“Life is busy for all of us. Whatever we do, there’s seldom enough chance to think about what happened last month, let alone a whole year. For me the annual ‘VONYC Sessions’ provides that rarest of opportunities – a moment to look back and relive some truly great memories through the power of its best music. I hope you enjoy listening as much as enjoyed compiling and mixing it!” – Paul van Dyk, Berlin, November 2012

Week by week, over the last 52, the playlists of VONYC Sessions have built up a picture of another boundary-breaking, standout year of electronic dance music. To encapsulate it van Dyk has draw together the tracks that have generated the most heat on his floors, the most buzz on VONYC Sessions Show and fashioned them into a pair of thrilling, year-honouring mixes.

Heading straight into the thick of the action, Disc One lines up the punch-packing drum structure of Orjan Nilsen’s ‘Endymion’, Lisa Lashes’ tech-threat ‘The Bends’ and Protoculture’s crowd-wowing ‘Cobalt’. Working the mix in masterful peaks and drops, he tempers its tone with the stargazing sounds of Ost & Meyer’s ‘Safari’ and the celestial-ism of Starshifters’ ‘Driveby’. As you’d expect from the double disc compilation, it draws plenty of resource from VANDIT Recordings’ class of 2012. In and amongst them are the razor-sharp synths of Judge Jules ‘The Attack’, (cited by Paul as his ‘favourite track of 2012’), Maarten de Jong’s blood-pumping trancer ‘RAW’ and Sean Tyas and Giuseppe Ottaviani spirited, elevating ‘Arcobaleno’.

Naturally with the release of ‘EVOLUTION’ – his first artist album year in five years – the VONYC Sessions’ tracklists have been supremely stocked with PvD’s own material. From the castaway beauty of ‘The Ocean’, to the unstoppably uplifting ‘Eternity’, its tracks thread the two mixes. The endemic, from-Miami-to-Ibiza EDM of ‘Verano’ (here in its ‘Such A Feeling’ vocal form) to the vocal ache of Plumb’s ‘I Don’t Deserve You’ and the lovers lament of Mix-2 close-out ‘Lost In Berlin’, they soundtrack an incredible year.

With ‘Stone Pony’, VANDIT’s latest hot-pick signing Las Salinas’ strike an early harmonic note for the second of ‘VONYC Sessions 2012’s discs. With its low-slung bass, whip-cracking FX and tight percussive loops, the Israeli duo provides a progressive induction to the mix. PvD fully ignites its engines, bringing in the vocal reach of JES (on Cosmic Gate ‘Flying Blind’); channels trancestep with Tritonal’s ‘Slave’ and makes room for more melodic vistas with Jaco’s epic ‘Malaysia’. The breakbeat/dubstep breakdown and killer vocal hook of Jules and Dale Corderoy club rocker ‘Give Me A Reason’ charges the mid-section, whilst at its summit, the poignant vocals of Amba Shepherd on Giuseppe Ottaviani ‘Lost For Words’ finally splits this ‘Session’s atom.

Over 31 tracks PvD picks out the brightest track stars in 2012’s musical galaxy and recalls the year that was.