Beat Explorers

The commercial storm seems to have eventually past; the Trance scene has been left battered and bruised. It’s tired, jaded and lost all dignity. This storm has created utter confusion amongst the residents of the Trance community, the skills, tools and talent they had adhered over the years were completely overlooked and deemed insignificant, replaced with egotistical bullish marketing. This once great music genre attracted the elite producers of the World who produced forward thinking avant-garde music. This in return attracted Hollywood movie directors such as the Matrix whom used Trance music for its sound track. Consequently Progressive Trance was born; Sasha, Digweed and Way out West playing a big part in this (many people reading this wont remember these wonderful proud great days). 

House, Electro and Dubstep are now King, and the storm have moved in that direction. The corporate are abandoning the sinking Trance ship and heading for where the money now lies dropping their now worthless Trance tag. ‘None genre’ seems to be the new trend now, along with Trouse as they abandon ship. So how does that make us true Trance musicians feel.

The ones that have dedicated our lives to this genre we feel so passionate about. Angry? Bitter? I think relived is the right word. We can now get on with the job in hand of making music void of Internet marketing games, and presence. We’ve lost a few good men on the way though, shame how they got totally overlooked.

Yes I’ve got a reputation of ranting, but my honest words have bought likewise people to my doorstep. More and more feeling my exact pain and frustration. I’m talking about HUGE names in the industry phoning and emailing me on a weekly basis that got drawn into the marketing race. They’re tired of spending most of their week satisfying social media sites due to unnecessary pressure when they should be making music. I mean making the music they actually want instated of adhering to commercial pressure. They’re falling in love with music again.

Experimenting with sounds, creating new sounds and rhythms, pushing the boundaries of their production skills. It’s turning into the good old days again. We have a community of likewise friends. Almost everyday I’m calling my close friend Laurent (Airwave), we’re getting excited as we listen to each other’s experimental sounds we’ve made. Rik (The Digital Blonde) hounds me with Youtube clips as he reminisces with old tracks, gathering ideas for his next projects.

I’m getting back to having personal relationships with promoters, clubs and festivals, something that was stripped away with the corporate world. Again the excitement is evident as we help forge a new way forward with each other’s valuable ideas and advice. The close community is getting stronger and closer, there’s no more competition between labels, and we are all one. I’ve had many a conversation helping and rescuing labels, Platipus being one off them.  Yes I may rant, but I’m 1000% active in the background speaking to many and helping.

As things stand today, specialist Trance producers/DJ’s will find it difficult to get any form of support in the media as this is dominated by the more commercial World. We have some wonderful music and superb DJ’s out there that the World needs to know about. We have some of the most amazing club nights and festivals that are being missed off the radar.

I have a vision of putting these great assets all in one place. A place for likeminded people to gather the information they want. A place to find new music releases, discover new DJ’s and club nights. These are the places where new working relationships are born that in return can create new club events. These places used to be records shops years ago; they created a community of likewise people. We can use the same technology that had a hand in killing the Trance scene, to rebuild the Trance scene by using the Internet. The natural place is a website dedicated to specialist Trance enthusiasts. As you could imagine my life is pretty hectic touring, producing and running a record label. I wish I could dedicate 100% of my time to running a website, but I can’t. I can however stand firmly behind this project (along with fellow colleagues) to ensure this venture will be successful. I’ll put my name firmly behind this venture.

I need volunteers, fellow specialist Trance enthusiasts to dedicate their time to make this happen. Web developers. Journalists. Club reviewers. Music reviewers. We need input and advice from all angles. It’s a pretty intense project. Yes I say volunteers, because this generally filters out the corporate people from the passionate people. There will be rewards and jobs at the end of this project. Do I have a crazy vision? Let me know and if you want to be involved. Darren in my office will be keen to hear from you: darren@joof.co.uk

From what I’m hearing on a daily basis and from what I see and hear on the street and what I see in forums, I firmly believe 2012 will be the year of the resurgence of the more pure form of Trance.

- John 00 Fleming

Every trance fan knows Above & Beyond, yet I feel their softer, more subtle work goes generally unnoticed by the large majority of trance fans, the fans that get their trance fix from radio shows like A State of Trance, Trance Around The World and Global DJ Broadcast.

Breaking Ties is a track from Above & Beyond’s vocal alias, Oceanlab. The flow mix that was on this release is a beautiful, haunting rendition of the original banging version that made the rounds in 2008.

Filmic was the opener to Above & Beyond’s 2011 album, Group Therapy, a house focused album that honed in on this year’s trend of slower, groovier tracks compared to the 140bpm arpeggiated basslines of yesteryear. Above & Beyond have been starting a lot of their sets with a shortened version of this, it works incredibly well.

Filmic is built on consistent piano chords, sweeping strings and an otherworldly chorus of chanting, all of which build to a stunning crescendo. It is trance without being trance. If only the entire album was as good.

I made this post on trancefix.nl, and though it’s about trance, it can really apply to your preferred EDM genre. If you care about music but you’re saying it’s dead, then you’re doing yourself a disservice. Get out there and do a bit of crate digging!

What annoys me most about people hearkening the death of trance is that there’s actually a shitload of good new trance being made, it’s just not being made by the big names that people have relied on for the past 10 years, but for some reason, people don’t care about new music unless it has a big name attached to it.

It’s this ridiculous, frustrating cycle to see and people aren’t breaking away from it. 

Every thread with a big name in it is just:

‘Baww, this new <Insert Your Favourite Artist> release sucks, why can’t they make good tracks like <Some track from before 2010>!’

Yes, it does suck, so stop looking to them to reliably make good trance, and find some new artists that are making good new trance.

There are more labels than Armada and Enhanced. Stop being spoon fed the same old garbage by lame radio shows like ASOT and TATW and find some new shit yourself, it’s really not that hard. Dig through some random labels on Beatport, hunt through Discogs or YouTube, have a listen to some of the up-and-comers in the TF User Tracks section, hell, message me and I’ll be more than happy to give you some suggestions.

For every artist that moves over to commercial/mainstream garbage *cough* Arty, Emery, Armin, SvD, a million other names in recent months *cough* there are a hundred other newcomers or under-appreciated established artists that are already making quality trance that can easily take their place. The stalwarts of trance can’t live forever, isn’t it about time we start focusing on some new artists that can create their own legacies?

Trance is far from dead, it’s just the fans that won’t do the research that are the problem.

Arty is somewhat of a wunderkind, and everyone is making a fuss about him at the moment, either because they love his feel good tunes or his top notch production skills, or because they aren’t liking the fact that he so quickly jumped ship from Trance to make somewhat generic, more shallow tracks for the masses.

His talent for remixing and ‘updating’ classics is undeniable, as not only has he remixed legends such as Kyau & Albert and Tilt, but he had the impossible task of remixing a rave staple and widely regarded classic, Ferry Corsten’s Punk. Arty somehow pulled it off with a remix that ended up a huge hit, rekindling many partygoers love for Punk, and the remix aided the spread of the emerging cross-genre of trance and house, affectionately dubbed ‘Trouse’ by some.

Like him or not, Arty is making waves and has definitely got the opportunity to shape the massive festival EDM scene that’s been blowing up in the past couple of years.