Put a trance purist and a stadium-pop hitmaker on the same record and you usually get a compromise that pleases nobody. Astra is the rare time it works. Giuseppe Ottaviani brings the craft, Gabry Ponte brings the size, and somewhere between them the two halves actually meet.
It rolls at 140 and never stops moving. The bassline has that classic Ottaviani patience, the kind that keeps the energy coiled through the verse, and then the break does what uplifting trance does best: it opens the sky. The melody climbs in G major, holds at the top a moment longer than you expect, and the release on the other side is the part I keep rewinding. There is enough pop instinct in the topline to give it a hook, and enough trance discipline to keep it from going soft. Save it for the sunrise set, the hour when the tent thins out and the people left actually came for this.
This is two Italian heavyweights working in earnest, rounded out by Crooked Bangs, and the whole thing carries the Armada stamp. It gives both Giuseppe Ottaviani and Gabry Ponte their first markers in the archive.
Astra is out now, released May 22 on Armada Music, the Extended Mix running 4:10. Catch it as the sky goes light and let it lift you.
