The idea is captivating. If a billion people appreciate Arabian chanting, another billion+ African tribal sounds and another billion people Latin music why not incorporate some central ideas of that music in contemporary electronic dance music?! Surely, a symbiosis of cutting edge electronic musicians and ancient musical traditions can create some breathtaking stuff? Well, I’m not one lightly to take phrases such as "outstanding", "essential" or "classic" in my mouth ... and this time around I see no reason for it either! Sure, ATWI80M is crafted by talented musicians, the production more than adequate, the tracks packed with ideas and full of strong head-on progressive parts. But without profound appreciation of a World Music approach the album shatters. And I can’t muster that appreciatation. Which is a darn shame ‘cause all the right element are there. Like track 2 Desert Tale. It rocks and I’m on my feet dancing, but the incorporation of Arabian inspired chords, sounds and samples simply doesn’t work in my book. Instantly my dedication is jeopardized and when a male lead vocal starts announcing praying time at 4:20 (no religious bashing intended!) Tegma has lost me completely. WTF?! Consequently, as much as I appreciate what Tegma have done in the past this comes nowhere near my appreciation of their earlier album 002. And, as matter of fact, an album I hardly ever listen to. And I had such high expectations for this one. Damn ...

Tegma’s latest album 002 Avant.garde was more uptempo & kinda melodic trance. Right after their latest album was released, they spread the message that their new stuff would be more in the vein of their progressive roots. So, have they gone back to the days of “Akabar” ??? Our World kicks of the jams with that familiar sounding LOTR-sample. “The world is changed, I feel it in the water, I feel it in the air, I smell it in the air!” The world has changed indeed because this is a pretty good taste of what’s to come: Progressive Tribal Trance to the max! On the road in Egypt Temga met Paul El-Younani, an expert in Arabic music. They jammed together & their experiments were the basis for this track: Desert Tale. I just love these Eastern influences, combined with Scandinavian Progressive Trance. Especially the ethnic voices bring a special sound to this composition. A really nice blend of different styles & musical concepts. Briliant fusion! As it’s title suggests, El Mariachi has a more Latin-American flavour to it. & spicy it is: synthetic rhythms fused with Spanish guitars into one organic composition that’s rocks the hell out of you. Catchy without being shallow, hypnotic without being boring. Both Tribal Dancer & Drums Of Africa are heavily based of vocal samples that are looped into entrancing mantras. Tegma also used a lot of these on their previous album. It’s one of their trademarks so to speak & it’s a very effective way to build a certain atmosphere. It also distinguishes the tracks from each other, but they remain kinda similar, not that that’s a bad thing. Afrohouse but seriously tranced-up with percussive build-ups & a slightly melodic evolution throughout the tracks. A Night In Cairo is one of the absolute highlights for me. One of the few tracks that establishes a truly dark mood, in particular through the superb & haunting chanting/singing. The fact that you won’t understand the lyrics only adds to the mysterious character. In the second half, the electronics come out to play & make this into a full-blown, up-tempo dance floor monster! You can tell this was originally designed to be played live, because over a big PA this is guaranteed to rattle your brain! I Wanna Be A Robostar reminds me of Kraftwerk meets Ticon but that’s not a bad thing & with Spooked we end up exactly where we started of: “The world is changed!” Finally an ORIGINAL trance release! If there ever was an album that has real “ Tribal Vision”, this is it. As Omar and Jason promised, this is “progression” in every sense of the word. Thinking outside the box, including musical influences from all styles of “world music”. If you check out Encoded/Decoded, you’ll realise that Tegma has been trying to do this for a long time, but never succeeded so well as this time. On the second album the relied a bit too much on movie-samples, but here they get inspiration from all over the place. Many comparisons have already been made to describe their new sound, so I’ll give one too. Think Sphongle meets Jaïa: this is the kind of album Postford could have made if he wouldn’t still be stuck in the 90’s... A truely GREAT piece of music that goes way beyond regular progressive trance & deserves an open-minded audience!

