This review covers the progressive trance track Ahmet Atasever Feat. Monty Wells – Trading Halos (Sunset Remix).
This track was released in 2018 as part of a single.
The track starts off with a reverse cymbal, white noise, a drum kit, and a synth. A clap then joins the track. The synth becomes more pronounced. From there, a grungy synth comes in as the kick drops out.
A snare roll hits and chopped vocals join the track. This is backed by the full drum kit and other synths already in the track. A synth melody comes in. Some pitch bending happens on the chopped vocals for a moment before they go back to normal again. A snare roll comes in and the track drops with a filtered white noise making an appearance.
The synth and chopped vocals are left. After a kick, the vocals take over with some heavy reverb. A synth backs this in a subtle manner. From there, another synth comes in with some subtle choir elements backing them. From there, the main synth melody comes in with the vocals making brief appearances in the track. After a slow drilling kick, the main melodies take over.
A snare roll then makes an appearance as the vocals come back in. After a bit, the chopped vocals make a return to the track. The normal vocals then make a return one last time.
After that, the grungy synths make a return, replacing the main synths. They have a 303 like effect to them. After that, the track gradually starts to break down. Elements of the drum kit pull back piece by piece. Te pitch is adjusted on the kick and the track is lead out by a filtered white noise effect.
I have to admit, this does have a mixed bag feel throughout. For one, the grungy synths do sound pretty solid and build up nicely. Unfortunately, with what is in the middle of the track, I almost get a sense of a mismatch in sound. You almost go from a harder trance sound to an uplifting vocal trance back to a harder trance track after. Even though there is an attempt to mix the two styles together, I’m not really convinced they went together this time.
Probably the strongest part of the track is the chopped vocals that lead up to the main part of the track and the chopped vocals that begin to lead the track out. I thought these parts really added a lot of nice energy and uplifting sound here.
As for the lyrical vocals, they work reasonably well. They weren’t bad by any means. In fact, I thought they were pretty good. I just thought that the lead up was leading to something better for a lack of a better way of describing it. So, there is a very subtle sense of getting to this part of the track and having it be a bit anti-climactic. It’s hard for me to say because they really weren’t that bad by any means. The build up may have overpowered them a bit.
Still, I thought this is a very solid track. While there might be a bit of a stylistic mismatch in smaller parts of the track, there is still a fair bit to give a thumbs up to in this track. The chopped vocals wind up being a major highlight in this track as it sounds quite great. The vocals are pretty good. So, I’ll say this is a pretty solid track even if there are flaws.
Score
7.5/10
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
