:: Armin Van Buuren - Imagine

Armin Van Buuren

Imagine starts abominably. Before the beginning of the album proper, Armin Van Buuren sees fit to put us through three minutes of ridiculous, operatic piano, horns and distorted guitar. An intro is a tricky gimmick to pull off, largely because nine times in ten it’s superfluous. This is what undermines Van Buuren’s otherwise unobjectionable release; the superfluous elements he glues on for no readily apparent reason. Most obvious are the vocals. They get more bearable towards the end of the record, as they tend to integrate with the rhythm and become an element of the song at large, but the first half is brutally dominated by insipid lyrics – ‘See the mirror in your eyes/See the truth behind the lies/Your lies are haunting me’ etc. etc. It’s possible to ignore them, and no doubt all who listen will do so, but it begs the question – why? Why bother including a vocal track at all? Because Van Buuren genuinely loves them, apparently. His production often seems to fade into the background on account of the vocals, and only on those tracks where it’s not so held back does it begin to act as a pull on the listener in its own right. Imagine isn’t as terrible an album as its first three minutes would suggest, but it would be much stronger if Van Buuren had less of a tendency towards the extraneous.