trance was ok in the early days - ie when it was made by hippies, yothu yindi, people like that, there was real potential for the sound in that era
BUT
trance DIED when certain Dutch and German producers started bstardising the sound for big arenas and creating sounds expressly designed to appeal to mongs with no real taste, musical education or expectations - even PVD made SOME good stuff in the early days - 'beautiful place' for instance still stands tall as a gritty prog-ish track which could appeal to the house fraternity too. Age of love and the related sounds jam & spoon, oliver lieb, westbam etc made, were all heavily influenced by the 70s experimentalists like tangerine dream and kraftwerk and also included trance elements in their productions > bequeathing us scores of bona fide party classics
....but then PVD created a MONSTER with "for an angel" and the floodgates opened and an endless river of soulless, beatless, spiritcrushing, brainmelting, yawn-inducing gatecrasher-style kak was unleashed which has basically taken over most commercial dance festivals ever since, which is why they should be avoided like the bubonic plague
the saddest story of all though is Judge Jules - he had so much promise, he had soul in his blood until around 1995, he knew his onions... but then he smelt the $$$$$ and crossed over to the dark side, never been the same since...
