good trance

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
also, as far as I can tell Lunatic Asylum - Meltdown isn't anywhere on YT but that is another hard af trance classic
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
and a ton of proto-trance, roots of trance, trance before trance, whatever classics - by far the best/my favorite era of trance

best dark post-EBM proto-trance pan flute jam ever (there are some absolutely next level hilarious late 80s Italian "live performance" Atahualpa vids, btw)

just on the right side of ridiculous for me. this also definitely has a bit of a What Time Is Love vibe.

 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
big personal fave. apparently a big early Goa classic.

New Zone - along with Boy Records, Exist Dance, early R+S - etc is a big roots of trance touchstone

speaking of Exist Dance (same guy who did Eden Transmission) - from when trance was actually trance-inducing psychedelic weirdo proper drug music

 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
there was a parallel EBM/New Beatish/proto-trance scene in Valencia - Megabeat, Otto Records - that for whatever reason (language barrier?) has gone mostly unacknowledged

Torsten Fenslau obv a huge name in the early history of trance. he has a ton of classic tunes but this - w/Oliver Lieb of later Spicelab fame- is probably my favorite. hard af.

and finally this loose Kraftwerk reinterpretation
 

Numbers

Well-known member
All by Steve Cop and CJ Bolland on R&S. I suspect Steve Cop to be the better producer though. The later Bolland stuff (Camargue and especially Prophecy) was much less inspired.

 

blissblogger

Well-known member
ooh look, somebody at Pitchfork wrote a defense of trance a few weeks ago

https://pitchfork.com/features/article/in-defense-of-trance/

i wonder why, now of all times - it's not particularly in the re-ascendance, i don't think. Is it?

actually i'm a bit surprised that trance still exists - but then again everything else from the 90s does - drum and bass, gabber, etc

i suppose it is also a flavour within the mush that is EDM's stadium rave fodder
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
having actually read the piece now

seems it is big in Eastern Europe, which makes a lot of sense

and then you have someone like Lorenzo Senni coming with an arty intellectual take on it



i like this quote from the piece:

“One of the main functions of trance music is to simulate a space,” says Heinrich Deisl, a music journalist and radio producer in Vienna. “In Germany, we call this fluchtpunkt, a space in nowhere that can be filled with all your ideas, projections, dreams, hopes, imaginations. It’s not connected to reality at all. A simulation.”

Fluchtpunkt is the glass-half-full redescription of the glass-half-empty concept freizeit knast or "leisure prison" (which I learned from Achim Szepanski of Mille Plateaux, although i suspect he got it from one of the Frankfurt School)
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
ooh look, somebody at Pitchfork wrote a defense of trance a few weeks ago
that was much better/more interesting than I thought it'd be

confirms the impression I've always had of Van Buuren etc commercial trance as largely working class music of eastern + southern Europe, akin to gabber in Holland

a key line to me was "it is a modern European folk music" immediately made me think of turbofolk

it also made me think of visiting Graceland, simultaneously the ultimate monument to kitsch and as close as you get in the U.S. to visiting an ancient European shrine

see also the description of kids in rust belt Poland being very reminiscent of juggalos (and before that, nu metal)

another vastly popular rust belt prole thing that is universally mocked/reviled

the weird thing about commercial trance is that it then also has that higher end Ibiza etc side, which nu metal etc very much did not
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
as ever when discussing something like as a person with "good" taste I think it's important to approach it on its own terms

i.e. it's always easy to conflate Van Buurin/Corsten etc - which is utter irredeemable garbage - with just sneering at its audience

as when the one guy in the piece mentions hip DJs occasionally playing trance ironically to laugh at it

Senni seems to have a good philosophical approach even if I haven't been remotely interested in any of his music I've heard thus far

on that appreciating things on their own terms tip, this is one of my favorite mixes and YT vids of all time

also confirms my belief that virtually all that stuff sounds way better in every way slowed way down
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
i suppose it is also a flavour within the mush that is EDM's stadium rave fodder
I'd argue it's the main flavor, sonically and especially aesthetically

this is the other thing talking about trance - as someone here (crowley maybe?) said, it's long since won massively. it doesn't need the validation of critics or musos.

commercial trance is the Thomas Kinkade of dance music
 

Numbers

Well-known member
Fluchtpunkt is the glass-half-full redescription of the glass-half-empty concept freizeit knast or "leisure prison" (which I learned from Achim Szepanski of Mille Plateaux, although i suspect he got it from one of the Frankfurt School)

It sounds definitely very Adorno-like, but I never came across the precise expression. Might be Szepanski aforising Adorno. Is he teaching now?
 

firefinga

Well-known member

Somebody mentioned CJ Bolland's "Camargue" already. Dunno if it really qualifies as Trance though. Nevertheless I think it's a superb track.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
I'd argue it's the main flavor, sonically and especially aesthetically

this is the other thing talking about trance - as someone here (crowley maybe?) said, it's long since won massively. it doesn't need the validation of critics or musos.

commercial trance is the Thomas Kinkade of dance music

Trance lived well outside of critics and hipsters' circles. And in Germany even pretty much outside the established dance media. The trance scene has built their own independent infrastructure - had their own shops, parties, ravers etc. You wouldn't get records labelled "Trance" in the "proper" shops. Records didn't get reviews, clips weren't played on Germany's MTV rival "Viva-TV". It's a bit like Gabba/HC-Techno, which got some coverage from let's say 91-95, but then dropped from the radar of "establishes" + "proper" Journalists, DJs, etc. Amazing really given the scale of Techno in germany during the 1990s, 2000s and actually Germany is still THE techno country in 2018
 
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CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Do we count the sort of generic electronic dance records that existed from say... 02-06 that would sort of set up the industry that EDM was built upon as 'trance' btw?

One of the best arguments for the popularization of trance in critical circles (if we do consider such as trance) has to be araabmuzik's "Electronic Dream" album. A guy who has no pretensions of trance as being bad or cheesy, but was constantly using it in his rap productions and then later essentially made an album that could be considered a bunch of remix/hijackings (I believe the project more or less got derailed because deadmau5 took action against him).

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