S3BA

For those of us who believe a trance melody can still hit like a truck, S3BA's Makaan Takeover in London is a defiant, nostalgic, and utterly joyous manifesto. The vibe is that of a classic superclub, all laser pyramids and hands-in-the-air abandon. This is a trance and progressive house set through and through, maintaining a high-energy 142.9 BPM cruise control. Harmonically, it's anchored in the euphoric 12A key, with forays into 4A for darker, more driving passages.

The energy is perfectly balanced for the genre: a solid low-end thump (0.55), rich, soaring mids for the melodies (0.32), and just enough high-end sparkle (0.09). S3BA's mixing is smooth and stadium-ready, building peaks with veteran precision. The tracklist is a raid on the classic and contemporary vaults. It opens with the mystical allure of Joaquin Acosta's 'Egipto', before launching into the psytrance rocket fuel of Astrix & Rising Dust's 'Universo'.

Phil Berg's 'Dispatched' and 'Sinara' offer lengthier, more progressive journeys, while Xtrica's 'Lost Everything' provides a moment of poignant melody. The true crowd-weapons, of course, are the cheeky inclusions of Darude's 'Sandstorm' and Oliver Heldens's Euro-rave mix of 'Désenchantée', played with zero irony and maximum effect. It all starts with the promise of 'Egipto', peaks with the communal scream-along to 'Sandstorm', and closes with the rave-age immortality of Zombie Nation's 'Kernkraft 400'.