Various - Club Life Vol. 1: Las Vegas, mixed by Tiesto

Looking for a journey-trance mix from Tiësto in 2011 is like expecting subtlety from Skrillex. There’s no point crying over spilt glow-stick fluid. Tiësto might call his current stock-in-trade ‘Trouse’, but it could just as easily be coined ‘mainstage’. Or perhaps, more fittingly, ‘Las Vegas dance music’.

The city of sin is the chosen launch-pad for Club Life, a new mix-CD series from the inexhaustible Dutchman. It was only natural that Tiësto would unshackle himself from In Search Of Sunrise, with all its history, and start afresh. In his own words, it’s “a new series to reflect my new style”.

Followers of Tiësto’s Club Life radio show will recognise the bulk of the 15 tracks that make up Volume One. The mix opens with the host’s ‘Track of 2010’, Henrik B’s Now & Forever, which teams ecstatic house keys with a soaring vocal from Swedish metal vocalist Christian Älvestam. At 2:40 it hits a peak, and that’s more or less where this compilation stays. Almost every track sounds like it was made to be accompanied by a confetti cannon.

You certainly can’t fault Tiësto’s work-rate in the studio, and Club Life Volume 1 proves how much he loves collaborating. Luckily Three 6 Mafia and the like are left out of this one, with the DJ showing off his handiwork alongside Hardwell, Marcel Woods and his hook-up with Angger Dimas as Boys Will Be Boys.

These productions are what Tiësto called his return to “making underground DJ tracks again” in a recent interview with MTV. “I haven’t been in Beatport in years,” he said. “Tiësto is more ‘straight to iTunes’, so I like it that I’m back in the Beatport charts again.”

The euphoric vocal tracks are laid on thick in the first half of Club Life. One of Tiësto’s many bromances is with high-flying Swede Avicii, who is in unabashed festival mode under his Tom Hangs moniker with Blessed. Pleasingly, the vocal performance from Shermanology doesn’t sound straight from the cookie-cutter. There’s certainly a ‘ladies on the dancefloor’ theme at play as Tiësto brings his remix of Lune’s Girls With Bangs into the mix, following it with the pop rush of Rebecca & Fiona’s Bullets. So far, so Tijs.

We know Tiësto is now probably the world’s most bankable DJ, and this mix reminds you why. Regardless of his past glories, Tiësto’s sets are connecting with a lot of people right now. It’s mass appeal dance music that closes festivals, and is that really something to begrudge?

Coming at the mix’s mid-point, the Marcel Woods collab Don’t Ditch is a rebuke to the claims that Tiësto is done with trance (or at least a version of it). The team-up with fellow Dutchman Hardwell for Zero 76 continues that electro-trance theme, with the dial set firmly to 11.

The mix’s final stretch ensures the energy doesn’t dip. You can count on Kaskade to make the most of a vocal performance, and Dragonette’s Martina deftly avoids sugary cliché with Dynasty cut Fire In Your New Shoes. Need it even be said that Sultan & Ned Shepard have red-lined the hands-in-the-air setting with their remix?

This is not the review to talk programming or progression. Club Life Vol. 1 is big tunes, back-to-back. It’s Tiesto in 2011. It’s how they do it in Vegas.

Club Life Vol. 1 is out now through Liberator Music.