The newly-crowned #1 DJ in the world delivers the latest in his trance empire's conquest of the globe. Universal Religion 2008 is the third installment in a single-disc live mix series that mines the best of current euphoric trance offerings. It also could have been titled Ibiza For When You Can't Be There.
The set opens up with the appropriately breezy "Another Day on the Terrace" by Sunlounger, which starts things off with a delicately pretty intro, before easing you into full-club fervor. Things progress predictably from there into Dash Berlin's "Till the Sky Falls Down." It's a nice track, but also helps to reinforce a current thinking of trance music as a genre that is not progressing.
And this introduces the double-edged blessing and curse of the set. This track could have been produced either yesterday or six years ago. It's non-forward looking, but high-energy quality, which will probably be a minor criticism by some of the set as a whole. What Gabriel & Dresdeb are doing for progressive house seems to be missing a counterpart in trance. Exceptions to the rule include the back-to-back pairing of Dubfire's "Roadkill" and David West's "Welsh Morphology."
But like I said, it's not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation, and for many this could even be a welcome homage to the glory days of trance. Because while tracks such as "Summer Blush" by Mungo and Forerunner's "Lifecycle" fall into the same category of obvious pastiche, they're sufficiently catchy enough that you soon don't care if things ever change too much.
The set is also fairly equally split between vocal and instrumental numbers, with some vocal standouts including "How Long" by Aly & Fila, as well as John O' Callaghan's finale-sounding "Big Sky."
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