Tegma (Omar Chelly & Jason Orfanidids) based in Sweden are out with their third album, this time on the progressive super label Tribal Vision Records in the Czech Republic. Tegma seems to be changing style a little bit between each album, still keeping a progressive trance style. As usual with releases on Tribal Vision, we also get a fat booklet with a lot of informative text, which is a nice bonus for us who buy instead of stealing albums... As the title says, they have got inspiration from different places around the world in each track, which they also explains everything about in the booklet. The album starts off with a floating track. Housy progressive trance with a nice flow. We also get some electro sounds in this one. Perfect track for the morning. Track 2 has inspiration from Egypt, with some samples from a musician they met in there. Nice, stumpy track with tribal elements of drums and arabic violin sounds etc. One of my favourite tracks on this album. Track 3 has inspiration from Mexico. It starts off with a Mexican voice sample, before we get brought into a mystic sounding, pumping groove. We get a lot of small, psychedelic details in these tracks, which results in interesting soundpictures. Here we also get more floating vibes, and some rough electro sounds again. Nice one. Track 4 brings us to some African vibes, with nice tribal intro of drums and voice samples. This track goes really groovy, with a lot of nice samples and a marching tempo. Track 5 gives us more arabic vibes again. This is a chilled track, but with a massive soundpicture. Nice arabic break in the middle of the progressive trance tracks. Track 6 is a drifting track that builds up slowly with a lot of African drums. Beautiful if you are into tribal trance. Track 7 gives us more vibes from Egypt. More tribal drums and Arabic sounds. I really like the mystic vibes we get here. Track 8 is an atmospheric track with a nice uplifting vibe, which fits perfect for floating on the dancefloor. The last track we get on this album starts with some 80’s drums. This is one of my favourite tracks on this album. Electro sounds meets progressive trance in a nice way. Nice finish on the album. Tribal Vision Records releases another quality release here. This is in my opinion the best album Tegma has released so far. More variation, more ideas and more interesting soundpictures than before.

Multiple audio orgasms… Omar Chelly and Jason Orfanidis from Malmø, Sweden have their third album out… The first one, Encoded/Decoded, was released in 2002 by Digital Structures – and despite repeated attempts I never really got into it… The second one though, 002: Avant.Garde, (released by Candyflip in 2005) was an absolute blast, and with its rich, versatile style of hybrid trance it was one of the best albums of 2005… So yeah, I’ve been looking VERY much forward to this, their third album, which is released by one of my fav’e proggy/crossover labels: Tribal Vision from the Czech Republic… This can *only* be good… Holy fucking shanti on a pogo stick! The world is changed! Indeed it is! This magnificent, majestic, grandiose album is definitely going to stir up the trance world… Trust me on this one – this is going to be huuuuuuge! This is easily the best progressive album I’ve heard in 2006! Every single track rocks my socks off and there are literally hundreds of goosebump-moments here… A magnificent journey of epic proportions! Musically it’s a VERY diverse and VERY mature album which proved to be the perfect platform for showcasing the endless talent of Omar and Jason. The production is among the best I’ve heard in years and both the cover art + the informative booklet will serve as benchmarks for future releases… Labels take notice – this is how it’s done! Once again Tribal Vision Records distance themselves from most other labels – this is quality all the way! Eat your hearts out mp3 pirates – this package is miles above the sastisfaction a downloaded version can ever bring… It’s simply amazing! With the reduced BPMs and the added focus on non-trance elements, this album is a radical departure from 002: Avant.Garde and as such it’s more similar to Encoded/Decoded… I absolutely loved 002: Avant.Garde but this is even better… Wow! A very, very strong contender for album of the year! An instant classic and an essential purchase for any serious trance head… Get this, or get left out… Enjoy! Favourites: 1(!!), 2(!), 3(!), 4(!), 6(!!), 7, 8(!)