Search - Armin Van Buuren :: Imagine

Get the other version with 34 tracks - awesome!

G P | USA | 06/29/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a great album. However, if you look at his albums in Amazon's MP3 store, you'll see there's an MP3 version of this exact album for half price, but even better, there's an alternate version that's only available as MP3 that has all of these tracks and many, many more. In fact, there are 34 tracks in all, including 3 tracks that are hour long continuous mixes in their own right, and it's still less than this one cd alone. That's the way to go. That version is called 'Imagine The Music' instead of just 'Imagine'. Armin Only - Imagine The MusicClick that link, or just go to the MP3 store, search Armin van Buuren, and list his albums according to release date, you'll see it as one of the most recent, right next to this one. Tons of great music."

I love it!

E. Anderson | 12/21/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I am not a huge trance fan as I once was but every now and then I like to listen to music that I hadn't listened to in a long time. In this case, I just happened to start listening to trance music a bit more lately. I recently saw the video for Amin Van Buuren's "In and Out of Love" w/Sharon Den Adel of Within Temptation on youtube and totally dug what I heard, so I decided to check out the album Imagine in which the song could be found out. No words can really describe the ecstasy that Armin's music brings to me. The overall flow of the album is excellent. The songs just perfectly flows together like a running stream would. All of the songs are catchy. I enjoy all of the contributing vocalists on the tracks both male and female alike. There isn't one song on the album I did not like. This is a great album to listen to on a weekend night when one is getting ready to go paint the town red."

Timeless Trance

pekkle | 03/12/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There is hardly a soul alive who has not heard of Armin van Buuren. The world's number one DJ for the past three years and the best trance artist for the past two, van Buuren's latest album `Imagine' certainly lives up to his reputation. Van Buuren's music is classified as trance and progressive trance, and impressive to note is that even as his fame increases, van Buuren stays true to his musical style, refusing to be pressured to make his music appeal to the mainstream audience.

`Imagine', the first track on the album, is wholly an instrumental dance track, featuring a cutting piano line and dance beats. The track slowly builds over its nine and a half minute length, starting with an epic instrumental that is suddenly pierced by an electric guitar solo. After the solo, the track focuses more on traditional dance elements, with pumping bass and drum beats, but fuses the beginning instrumental and guitar to create a truly one-of-a-kind track. The long length and slow evolution of the track is reminiscent of the Goa trance scene, known for its long length, slow evolution, and a slow but steady increase in energy throughout the song.

The lead single in the album, `Going Wrong', is a collaboration between van Buuren and DJ Shah (or Sunlounger), and surprisingly is one of the more mainstream tracks that van Buuren has released. At five minutes and twelve seconds, the track includes a focus on the male vocals (by Chris Jones) and very little buildup, creating a very radio-friendly sound that propelled the track into the top 5 in The Netherlands.

The rest of the album centers more on the beat and the electronic instruments and their progression over time, which is more typical to the trance and progressive trance genres that van Buuren is known for. Although many of the remaining nine tracks on the album contain female vocals, they are extremely superficial. Many would criticize van Buuren for this aspect, but the real purpose of the vocals is to supplement the driving beat and instrumentation. The vocals are not meant to be the centerpiece of the track, as in pop music, but rather to serve as merely another instrument to be manipulated through modern technology. A brilliant example can be found in `Unforgiveable', in which the female vocals are sampled and manipulated as if it were a percussion instrument. This technique was a trademark of musique concrète, in which style samples of natural sounds are utilized to create music. Van Buuren's manipulation of the female vocals is similar to Karlheinz Stockhausen's manipulation of the voices of young boys in his `Gesang der Jünglinge'. Van Buuren's inclusion of various electronic sounds throughout the album along with his use of a synthesizer and drum machine suggest that his music is a blend of both musique concrete and the German-originated electronische muzik.

As if hearing my remarks, the last track on `Imagine' is a song created purely through electronic means. Wrapping his album up with `Intricacy', a vocal-less pure dance track, van Buuren reminds us why he's the number one DJ in the world. Although a couple of the songs in the album do not stand out much (most of the tracks with female vocals just blend into one another), this is good for van Buuren's famously long DJ sets where he needs material that he can blend together. All in all, `Imagine' is a solid studio album; in fact, solid enough that he released a remix of this album the year after in 2009. There are two bonus tracks that are exclusive to iTunes: "If You Should Go" and "The Sound of Goodbye". As if there was a necessity for additional incentives to purchase this album.

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