Music Review - Ultra Dance 5

Decent At Best
Ultra.Dance 05 is a below-par two-disc album. At best, it's worthy of listening to in the car or at work. I specifically rate is as "decent" since these compilation albums are never "great" and it does have a tiny few fairly good songs. Also, the majority of tracks on this album certainly do not qualify as "club dance" either. They're much too popish for that in most instances, or techno-trance in others. The first two tracks on disc one, "Love Me Right (Oh Sheila)" and "Take Me To The Clouds Above", are perfect examples of the former.

"Trick Me" is a track that I absolutely cannot stand. The same goes for "Stand Back", a hideously bad cover of Stevie Nicks' hit song. The artists on this album each have their place in music, but none of them, with the exception of Sarah McLachlan, deserve to even stand in the same room with Stevie Nicks. None of them should even be attempting to redo her songs, especially the girl on this particular track who doesn't seem to have any particularly noteworthy singing talent to begin with. By contrast, "California Dreamin'" by Royal Gigolos selectively samples the 70's classic by the same name instead of trying to redo it, and the result works well.

"Seven Nation Army" by Punk Division has received pretty good radio play in the genre. Most readers will probably already be familiar with it though you may have to hear it to recognize it.

"Never Be Alone" by Lucas Prata is about as popish as you can get (with a little techno thrown in), but it works and is a really great song. Ditto for "Love Comes Again".

"Fallen" by Sarah McLachlan is the first single from her Afterglow album and the only 5-star song on this compilation. If you don't have this single or the Afterglow album, buying this compilation is almost worth it for this single song with the few other half-decent tunes as bonus material.

"Fallen" flows well into by the trance tune "Satellite" by OceanLab which is easy to get lost in and reminiscent of tunes by Ian Van Dahl or Lasgo.

Seal reaffirms his flash-in-the-pan status with the quite forgettable (if it was so obnoxious) "Waiting For You" which starts out disc two.

The majority of the other tracks are mediocre at best, but are not a total loss.

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