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Trance ain't Trance

D

Darkblade

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May 30, 2000
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OK to keep this less of a rant and more of a sort of semi serious comedy sketch you have to imagine this as if I am Chris Rock going full steam ahead....
Bah! I am annoyed. Just came back from Thailand on the luverly little island of Koh Phangan. You know? That little island where there is a huge doof type thing on a 4km stretch of beach every full moon? Yeah, well. It would be much better if you could dance on sand. But the Magic Milkshakes are great
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Anyway...down to the point. Whilst walking along the beach you notice that there are a gazillion different styles of electronic music. Everything from tech house to happy hardcore (groan) to psy trance and reggae. But what I am most pissed off about is the fact that the word Trance seems synonymous to Anthem. Yes, the humble Anthem is no longer an Anthem and the humble Trance is no longer Trance.
Back in the days when trance was emerging we had the likes of No Fate by Zyon and The V.S. by Virtual Symmetry. Not to mention the Kinderlied Part II by Cygnus X...basically anything by Cygnus X, etcetera...etcetera... Now all we seem to have is anthemy stuff like Godspeed by BT and Gouryella by Gouryella. Even all the Binary Finary stuff is Anthemy Trance. WHERE IS THE REAL STUFF EH?
OK now I know a lot of people like this anthemy stuff, and don't get me wrong...I love some of these tracks myself...but don't you find that anthem after anthem starts to sound kind of similar after a while? For example...play an anthem track, say, I Need Your Lovin' (Like The Sunshine) by Marc Et Claude then immediately afterwards play another one like, say, Gouryelly by Gouryella. Have a listen and you will find similarities there. Then play another then another and keep it up for a while. Don't they all seem to follow the same sort of theme.
Also I like to dance. I am a good dancer. I enjoy dancing. The thing I hate most about anthems is that part where they build and build then as they are about toigo right back into it they have a pause for 4 beats then bring in the chorus. Now here I am doing my nice floaty hand parts then anticipating the reemergance of the big chorus I throw my head back and do a few quick dance steppy things and right when I leap into a big hardcore dancing feat with feet and arms flashing every which way the music stops, I can dance to this non music no problem but I sit there going hard at nothing and people MUST look at me strangely. I wish for once they would just get on with the damned track! It sounds liek their sequencer broke at just the wrong time. Now this wouldn't matter so much if only 1 or 2 songs did this in a set, but Oh No...1 or 2 pauses isn't enough is it? NO! They have to do it to EVERY damned track don't they?
Yeah well I write music, mainly trance and acid, and I don't have that problem with the stuck sequencer. MY equipment works perfectly. I wonder how these people who are fortunate enough to afford a gazillion dollars worth of Synths and Samplers and Effects Modules etc... can have so much trouble with their $100,000 home studios.
Maybe I should quit the whole dance scene and take up belly dancing...
DB
 
I know exactly what you mean with the sequencing and build-ups. I can't remember who but one or two of the Dj's in the voodoo room at home are always giving me the shits with their over exagerated buildups, like they do a nice normal build up then a good pause *queue me going nuts on the floor and feeling like a knob* and then more of a buildup (some of it isn't even a build up it's so shit lol) and THEN after about 10-20 seconds of "building" the music comes back. Ugh, it shits me, but it's a price I'm very prepared to pay for the quanitity of great tunes being pumped out week after week
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I know what you mean Darkblade, if you tell people you like trance these days, they think BT or Oakenfold, when you really mean stuff they wouldn't have heard of, possibly even more well known producers like Union Jack...
Distinctions between styles of trance is hard to narrow down tho, so trance isn't just trance even if it is trance... What would you class the Platipus label as? Some of their compilations have had tracks from typical anthem style through to ambient, through to psy-trance... Yet I'd still class the label as a whole as 'just trance'
And then there's the deeper harder trance, which is really still just trance... The Noom label springs to mind, can't remember any specific tracks tho...
But all the more anthem trance that is produced these days is a little stale... But then the majority approves, so it keeps coming out... The Reactivate series used to be awesome, even though it too contained a lot of the more popular 'anthem' tracks, but these days it's not up to the same standard... I hope reactivate 17 doesn't let me down...
 
