“Uwe Saher is back with an album to bring to a Rave party...”
1 The Eclipse 6:59
2 Soleil de ma Vie 2022 7:48
3 Supernova 6:06
4 Fairy Flight 2022 7:00
5 Looking for Love 7:08
6 Fun Planet 7:20
7 Galaxy 7:16
8 Dreamtime 6:33
(CD 56:09) (V.F.)
(Melodious Techno Trance)
It's been almost 13 years since Uwe Saher has not set dance floors alight with a solid album filled to the brim with his incendiary Trance rhythms. And it was clear that the German musician hadn't quite given up on the genre, since most of his albums since 2010's Monotony in Motion hid a few dance anthems, not forgetting the album that bridged the gap between EDM and the New Berlin School, Back to Future II in 2017. And if the excellent Late in Berlin brought out the best of Brainwork in its Berlin School style, TRANCEFUSION has all the charisma of untimely, hyper-lively and above all melodious dance music unique to Element 4. Get ready, because the music, its rhythms and its disco waltz effects will make your walls vibrate, your floorboards shake, and your eardrums smash with this solid opus where Trance and melodies always go hand in hand. The Element 4 signature! Let's be clear from the outset: I've had this album for a while and he passed under the radar from the audience, and not just a little! It's not even listed on Discogs! I've listened to it in bits and pieces here and there, I still have a soft spot for the earworm-weaving melody line in Galaxy, Trance not really being my cup of tea. I finally decided to dive in, with my ears wide open and my feet well wrapped up. Because at my age and state of health, they're sensitive😊! And I owe it all to Uwe, who's a really nice guy.
And it's off to a pretty solid start with The Eclipse. Boom-boom, tssitt-tssitt! The rhythmic base is solid and hosts a lively line of pulsating sequences that twitch with fury, and finally another line whose electronic gallop is as rhythmic as it is melodic. The mix ends up creating a wild spasmodic techno structure. The main melody line is grafted on early on, and its jerky oscillations dance in symbiosis with the structure, eventually waltzing with velocity between two rhythmic outbursts. It hits hard and fast! Uwe Saher injects some rather timid orchestration behind this violent Trance rhythm, which even picks up the pace after a short phase of psychotronic floating around the 4-minute mark. The conception and evolution of The Eclipse can be found on most of TRANCEFUSION tracks. Element 4 thus wastes no time! I've abandoned my headphones to vibrate my walls and the patience of my sweet Lise. Soleil de ma Vie 2022 is a cover of a track from the 1996 album Elements of Trance. I wasn't familiar with this track, but this cover follows in the footsteps of The Eclipse, with a structure hammered out in a very lively minimalist vision. Except that here, a woman's voice constantly recites the following lyrics; Soleil de ma vie, la lumière de mes yeux. This lends a sensual cachet to the music. Supernova follows with this concept of minimalist rhythm in a Trance texture where good convulsive impulses are interwoven. The rhythm thumps heavily with orchestral flights over electronic percussions rolling like machine-gun fires.
Do you need to rest your feet? Give your ears a breather? The introduction to Fairy Flight 2022 comes at just the right time. In fact, the whole track! Its keyboard is hyper-melodious, unrolling a carousel of arpeggios alive with limpidity. The melody constantly belts out the rhythm, implanting a beautiful earworm into this mosaic of breathless dance. The rhythm that follows is less fiery and introduces some rather seductive organic effects. But still, it's dance music and it's closer to melodious disco than Trance. And that's good for the ears 😊. At the very least, mines. Looking for Love offers that boom-boom, tssitt-tssitt combination that's more tempered here. It sounds a bit like Kraftwerk from their Electric Café tour, possibly due to the vocoder effects. A fine melodic rhythm line emerges from this structure, which gradually takes on a second life, flirting with the more incisive dance style of Element 4. Fun Planet returns to the style of The Eclipse, but with a melody that is less dominant. There's also a touch of Supernova in this track. Galaxy lives on a heavy rhythm hammered by semi-smothered pulsations. We are more into Techno than Trance here, with a catchy melody line that inspires reverie on a dance floor. With its boom-booms that bang from ear to ear and its industrial tssitt-tssitt that want to make us jump on a skipping rope, Dreamtime has only of its title its beautiful melody which shines on impulses held back in a spasmodic state. The percussions machine-gun its short moments of melancholy euphoria with lively rolls and ratchet effects often used with the sequencer.
So much for the essence of TRANCEFUSION, where melodies and fiery rhythms go hand in hand. This is Element 4 at its best. For fans of Trance, Techno and Disco! Finally, this is the album to bring to a Rave party...
Sylvain Lupari (September 28th, 2023)
Available from Brainwork Music website
(NB: Texts in blue are links you can click on)