Educate me on Trance

Crawleytown

Active Member
I’m a relatively long time lover of Techno but have recently been finding it a little stale and have been dipping more and more into Trance to make for a change.

I got into clubbing 9 years ago through D&B and a bit of house but I’ve never really been exposed to any sort of trance before and have no idea what’s what.

I really enjoy the style of Paul Oakenfold in his 1999 Space Essential Mix. Listened to a couple of mixes of Bryan Kearney and John O Callaghan recently as well. some of which I enjoyed, others less so. I can’t really stand the EDMy side of trance with Paul Van Dyk and modern Armin but the banging melodic stuff is right up my street.

Any educated Spotlighters out there who can point me in the direction of the best artists and events in the U.K so I can further explore this mysterious genre!??
 
Eddie haliwell is probably the best live DJ I've ever seen. He plays a mix of trance and techno get a look at SoundCloud for his old sets live at godskitchen, tall trees, cream amnesia etc. Post 2011 he went a bit edm but his current podcast fire it up is has been banging techno for the past year.
 
I believe we have a lot of people on the forum who, like me, enjoy the trance of days gone by. for current stuff I really cannot help, but I'm sure @Ikoda can. also, I'm sure we have a thread somewhere with the best trance classics? or at least a list with people's favourite trance tunes? do a quick search if you haven't.
 
I feel quite some overlap between Techno and Trance lately.
Kevin De Vries, Matador, Tale of Us, Adriatique, Maceo sometimes....they have been using melodies that I have heard before in older progressive trance.
 
Has to be Jordan Suckley for me! Although I sometimes find his mixes moving in to quite hard trance/EDM style but it's still enjoyable. Been listening to some of the Pure Trance Radio podcasts by Solarstone which are pretty good.
 
I feel quite some overlap between Techno and Trance lately.
Kevin De Vries, Matador, Tale of Us, Adriatique, Maceo sometimes....they have been using melodies that I have heard before in older progressive trance.

Yeah deffo, funnily enough I find Tale Of Us’s ‘emotive techno’ style quite dull but surprised myself with how much I enjoy the purer Trance form of it.
 
I believe we have a lot of people on the forum who, like me, enjoy the trance of days gone by. for current stuff I really cannot help, but I'm sure @Ikoda can. also, I'm sure we have a thread somewhere with the best trance classics? or at least a list with people's favourite trance tunes? do a quick search if you haven't.

I’m always confused about how people seem to talk about trance almost pre and post the 90s, or ‘old’ and ‘new.’ Why did it change so much around that time period? The older stuff sounds so much better so why aren’t people making it in that style anymore?
 
Trance was my gateway into dance music and although I find myself immersing into melodic techno now, I still listen to modern trance on a regular basis. Granted some is still borderline EDM, but you can really find some great trance music if you look for it. ASOT in Amsterdam next month has sold out with 35,000 capacity and with Shine & Armin's night on the island, the genre is definitely re-surging a little I would say.

With the uplifting, progressive & emotive 'tale of us' sound I would listen to Aly & Fila, Dan Stone & Markus Schulz sets.

If you enjoy the harder sound of Kearney & O'Callaghan I would say Jordan Suckley, Sean Tyas & Simon Patterson.

Psy Trance has really becoming a popular sub-genre within the trance family, this is really intense stuff but maybe give Liquid Soul & Neelix a listen.

Trance has been declared dead by some for around fifteen years now but with the loyal & vocal support the genre still possesses, i feel like their will always be a place in dance music for trance!
 
Eddie haliwell is probably the best live DJ I've ever seen
I saw him at an "intimate" gathering on NYE 2011 in Puerto Rico, and it was probably the most fun I have had. :)

I say "intimate" because it was a party for 5000 or so people at the convention center, but it was divided into 7 separate salons. He was a headliner, but since the trance/ house/ techno scene is limited there, it ended up with him and a group of maybe 20 people loosing our shit for about 3 hours or so.
 
only qualified to comment on the early years but i’d urge any beginners to start with the classic labels eg noom, eye Q, harthouse, platipus, R&S (+ the React comps)

the names that did it for me were abfhart, torsten fenslau, jam & spoon, sven vath, red eye, legend b, union jack, emmanuel top, dance 2 trance, jones & stephenson, age of love, oliver lieb, dj scot project, country & western, cj bolland.. (some of you hadn’t yet been conceived)

i posted a load of vids in that classics thread stivi mentioned
 
there is a really good article somewhere about the roots of trance but I can't find it. To summarise, I think it basically all really starts sonically with Vangelis, Alan Parsons, Tangerine Dream and endless beardy 70s prog rock - and culturally with the whole hippy thing in Ibiza / India - start date? 1968? before the synthesizer gurus like Jean Michel Jarre made things more mainstream with Oxygene. One of the reasons why there is this constant tension in dance music is that some people go back to the black, soul American tradition which inspired disco and house whilst others draw on a European, almost symphonic style of music arguably stretching all the way back to the classical composers - and Trance has that direct lineage to the latter. I think Paul Van Dyk understandably gets defensive when critics accuse his music of being soulless because he came out of a totally different tradition in communist East Berlin, which owed nothing whatsoever to the US. Where it all got very interesting though is where the 2 traditions met. Black American producers listening to Depeche Mode, Moroder and Kraftwerk imports and accidentally creating techno out of it. I think I lost interest in trance partly because it got formulaic and partly because I got into house in a big way from 97/98 onwards, thanks largely to the French Touch scene making house exciting and funky again - and there was no way back from there. And there endeth your genre history lesson for today kids...
 
Any educated Spotlighters out there who can point me in the direction of the best artists and events in the U.K so I can further explore this mysterious genre!??

I may be an outlier around here, but I started with trance around 2010 and that's still my first love. It's what got me going to Ibiza in the first place, and the trance parties there are still what I most look forward to when I go back.

@ComingHome listed some great choices of artists to check out. And yes, I'm a big fan of Jordan Suckley too -- and he often blends some techno into his sets. (In fact, you might want to check out the subgenre of "tech-trance" that kinda walks the line there).

For U.K. events, I'm most connected with what's going on around London. One coming up soon is Liberation -- 2nd February at Fabric (yes, trance at Fabric). It's a new event (I think), and a daytime party, but with a solid lineup of top trance DJs that may be in line with what you're looking for. Their second stage is listed as being all vinyl and classics too. If you're interested, don't hesitate as it's almost sold out.

If you're looking for something around London a little later in the year, check out Trance Sanctuary (they're on Facebook). They put on a handful of really fun (imho) trance parties each year, along with usually one or two boat parties on the Thames.

And there's certainly a lot more going on around the U.K. -- I know there are competing parties in Manchester and Glasgow just that same weekend as Liberation.
 
If you looking for uplifting Trance you wont go far from with the Above and Beyond Anjuna Beats albums around 2003 - 2008. Smith & Pledger also released some awesome tracks around that time. They track Amsterdam is quality imo.

Since you posted this thread I've spent the last few days listening to some old stuff. Haven't listed to trance since 2013 due to the way the genre went. Trance was my first love :)
 
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