Michael Woods - Ministry of Sound Club: Residents

A mix that deals with always being on the verge of something stratospheric. That makes Michael Woods’MoS bow sound like the one-time Warrior never quite delivers, when the opposite is very much true of his crowd control. A man who has been to Ibiza and back and can pick remix targets as his pleases (past works over the last decade moving from Art of Trance, Judge Jules and Kaskade to more recently Kylie, Robyn and Lady Gaga – this mix shows some of that same pulling power), the art of delivering the highest highs is presented as a prize only achievable once you’ve grappled with electro-house might and keenly felt prog push.  
The maths - a pure trance session this is not. Yet the first port of call should still always be the mammoth Drop Zone (with its origins shared by the bossy fire First Aid – the first indicator of Woods’ manifesto of house grounding with a trance aim). A plink of chords reaching for the skies, sent into freefall before they start climbing again, it’s of such a stunning simplicity – Woods pretty much tapping the keyboard in an upward ascent - to give you goosebumps the size of your head, and a perfect measurement of time and space making punters feel really small under its massive gaze. Precisely what the Ministry soundsystem was built for. In the long run it’s something of a divergence from Woods’ Resident sound, as he gets to trimming and topping up trance verges that instinctively know their place and when to keep their distance: a consistent, persistent sense of making euphoria wait on big room propulsions. Two unreleased exclusives to the mix, the out-of-my-way instincts of What’s That and electro klaxon Burned You Away, bear this out.
 
So you’re not allowed to get caught in the rush of relief: Woods wants you to put in just as much graft. More accurately, the big synthed sensations get dangled carrot-like, as on the 8-bit spots of the Chris Lake-paired Dominos - kind of mindful of Warrior’s decade-old ploy of bedding in roughly to make the smoothness that much sweeter. This follows the introduction of edge-of-trancer Midnight Run, in turn putting in the groundwork for a remix of Martin Solveig’s turning the cheery Hello on its head; playtime definitely over and muchmore open with its trance touch papers looking for a match, Woods shapeshifts and re-cuts his cloth with a Swedish House Mafia-endorsed pair of secateurs.

Going back to Woods’ remix roll-call, the trance-tech-prog equation shouldn’t be allowed to go near remixing a Ginuwine-Timbaland-Missy Elliott social under normal circumstances of taste. Mercifully the tigerish dub of Get Involved goes with the scissoring No Access. Both trained in being able to switch to trance pyromania in the blink of an eye, and both doing habitual electro-house with valve-bulging horsepower keeping on the straight and narrow away from chart-dom. Resident fast becomes a mix where Woods’ next move is always eagerly anticipated through its variety of peaks only accessible by fingertips and dance-like-a-demon tactics. From hands in the air to feet firmly on the ‘floor, it’s a session where by its end you know you’ve been part of a good and honest dancefloor epic.