2020 is a kind of year that nobody in the world had expected, from changing lifestyle to dynamics to anything and everything, and this very year hosts the most iconic and anticipated debut artist album as genius Scottish producer Will Atkinson delivers a 17 track journey that’s nothing less than a masterpiece.

The fusion of trance, techno & drum n’ bass with progressive & poetry, ambient & acid and harmony & hard dance, it immediately vies for the tag of ‘timeless’. The ‘Last King Of Scotland’ released just few days bac is a musical tale like no other, but also an intoxicating and often-hypnotic collection, which is a musical narration of Will’s own path. 

Will’s productions regularly subvert trance’s staples, while at his most overt, they flat-out punk them. Over the last 10 years he’s thrown ever more effort in taking it out of its comfort zone, and in that pursuit, the ‘Last King Of Scotland’ maybe its final reckoning. Few then would expect seventeen dyed-in-the-wool trancers from him, but fewer still would anticipate the expanse of range he’s arrived with. Brave, heartfelt and instinctual when club momentum’s required, urbane, to the point of intellectual when it’s not, it’s the ultimate subversion of ‘the trance album’.

“So is this a trance album?”

“Well – there’s certainly a healthy dose of it – but there are other styles, other influences, other moods, melodies and emotional experiences for you to immerse yourself in too. I love so many different styles of music that it would be an insult not to draw influences from beyond the boundaries of trance”.

Productions like ‘Solace’ and ‘Drowning In The Dunes Of Time’, which bring it ambient eminence, while ‘Happy Hours’ assuredly dips ‘Last King’ into drum ‘n bass. The charged (yet never released) energy of ‘Pipe Dreams’ meanwhile lends textbook contrast to the unchained floor-freneticism of ‘Beans’.

Not to forget the vocal numbers, many of which hold personal resonance for Will. Harry Roke ponders the demons many DJs encounter on ‘Burning Out’, while ‘Cigarettes & Kerosene’ (with Cari Golden) ruminates on the combustible nature of relationships. Bringing lighter themes to the album, the spine-tingle of JES’s incomparable turn on ‘Long Way Home’ lingers in the mind for the time, while Will packs ‘If I Spoke Your Language’ with synth-zest.

When, on ‘Last King’, the broad sword of trance does swing, it does so with the kind of application Will’s made his name out of. ‘Last Night In Ibiza’, ‘Awakening’ (w/Paul van Dyk), ‘Telescope’, ‘Rush’ and ‘Kismet Energy’ are all nutshell examples of how he finds the extra mile, juice, and studio-distinction where others cannot. 

Stream the album below:

 

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