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Many would criticize van Buuren for this aspect, but the real purpose of the vocals is to supplement the driving beat and instrumentation. As if there was a necessity for additional incentives to purchase this album. Van Buuren's inclusion of various electronic sounds throughout the album along with his use of a synthesizer and drum machine suggest that his music is a blend of both musique concrete and the German-originated electronische muzik.As if hearing my remarks, the last track on `Imagine' is a song created purely through electronic means. Although a couple of the songs in the album do not stand out much (most of the tracks with female vocals just blend into one another), this is good for van Buuren's famously long DJ sets where he needs material that he can blend together.
`Imagine', the first track on the album, is wholly an instrumental dance track, featuring a cutting piano line and dance beats. The world's number one DJ for the past three years and the best trance artist for the past two, van Buuren's latest album `Imagine' certainly lives up to his reputation. The lead single in the album, `Going Wrong', is a collaboration between van Buuren and DJ Shah (or Sunlounger), and surprisingly is one of the more mainstream tracks that van Buuren has released. The vocals are not meant to be the centerpiece of the track, as in pop music, but rather to serve as merely another instrument to be manipulated through modern technology. Although many of the remaining nine tracks on the album contain female vocals, they are extremely superficial. Wrapping his album up with `Intricacy', a vocal-less pure dance track, van Buuren reminds us why he's the number one DJ in the world. A brilliant example can be found in `Unforgiveable', in which the female vocals are sampled and manipulated as if it were a percussion instrument.
After the solo, the track focuses more on traditional dance elements, with pumping bass and drum beats, but fuses the beginning instrumental and guitar to create a truly one-of-a-kind track. All in all, `Imagine' is a solid studio album; in fact, solid enough that he released a remix of this album the year after in 2009. At five minutes and twelve seconds, the track includes a focus on the male vocals (by Chris Jones) and very little buildup, creating a very radio-friendly sound that propelled the track into the top 5 in The Netherlands. Van Buuren's music is classified as trance and progressive trance, and impressive to note is that even as his fame increases, van Buuren stays true to his musical style, refusing to be pressured to make his music appeal to the mainstream audience.
The track slowly builds over its nine and a half minute length, starting with an epic instrumental that is suddenly pierced by an electric guitar solo. The rest of the album centers more on the beat and the electronic instruments and their progression over time, which is more typical to the trance and progressive trance genres that van Buuren is known for. This technique was a trademark of musique concrète, in which style samples of natural sounds are utilized to create music. There are two bonus tracks that are exclusive to iTunes: "If You Should Go" and "The Sound of Goodbye".
There is hardly a soul alive who has not heard of Armin van Buuren. The long length and slow evolution of the track is reminiscent of the Goa trance scene, known for its long length, slow evolution, and a slow but steady increase in energy throughout the song. Van Buuren's manipulation of the female vocals is similar to Karlheinz Stockhausen's manipulation of the voices of young boys in his `Gesang der Jünglinge'.
The songs just perfectly flows together like a running stream would. No words can really describe the ecstasy that Armin's music brings to me. I enjoy all of the contributing vocalists on the tracks both male and female alike. In this case, I just happened to start listening to trance music a bit more lately. This is a great album to listen to on a weekend night when one is getting ready to go paint the town red. The overall flow of the album is excellent.
There isn't one song on the album I did not like. I am not a huge trance fan as I once was but every now and then I like to listen to music that I hadn't listened to in a long time. I recently saw the video for Amin Van Buuren's "In and Out of Love" w/Sharon Den Adel of Within Temptation on youtube and totally dug what I heard, so I decided to check out the album Imagine in which the song could be found out. All of the songs are catchy.
Tons of great music. That's the way to go. In fact, there are 34 tracks in all, including 3 tracks that are hour long continuous mixes in their own right, and it's still less than this one cd alone. Armin Only - Imagine The MusicClick that link, or just go to the MP3 store, search Armin van Buuren, and list his albums according to release date, you'll see it as one of the most recent, right next to this one. This is a great album. However, if you look at his albums in Amazon's MP3 store, you'll see there's an MP3 version of this exact album for half price, but even better, there's an alternate version that's only available as MP3 that has all of these tracks and many, many more. That version is called 'Imagine The Music' instead of just 'Imagine'.
I heard of these songs on his radio show A STATE OF TRANCE and I appericate it more now since it is not remixed. This is a great CD if you are into vocal trance ARMIN puts together these song so well it is well worth the price of this CD. There are some songs that could pass for free style you will not regret getting this CD.~
Armin van Buuren always brings his best game to his music and he has done it again with this album. The artists that are featured are extremely talented and the music is captivating.
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