Sound Radio, the album was released on June 18, 2012.

The compilation includes tracks of well-known producers featured on prior Slowstyle volumes. Silvio Fei, also known as The Melody Guy, starts out the compilation with his production of Classique Gothique, a dark sounding classic slowstyle track. He is also the producer and singer of Legame d’ombra, which is a beautiful example of bringing together slowstyle with some hardstyle components. The added vocals is making this track one of the many highlights in this compilation.

DJ Fole is featured in several tracks, namely Go Clubbing (together with DJ Tose), which starts out and ends as hard lento track but changes melody line midway. In Salta, DJ Fole and DeanDJ produced a fusion of slowstyle and rap creating yet another highlight of this album. Notte in cantiere (A Lavoro mix) is a solid loop mix. Heavy machinery should not be operated when listening to this song.

Michele Di Palo adds three productions to this album. With the collaboration of Dean DJ
La Danza Delle Sirene (Lasciati Andare) brings out another solid slowstyle production. Peaceful Journey has a nice emotional melody while as Soundancers, Michele turns up the bass bringing out the hard lento track Get Down.

Giuseppe Sessini adds two loop tracks with Unpopiulento and Ice Core. Vindes is also featured twice on this album with Cataconda 3d and Slowtrance, combining slowstyle with his trademark trance baseline. In Essential, DJ Cillo mixed slowstyle with some dubstep elements, creating an outstanding combination of melody and bass. Mr Lybra adds a hard lento track with Kurotensho while Cambiotono’s Save the Game and Noi che’s Return feature beautiful melodies with classic lento components. The compilation comes to a nice finish with Gfx909 Balata letting us realize that classical music and lento can make a good combination.

It is very apparent that the Slowstyle group put a lot of efforts into creating this compilation. The tracks are solid productions and the variety is excellent. As of this date (and these are only preliminary numbers) 6 albums and 12 tracks were sold in June and July. Hopefully, there will be a lot more volumes to follow.