A Voyage Into Trance is a studio mix by DJ Paul Oakenfold. Its the type of synth-heavy, European trance that typifies what many think when they read “techno.” This is far from essential trance though. I’ve read that this is called GOA style. Paul Oakenfold’s been popular lately but among his peers he’s been average. Average in terms of song selection and skill. It helps that AVIT’s song selection all matches and probably had easy transitions. But they’re of the boring, mid 90’s, MTV “Electronica” era: panning here and fading out there with nothing really exciting and aggressive. Oakenfold mixes these to their nature - passively. And it comes out very boring. He even stops and rests a whole second to start a new beat. What kind of DJ mix is that?

I’ll have to say that I like one song in this compilation if you will. “Wicked Harp” by Mandara Gora is a good example of the structure and animation of early 90s Techno.

If you are curious about the genre, this has some thick synth playing with a healthy dose of keyboard sounds. But that’s about it. You might as well just press one of your drum machine’s presets and play patterns every 8 measures.

Score 2.0/5

/author/ Alzn