Markus Schulz featuring HALIENE - Tidal Wave

That the eighth album from Markus Schulz is arriving in extraordinary times scarcely needs saying. Some already have - many more will. It’s the direction that artists chose to take with that wealth of additional production time that’s now providing the real insights. By way of example some might’ve imagined that Markus would take our harder times as the artistic cue to re-don his Dakota mask as he last did in the winter of 2017. What’s established inside the first three tracks of ‘Escape’ - his new artist released Sept 25 - however is that he’s headed it in almost entirely the opposite direction. Topping even the headily life-affirming heights of 2018’s ‘We Are The Light’, he’s delivered his most heartening, elevating new music assembly to date. With ‘up’ its sole goal, Markus has put together a singer/co-writer teamsheet that feels instinctive in choice and proves (by virtue of his accrued studio years) alchemic in outcome. Drawing on talent new & established, it splits its productions between solos, first-time debuts and collaborative reteams, developing in turn an album that tonally reaches all the way from the eclectic to the mainstream. Naturally it includes Markus’s most recent single dispatches: ‘Indestructible’ & ‘In Search Of Sunrise’ with Adina Butar, April’s ‘Are You With Me’ and ‘Feel Alive’, with London Thor & Valentino Alessandrini. It further features 11 previously unheard Schulz cuts, including numbers with HALIENE & Christina Novelli, as well as first...