Various Artists - SynGate: The Collective, Volume 2 (2007)

"The Collective, Volume 2" is actually the 100th cd-r of the German SynGate label, a double-disc release with 24 different (often unreleased) pieces of music from various musicians.

For all fans of modern electronic music, a nice range of music is put forward by e.g. Keller/Schönwälder (which present the unreleased track "Connections") BIOnighT, Certamen, Rainbow Serpent, Moonbooter, Erik Seifert, EL-KA, Wellenfeld, Uwe Reckzeh, Stockman, Maxxess, Oliver Ganz, Frank Klare, E=Motion and Deep Imagination.

The track by Back to the Moon on the first disc features vocals, which doesn't make it my cup of tea. But the great Berliner School style on the next track "All Feels Alien" by Mac of BIOnighT is a very nice effort, before we move into the rhythmic, dancy stuff of Moonbooter, the contemporary electronics (with vocoder-voice!) of Erik Seifert, or Wellenfeld’s warm, melodic "Tritium" with some nice sequencing and so on.

Overall, this well compiled and produced 156 minute compilation offers a nice range of accessible electronic music which taps in the past and present, surely offering something for every fan of electronic music. © Bert Strolenberg