The Current State of Trance Music?


Max Kane

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I've certainly noticed alot of people who ' didn't like dubstep ' change their minds over the last couple of weeks.

Couple of quality live sets is all it takes.

It was the same when trance was just starting out ;)

In my personal experience, I've found the opposite to be true. I really liked it at the start, so fresh and new sounding. Always seeked out some new dubstep, just to give myself something different to listen to that I could really get in to. Now, I'm not so keen on it. While I still think some of it's pretty good, a lot of it's getting a bit samey for me.It doesn't excite me as much as it did in the beginning, and I can take or leave it. I saw someone call it 'this decades speed garage', and some of that rings somewhat true for me. Great new sound, but I do wonder about it's shelf life. Again, this is just my own personal experience with it, I'd love to see it last and grow for years and years.

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Dubstep is just the current craze. It's never good when an underground sound crosses over to mainstream and makes the charts and radio 1 playlists etc. That always seems to have a negative effect on the music coming out of the scene eventually. I'm sure some of the underground dubstep of a couple of years ago could have likely been good and a refreshing sound. All the stuff I've ever heard though has been the crossover stuff since Im not into the scene and I've not liked any of the commercial stuff at all. That Nero track they play on radio 1 all the time is dire for example.

I guess trance had it's hay day of being big in the charts too but there weren't that many tunes that went big which I really liked. I think the underground scene kept producing quality stuff which was good. Some tracks were certainly ruined by being overplayed though like Darude - Sandstorm to name just one. Still a good tune but it was so overplayed at the time

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Nero - electron

:)

not sure about the remix you mention but there's a good Nero mix of Calvin Harris - you used to hold me

and the combination of trance with dub bass is what I'm liking the sound of too

from what I understand there's some nu skool jungle but I don't think I've experienced any yet. :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Coming back to this I went thru the trance top 100 on beatport last night (in a moment of boredom).

I know that the top 100 can often be the 'obvious' tracks and not feature the real gems of a given genre but my word there is some god awful trance music around at the moment :angry:

The only track I thought was anywhere near half decent was Dakota 'Sinners' and compared to previous Schulz tracks under that guise even that was pretty lame.

Recognised producers like Mat Zo, Kyau & Albert, Above & Beyond, Ronski Speed and many more are churning out some right shite at the moment - I'm glad I seldom go near the trance section and I promptly retreated back to the relative saftey of the prog house realm!

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Recognised producers like Mat Zo, Kyau & Albert, Above & Beyond, Ronski Speed and many more are churning out some right shite at the moment - I'm glad I seldom go near the trance section and I promptly retreated back to the relative saftey of the prog house realm!

This ^^

I actually don't miss retiring from DJ'ing at the moment because there's not one tune that makes me think "wow, I can't wait for this to come out".

I'm really off Trance at the moment. However, i'm really liking the Techno that's coming through at the moment - particularly now the 'banging' side of Techno seems to be coming back. Really liking the stuff that David Moleon and Omega Drive - plus some of Advent & Industrializer - are doing at the moment.

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That sounds cool Briggsy. I'd love to hear some new techno stuff I just don't know where to get hold of it. I still play trance as my main style but I never get it from Beatport. It might just be me but I think beatport is huge for house/electro but not so much trance. Audiojelly is more trance focussed as you can tell by the top 10 on the homepage always being trance. I tend to look there first, then trackitdown and juno. possibly there would be slightly better tunes on those site's charts but I know there is alot of crap out there as well.

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Techno has really boomed again in the last year or so. Umek is on fire right now and there are some really cool producers making excellent music.

Phunk Investigation make some wicked stuff (probably a bit slow for you guys - around 130 bpm) along with guys like Beyer, Voorn, Magitman, Alan Fitzpatrick and some of Babicz's stuff

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That sounds cool Briggsy. I'd love to hear some new techno stuff I just don't know where to get hold of it. I still play trance as my main style but I never get it from Beatport. It might just be me but I think beatport is huge for house/electro but not so much trance. Audiojelly is more trance focussed as you can tell by the top 10 on the homepage always being trance. I tend to look there first, then trackitdown and juno. possibly there would be slightly better tunes on those site's charts but I know there is alot of crap out there as well.

Yeah Beatport seems to be more House/Electro orientated.

I don't like Audiojelly at all - its over-saturated with fluffy A&B/Anjuna style fanny Trance with girly vocals that I absolutely detest.

