Graham Gold retires from Trance

[Neuro]

Saw this from the di.fm board and thought it might be of interest!

Legendary trance DJ Graham Gold has hung up his trance headphones to concentrate 100% on house music following his move 2 years ago to the Full Moon party Island of Koh Phangan, Thailand.

“It is TOTALLY impossible to keep up to date with 40 promos daily when on Thai Internet. I have always prided myself on being as upfront as possible, and am just not prepared to spend 3 days a week sitting on a pc downloading promos. That time should be spent in the studio.”

“Graham Gold’s influence on dance music cannot be understated and his weekly show on London’s Kiss 100 helped to define the musical tastes of a generation” says Chris Hampshire, boss of Recoverworld, which boasts the top UK trance labels Discover-home to Graham’s current release “Living In The Now” and Flux Delux which released the PVD/Armin/Oakenfold heavily supported “Glorified” in 2007. He rocketed into the DJ Mag Top 100 at 22 in 1997, spending 2 consecutive years at this position, 5 years in the Top 40 and a further 3 years in the Top 100. His label Good As label & Management Company looked after the UK diaries of Tiesto, Armin and Ferry Corsten from 1998-2001. (He was also the first UK promoter to bring them -as well as the Flash Brothers and many more-to the UK to play at Peach at London’s Camden Palace-one of, and for thousands of clubbers, THE best weekly trance party in the UK.) Armin, the world’s number one, still continues to say Graham played a big part in his success. Graham was also the A&R behind Mat Darey’s first ever UK top 20 hit “Liberation-Fly Like An Angel”, the massive “Outlaw” from Fu Man Chu which gained huge support from Pete Tong and “The Answer” from Aptness-all tracks still considered as HUGE Trance Classics.

But Graham admits to not seeing the writing on the wall when promoters started to book producer only djs. “I did produce, but always with an engineer. I had a top rated show on Kiss, my diary was full 12 months ahead, and never saw the need to get into production totally myself-plus I had no more time available-I was too busy!! When I realised I needed to, I bought a studio, learned Logic, took piano lessons, but I guess it was all just a bit too late! And when my son, Ben Gold, who is phenomenally successful, now plays the big gigs I did some years ago-like Plaza Of Nations in Vancouver and Circus in LA-it really is time to move on!!”

Graham of course was there at the beginning, so playing house is just returning to his roots. “I have this huge back catalogue of classics that I can draw on for inspiration, and find producing house much easier than trance as it’s generally more technical and less musical-and I can do that!! I have almost finished a reworking of a classic I loved to bits from ’93 plus almost there’s a co-pro with Mark Wilkinson from Kidology fame, that is almost ready, so I am very confident I can make the full transition without too many problems. 99% of my sets these days are house gigs anyway, so this move just seems the right thing to do at this time. And the great thing is my house sets are genre defying-there is so much brilliant music out there."

Retrieved from http://forums.di.fm/trance/graham-gold-true-to-trance-july-2010-mix-201533/ at the time of this post.

[Max Kane]

An absolute legend!

Once he moved to Thailand it was always something of a death knell for his mainstream career but fair play to him for taking the plunge.

I was lucky enough to meet him after my very first gig at ElectronicSessions in London. The other DJs on the bill (including Super8, Jonas Steur & others) sat around drinking beers with Graham listening to some of his more colourful tales of excess during his career, he had everyone captivated and still had such a passion for the scene. I'm sure with Ben doing so well we'll see more of him in the future.

[Number2Fan]

That was a good read. Thanks for posting. Used to listen to him on kiss before kiss was shit. Heard a record at global that I always credit graham with introducing me too, blu room - spread love and altho I knew he was living and gigging in Thailand now, I hadn't realised he was still a trance dj I thought he'd moved on already.

I remember phoning him on kiss, and thinking he was a black bloke???

I don't know why!

[Ian_k]

he signed 1 of my fav ever records

beatpusher - murto

it was on his Good:as label

[Gregg]

He was quality back in the day. Sorry to see another legend jumping the great trance vessel. Still, on the plus side, there have been some great DJ's enter the trance scene recently; Simon Patterson has been playing some awesome sets of late.