Paul van Dyk's first radio edit single in ages is a precursor for new mix album The Politics of Dancing Vol 2. It opens with acoustic guitar chords. Que? But wait - ahhhhhh yes, here comes that four-to-the-floor trademark trancey tranche of beats. And then Wayne Jackson starts singing.
Which is another surprise, as I'm not used to hearing van Dyk numbers with deep male vocals on them. Wispy diva ladies or straightforward instrumentals, yes, but this marks a sonic shift for Germany's superstar trancemeister - and the resulting song calls to mind Dirty Vegas jamming with Dave Gahan.
Nonetheless, with varied frequency modulation synths at the high end, The Other Side gives every bit of that fulsome dance sound that aficionados of both van Dyk and EMI's trance splinter Postiva know and loyally love.
But isn't trance supposed to be dead and the last diehard tranceheads transmogrified into figures of fun? After all, there's no "The" prefixing van Dyk's name.
In this (musical rather than meterological) climate, The Other Side won't recapture the zeitgeist moments of 2000's Out There and Back. But it does remind us that clubs remain open for business, that it's summer and that superstar DJs can still sassily soundtrack blue sky, beaches and strobes.
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