- "Neo trance" or tech house?
- Agents Of Time have helped define the sound of modern tech house—dubbed "neo trance" by some—by blending grandiose chords with rigid grooves and melancholic moods. It's a sound most associated with Tale Of Us and their Afterlife party series, which Agents Of Time played at least six times in 2018. Primarily a live act, Agents Of Time have a cosmic, big-room sound, honed over the dozens of festival dates they play each year. Forest Of Lies is their first full EP on Afterlife, a label that spent the year releasing similarly huge records from artists like Recondite, Adriatique and Patrice Bäumel. It pushes a familiar sound that won't do much for house music purists, but will likely move plenty of dancers at Afterlife.
The EP's melodies might drag you back to the mid-'00s, when artists like Booka Shade, Gui Boratto and Stephan Bodzin were churning out synth-heavy tear-jerkers on labels like Get Physical and Kompakt. Ambitious and slightly cheesy, on Forest Of Lies they range from dreamy ("Pro Music," "Dream Vision") to melancholic ("Floating Time"), all densely layered and heavy on chords and snaking synth leads. It's the kind of music that has flooded the festival world, delivered by artists like Kölsch, Mind Against and others in the Afterlife realm: big on feeling, light on personality.
TracklistA1 Dream Vision
A2 Floating Time
B1 Pro Music
B2 Vapor Floor