Nice thread.
I'd have to agree, though i do love a lot of commercial-relatively- anthemish trance the older better stuff ie reactivates 1-10 and such are absolutely wicked. The roots of trance will always be based around those sounds but because trance is what i dub the 'entry level' of electronic music we will see more of such tracks being produced and similar build ups being employed.
I know what my favourite cd's are - Trance Nation 1(can i please have it back Tika?), Peaktime, and a few of the reactivates, and this is where trance should remain.
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life is too important to be taken seriously --Oscar Wilde
 
I would agree with you to a certain degree there but I dont think you should under rate a really good trance/anthem buildup.
When 1998 by Binary Finary builds up and builds up before finally breaking it is just pure bliss. It sends shivers down my spine every time.
My main problem is with power trance, etc. It takes the beauty of the music and kills it by making it too hard and too fast for what it should be.
Thats my opinion on it anyway
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http://junglizm.envy.nu <---- Blatant Plug..
 
yes, i dont like it how music is played so fast these days. It just kills the groove. But the thing is that people only dance when its fast
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. If u played a track goin at 135 at a "rave" people would just stand there like morons. I believe this is due to the fact that many of them take drugs that make them "need" fast music. Its a bit sad that its come down to this cus i reckon electronic music is loosing its touch these days simply because it is getting too intense.
And on the topic of trance, i believe that trance is different these days becuase the technology is different. And people arent putting as much effort into it. They're scared of pushing the boundaries and prefer to stick to formulas that they know will work.
Another sad thing is that many people dont accept something thats a little different and prefer to stik to the same boring old shit.
im not saying evryones like that, but there certainly is a lot of people who are...
bla bla. hope that made sense, i need sleep and probly didnt phrase myself too well.
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B.T.S.O.M.
-When the lights are out, all woman are beautiful-
 
money money money....
like with a lot of music and business, something worked, something is popular so its done to death eg: boy bands
trance was the break-through style for dance music I think. It makes money in clubs and on stands so every man and his dog has piled into trance, cutting it up, taking bits and ignoring others... making anthems, making crap, even pushing the boundaries. Trance aint trance because as with all art it accumulates and changes with time, technology, money and demand. Basically there is such a volume of the stuff you have to sift through mountains of crap to find something YOU like.
As for anthem after anthem being played, thats not the styles fault, its the DJs. they are just playing to the middle of the crowd, that which has mass appeal (aka laziness IMO).
I think trance is a huge genre of which a majority have 'sold out' (I hate that term). Other genres with less mass appeal are still able to keep it relatively 'real'... less tainted by popularity and money.
blah blah blah ... (like komplex)
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"If you are a promoter and cannot represent drum and bass on a real soundsystem in a proper venue, please do not contact my booking agent. I do not wish to be used as 'bait' to steal money from drum and bass enthusiasts who rightfully expect value for thier hard-earned party-going dollar.Come correct or don't come at all (fucking for real). This has been a public service announcment from the planet of the drums kru." - Deiselboy, the 6th session.
 
Hey Darkblade - agree with you. Love a good anthem, dropped in at the right moment - but when its overdone it breaks up the dancing too much. DJ Nervous is guilty of that (IMO) too often - he's a good DJ and can play serious quality sets - but too often drops in these enormous breakdowns and then stands there waving his hands in the air with a sh*teating grin while you just stand there thinking "WTF? Where did the music go?" :-)
An anthem an hour keeps the doctor away - more is overkill!
 
Wow! A response. I didn't expect much from this thread.
But I agree with all of you. Union Jack are great! I miss all the old days *sniff*. I wish I was a very very rich guy who could fly everyone to a big castle and hire all the old DJ's to play all of the old tracks
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Luv you guys *sniff*
DB
 
Hate to be another me too but... me too!!
The choon begins to build up...
I'm there feverishly dancing like a whirling dervish moving faster as the track builds.
Then as it's supposed to kick in really hard I do the above mentioned thrashing around, and the damned tune stops!!!
As soon as this happens I stop and turn around with a look on my face as if to say "That was NOT fair" and then by that time the tune has kicked back in again and I get straight back into it and all my worries sink back down waaay low into the recesses of reality where I currently am not. Good day!
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"Yes, I am one of the most despised and despicable of media monsters, that blight of corruption against morality and decency and law’n’order — one who chooses to partake of consciousness-altering flowering herbs and alchemical essences — a drug user!"
 
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