Milo.NL & CJ Stone feat. Lizzy Pattinson
» Surrender
Reviewed by Stu Cox
/ Submitted 09-07-08 12:46
Label: 12 Tone Records
Format: 12" Vinyl
Genre: Trance
CJ Stone, better known to his Mum and the tax man as Andreas Litterscheid, has been around for years and years. In that time he's worked with a whole host of people from Jürgen Dohr (as the Bad Habit Boys) to Voodoo & Serano on the huge "Blood Is Pumping".
But recently his favoured partner in crime seems to be a certain Mr Michel Beugel, or Milo.NL as he prefers to be called. Among other things, they did a remix of DJ Jose's "Turn The Lights Off" on Zzap last year which I actually quite liked, despite its electro cliches and painfully cheesy breakdown. But you may well have also seen their names on countless other remixes for the likes of John Marks, Bas & Ram and Mr Phillips, or their own track "Exciting" which had a rather popular Krzysztof Chochlow remix.
This time they've got Lizzy Pattinson on vocal duties (probably best known for her efforts on Aurora's "Dreaming" and "Hear You Calling" back in 2002) along with a whole host of remixes by the omnipresent DJ Choose, Richard "ReFuge" Hall and Tiddey, as well as Milo & Stone's own "Energy" mix.
With it's deep chilled pad feel and familiar minimalistic percussion it would be easy to write this off as yet another bloody Deadmau5-a-like, but try not to fall into that trap. As the one who's normally first to slate any vocal track that comes his way, I really think the vocals work well - they're soft, breathy and perfectly executed to fit with the backing track. Added to that, the trancey synths have also got just enough oomph to give this track a bit more energy than most of the other stuff in the 'mau5 subgenre.
As you might imagine from the name, the Energy mix lifts everything up a bit and throws in some tech-trance stabs, which personally I thought lost the purpose of the breathy vocals a bit, but a lot of people will still like the "floaty breakdown drops into techy beat" structure we've heard all too much recently. The ReFuge remix is somewhat similar although pushes things to a bit more of a contrast (and more of a cliche if you ask me... which you did, by deciding to read this review).
As you might expect, DJ Choose does his usual driving trance thing, although this doesn't sound like as much of a replica of "Release Me" as most of his remixes do. It's a bit trancier and more uplifting than we usually hear from the Dutch don, but does still go for the "floaty -> tech" approach of the Energy and ReFuge mixes (and countless other records over the last few years).
But I think the winner here is going to be Tiddey's Vocal Remix. It is just pretty bog-standard supersaw trance when you look at it, but it's solid, driving and uplifting, plus the vocal works really well in a short climactic breakdown, which will keep the energy flowing on the dancefloor with hands a-plenty in the air.
All that said, I'm not sure if you'd find me playing this myself, but I certainly wouldn't object to hearing it if I was on the dancefloor myself... who knows, you might even be lucky enough to catch me showing a bit of a smile.
Rating: 
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