Trackitdown is my store of choice - it has the best choice for the 'tougher' side of Trance and Techno. The only downside to Trackitdown is that they'll sell absolutely anything - so its overloaded with poor quality tunes from tiny, so-called labels. There's a lot of poorly mastered stuff on there too - but if you get past all of that, theres some real quality 'boshy' stuff on there.

djdownload is the cheapest though so I usually find my tunes on the other stores and then buy them from DJ Download afterwards.

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I always use beatport - for my tastes they are by far the best store out there.

They have exclusives that no other store can come close to and often they have these for anything up to six weeks.

If I can find a track for sale on DJDownload at the same time it comes out on beatport I will always buy it from there as they offer loyalty tokens and the player is way better.

I haven't used audiojelly for years now, they used to be good for Armada promos but since Armada labels are now shit there's no point

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As humans we are forever stimulated by new information (music, news, etc) and it is in our nature to never stop acquiring that.

This is good but it means we are never satisfied with our lot... finding new music is satisfying but for me now, I know what I like and I still get the same satisfaction finding old House tracks in digital format - because it's still "new" to me. :)

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I know what you're saying Quadrant and it's definitely true in my case.

BUT

It does still seem to me that a lot of what made trance music appealing is gone - some of the tracks are so unoriginal that it's painful listening

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It does still seem to me that a lot of what made trance music appealing is gone - some of the tracks are so unoriginal that it's painful listening

Yeah I agree. Its also frustrating when so many 'producers' have the same sound as other producers - probably because they're all paying the same guys to make those tracks for them. That's one of the reason why everything is sounding so 'samey' at the moment :(

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All good things must come to an end...

Doesn't mean we can't lament the fact that they do!

I just feel like trance music fell off a cliff in terms of quality. I mean my tastes have been changing over the last few years and it hasn't been as good as it was in 2004 since but there were still ample amounts of decent tracks and DJs until say two years ago when everything seemed to just stop and say 'that Gareth Emery has a good sound - let's copy that' and everyone started playing slower and floatier

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until say two years ago when everything seemed to just stop and say 'that Gareth Emery has a good sound - let's copy that' and everyone started playing slower and floatier

That's exactly the problem - everyone wants to be the worlds number 1 DJ now, so as soon as someone has some success with a sound, everyone else has to copy it. Deadmau5 introduced a unique sound a few years ago, it took off, became big - and then others copied. Sander van Doorn also had success with a specific sound - and then everyone copied that too.

Everyone produces now, and everyone is producing for one reason - knowing that a few successful tunes will bring in the DJ'ing gigs (because thats where the money is now).

If they're not copying someone elses sound, then they're paying to use someone elses sound instead.

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It's more about the money or fame than the sound.

Totally.

I think the fact that trance music has totally lost all relevance in mainstream circles has dictated that those wishing to make the extra big dollars (Tiesto et al) have had to really dillute their sound and cash in anyway they can.

Back in '99-2000 artists were making legitimate underground trance tracks which were designed for dancefloors and then incidentally enjoying cross-over success, or at worst adding a cheesy 'hooky' vocal to make the charts. That doesn't happen anymore, to make charts and big money you need to totally sell out.

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This might seem overly simplistic, but I think it comes down to the law of diminishing returns. What you have had a lot of becomes samey, and you like it less. Or get totally fed up with. There's only a certain level of real variation and newness you can get within any given genre of music. I love Dance music from chill out to techno - not hard techno, it's just an annoying racket. But I also really like good hip hop, R&B, rock, heavy rock etc. Variety is the spice of life. Dance is my biggest love. But if I just listened to Dance I think it would eventually become stale for me. That's just natural. More often becomes less. But I still believe there will be more good trance tunes. As someone has said we will just have to look harder for them.

Ahem. But did I not cover the salient points of this threadage in this post. I only mention it because I Am a Living God.

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Nature boy!!

I'm going to see Take That in July, very excited, I love Take That even through those early dance years I was buying Take That CDs, I wasn't full on following them round or owt tho, but I think Gary Barlow writes the most amazing moving songs.

I'm glad they reunited just in time for my 'going off trance' days.

I also think I've got old.

Still love dancing, still love the stuff in the archives here, and all the memories I have, but it's certainly a time gone by for me now, as were many times before.

I suppose before if I moved on from a genre a better genre was taking it's place, but nothing can compare to what we had 1998 - 2002 for me. I like a bit of dubstep, an odd vocal tune here and there too. But there are trance tunes I used to hear out that I actually loved, proper love stomach churning heart melting breakdowns, but that time has gone.

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