After many years, John Askew released his new album last week, confirming as one of the pillars of tech-trance music
That trance and techno could co-exist perfectly, John Askew has known for a long time.
At a time when techno seems to be a must-see at major electronic music events and festivals worldwide, the DJ and producer from UK has managed to stay perfectly balanced for years, marrying speed and techno atmospheres with a deep knowledge and desire for pure trance.
After seventeen years from the release of Z List Uber Star, John Askew released his new album A Room Full Of Pros & Cons last week on Black Hole Recordings.
John Askew revealed in a recent interview that the “curious” title album refers to the music industry and … : “the things that i like and don’t like, the people that are there in the some way over and the ones who are genuine, it’s a play on you know every conceivable good things and bad things about the industry” […]:
Musically, A Room Full Of Pros & Cons embraces, in a coherent way, some fast styles of trance, between psy-trance and techno-trance, alternating with “breaks” interludes up to notable peaks of uplifting trance.
The album in fact, starts with the breaks track Grave Digger, which seems to “load” towards the second “devastating” track, with Shelby Merry, Steady & Stronger: the Ohio artist is present in this album with two other tracks, When Darkness Comes, released in 2022, and with Wild Horse, final track of the album, which has been recently remixed by Siskin, with a captivating progressive work.
As we said, fast rhythms dominate the scene in this work of John which go very well with important vocal parts (Running In The Dark, I Want Your Soul with Sinful Biz) as well as without: Push It, the third track of the album for example, seems like a crazy bomb: let’s imagine what can create this track during a live dj set … !
But we also paid attention to some definelly more “calm” tracks, such as Be Careful What You Wish For with Lyonheart: an absolutely enchanting track.
In this wave of alternating energy, in the second part of this album, although all the tracks deserve right attention, we come across in two pure trance track: Organism, which recalls in the melody something very “classic”, and Afterburner, a really uplifting trance melody: well, suddenly, the times of – now legendary – remix of Stresstest (John O’Callaghan, 2012) seem immediately close with this beautiful melody !
We invite you to discover all 15 tracks of the album, which was released on September 27 on all digital platforms: A Room Full Of Pros & Cons:
1. Grave Digger / 2. Steady & Stronger (with Shelby Merry) / 3. Push It / 4. UFO / 5. 00:000 / 6. Be Careful What You Wish For (with Lyonheart) / 7. Take A Breath (with Manika Kaur) / 8. Running in the Dar / 9. These Dogs Trust No One (Red Dragon Edit) / 10. Organism / 11. When Darkness Comes (with Shelby Merry) / 12. Aces Hi / 13. I Want Your Soul (with Sinful Biz) / 14. Afterburner / 15. Wild Horse (with Shelby Merry)
John Askew was the Guest on episode 1192 of A State Of Trance, where he obviously performed most of the tracks of A Room Full Of Pros & Cons: