I never thought I'd be typing these words, but: Tiësto makes me miss trance. Not that the genre really went anywhere. Certain kids still scream through all holes whenever a DJ drops a circa-1998 hiccuping synth line. Dudes like Armin Van Buuren are still compiling mix CDs full of recent tracks with titles like "Satori Waterfalls". (Really.) But like most of you reading this, I couldn't set foot in a trance club without a lethal chemical cocktail to mute my sense of shame, and keeping up with the mix CDs and ephemeral whatnot feels a little too pricey when the belt is tightened enough to risk amputation.
So there's a new Tiësto CD, and I think, "Hooray, a little walk down memory lane in a neighborhood I didn't really get to explore first time out." Except Tiësto goes and makes some lame crossover electro-pop album larded with guest stars-- Jónsi from Sigur Rós, Kele Okereke from Bloc Party, Tegan and Sara, Nelly Furtado, Dizzee Rascal, which explains why we're writing about the thing in the first place-- that's "trance" in the way "Poker Face" and the recent crop of Britney singles are "trance," i.e., you have to extend the definition to "anything uptempo featuring programmed drums and synthesizers." At which point you might as well throw in Hyperdub and "Dare to Be Stupid", too, you know?
The difference between "prime" (again, weirded out to be writing this) Tiësto and nu-Tiësto is apparent just by scanning Kaleidoscope's tracklist. In 2004, the man was still releasing nine-track albums featuring 11-minute voyages into the smiley faced ultraworld. Here we get 17 songs (note noun choice there) averaging your pop-standard four-minutes-and-change-- a sure sign that a producer's shooting for blogland instead of clubland. On the other hand, this is a guy who released a cackhanded trance version of "Adagio for Strings" four years ago, so you might think this change to a popward direction isn't such a bad idea.
But Kaleidoscope is terrible, a masterclass in half-assed dance-meets-pop "songwriting" that gets only slightly better when it leans on outright clichés, which Tiësto then beats 'til they're ugly. That's not even counting the times he rips off Todd Edwards (the title track), Justice ("Bend It Like You Don't Care"), and your current dance-rock act of choice ("Escape Me") in a way that's both shameless and too technically adroit to induce enjoyable eye-rolls. Or the "love is the message"/"universal harmony" hippie drivel that becomes way harder to swallow when they stop being six-word catch phrases and start aspiring to actual lyrics ("I Am Strong"). The beats? They dutifully trudge along, never sounding like presets but never remotely wowing you, adding a little electro grit here, a little Van Dykian wax there.
About the only time Kaleidoscope perks up is when it stops fucking around and decides to become a trance album. "Louder Than Boom" has to be something of a personal peak/nadir in this regard, with synth effects that sound like god's going for a new high score on his own personal tabletop Galaga. But these cheesy respites are too few and far between to even recommend Kaleidoscope as nostalgia for the trance-deprived. The problem with dance producers trying to reclaim the sounds that pop producers have been swiping for over a decade is that by now the pop producers are just too good at it, along with the added bonus of (sometimes) having singers and (certainly) song-doctors to add that extra special radio pixie dust. When Diddy steals your vocab and starts spitting out gems, you need to come harder than Kaleidoscope in response.
