Hoxygen - The Album

Genre: Italodance
Label: Planeta Mix Records
Type of media: CD
Bought at: planetamixrecords.com
Reviewed by: Christopher von Würden
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars


Andrea Zingone is the human name behind the italodance project Hoxygen. He started his musical career in 2009 with the release of debut album Just For You on fluida records but changed label shortly after. Just For You was a messy mix of different styles where no tracks really stood out, but with recent singles such as La Musique Parfait and La Chanson Fatal, Hoxygen has shown his true quality. His new album is simply called The Album, although it might not be the most inventive title it somehow still makes a lot of sense.

Hoxygen's style lies in the hard end of the italodance spectrum, his style is a mix between Hard Dance Style and Hard Trance underlined with classic italodance elements like the tuba bass and vocoders.

The album includes a total of 14 tracks including 8 new songs and 1 new remix. Fragile, the first track, is sort of an intro but also an almost-complete track, not something particularly interesting. La Chanson Fatal is the newest single, released just a few weeks ago, and also the second track, personally I prefer the Fear Remix from the single but the original mix is also quite good. Tu Guardi Il Sole is one of those tracks that mixes Italian and English and the first of the new tracks on the CD, a fairly hard track but also the first step into the magical world of amazing hard italodance sound - a la Hoxygen. Obviously it's not for you if you prefer the poppy-kind like Paps'N'Skar, but if you, like me, love Molinaro and Hard Dance Style, a very interesting journey has just begun.

El Tango De La Muerte (In English: Tango of Death) is different introducing accordion and violin rather than a hard synthesizer sound for the chorus although it keeps the synth as C-part, well produced but not as catchy as many of the other tracks. Catchy, however, is Close Your Eyes we are back in the harder style, hard bass, nonsense lyrics and an incredibly catchy su-le-mani-friendly synth chorus like no other, and this is just the beginning. One of my absolute favorites on the album is the new remix of his debut single La Musique Parfait (means: Perfect Music) which mixes a short vocal sample and the classic intro and synth from the original mix, but approximately one fourth through the track utilizes a completely different melody for the synth. This is classic Hoxygen giving the track an extra layer by using different choruses. The result is fantastic.

We Want More has something as rare as catchy vocals too. Andrea Zingone really does something to the chorus melody in all his tracks but as a fairly new producer he has limited access to good singers. The vocals are the weakest link on the album, although Krystal Em as the female vocal and Sheby as the male vocal sound ok with the vocoders. Nevertheless We Want More is quite catchy.
The album started uninteresting and unfortunately it also ends uninteresting, This Is Crazy is electro and the last track Free Zove is Hardstyle but unlike Andrea Zingone's first album, this time we only get these 2 tracks, while the first album mostly contained house and other genres than italo while those being italo were not particularly well made either.

The Album is particularly well made, however. It might just be the album of the year (keeping Gigi's forthcoming album as a joker in mind) and in that sense the title makes sense, as mentioned in the introduction. If not, it is definitely the album of Hoxygen. The only improvement I can think of would be on the vocal side but nevertheless it still is an italodance experience you do not want to miss.