The fight for diverse and conscious voices

I never managed to get the second music post done before heading to Arisia (about which more in a separate entry). Here is the second post, collecting some of the better electronic dance tracks from the past year. This is all going to be house, trance, and vocal dance. Most of these are independent artists who sell through Beatport and don't have big label support. If you like their stuff please buy the tracks.

https://soundcloud.com/nervomusic/r3hab-nervo-ummet-ozcan-1
First of two from Ummet Ozcan (https://www.ummetozcan.com/) who has been working with some of the biggest names in house music. I've heard a couple mixes of this "Revolution" and I like this vocal mix best. It's not terribly sophisticated in either the music or vocals, but it's a good solid high-energy dance track.

https://soundcloud.com/ummetozcan/ummet-ozcan-superwave-original-mixout-now
Second Ozcan track for compare-and-contrast. This one lacks the smooth vocals and has a more energetic high-BPM style. I like it for its variety of styles - it's almost a sampler. I also like that Ozcan is willing to drop the volume and not try to blast everything out as loud as possible. There are plenty of loud passages, but it's not all the same thing.

https://soundcloud.com/vicetone/united-we-dance
Vicetone's "United We Dance" was apparently written for a movie soundtrack, so it's more ?compressed? tonally than a full club mix would be. That's not bad - you get a sense for how music can be built to leave spaces others can fill in. This is also prime remix material.

https://soundcloud.com/protocolrecordings/tritonal-paris-blohm-ft
Speaking of remixes you can find probably dozens of remixes of "Colors" - it was one of the bigger tracks of 2014. This version is more spare and really features the piano bits more than most mixes. I am not as fond of the non-vocal thumpa-thumpa bits but it's worth giving a listen.

https://soundcloud.com/porter-robinson/lionhearted-arty-remix
Continuing our theme of interesting piano and vocal bits, here is the "Arty Remix" of "Lionhearted" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgKDu5pp_fU). The original is much rougher and louder - this remix keeps the underlying track's energy but smooths and mellows the edges.

https://soundcloud.com/doornrecords/sander-van-doorn-firebeatz
I was intrigued by this track because guitars usually don't feature in EDM tracks. To be perfectly honest they're not all that big a deal here, either. Not in the way you'd hear guitars taking most of the load in a rock&roll track, for example. That said, there are some interesting bits where you can hear the guitars doing their thing and it's nice to see people trying different approaches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhkD47AauNQ
Here is AVB spinning Dash Berlin's "Shelter" at the Amsterdam Music Festival. This is the Photographer remix, which makes much better use of Roxanne Emery's vocals than any other mix I've heard. Unlike the Revolution track I started this set with, the vocals here are much more complex and interesting - this sort of thing is what first got me into vocal trance and I'm glad some people are still making these kinds of tracks.