As the world is going upside down with the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, all music festivals have been canceled which is giving a hard time to every music enthusiast around the world, be it the artists, the managers, or billions of passionate fans.

It was only the matter of time that release of music albums got pushed too including the much-awaited Paul van Dyk’s 10th artist album titled “Guiding Light”, of course, its wise decision that Mr van Dyk has placed the dancefloor-centric ‘Guiding Light’ album on ice until the day that clubbing starts to make sense again and for the same, he commented. And what that means, while ‘Guiding Light’ has stepped momentarily aside for a reason and it is to make way for ‘Escape Reality’ – an idiosyncratic project by the man which he had in process for some time now.

The project has given Paul the opportunity to take a subsequent glance at few of his best-known productions. Whilst their overarching tone is warmer, slower and more considered (influenced in no small part by studio partner Roger Shah), it’s allowed him to reframe each in a remarkably different manner.

“This project was, to the greatest extent, waiting in the wings. Reality can be unkind and while this release isn’t a remedy, it might play its part in helping us to calm down, relax, dream, and escape reality.”

To say that the album’s given Paul an opportunity to bend a different artistic muscle would be to understate ‘Reality’s true reality. The wide span of production methods he’s used together with his friend Roger Shah to create it also speaks volumes to its longer-than-average passage to release. While ‘Escape Reality’ does contain interpretations that are classically chillout in nature (‘The Ocean’ w/ Arty, ‘For An Angel’ ), they are in the minority. Some (like ‘New York’) take the opportunity to play with live instruments or subsets of instrumentation not normally open to club tracks. Through revisions of tracks like ‘Home’, acoustic-led versions assume a significant role too (with their vocal elements becoming, even more, center-stage), while Paul rephrases tracks like ‘The Other Side’ in a more cinematic fashion. A special treat will the highly anticipated male vocal version of ‘Music Rescues Me’ featuring the very emotional, beautiful voice of longtime friend Johnny McDaid.

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