Again, a rip-off from SttE and Ingram, for which I feel suitably ashamed.

Now, I am a bit of a rock/indie chick, albeit with a healthy smattering of old rock and a current taste fro Bloc Party and the Chemcial Brothers. I was getting a,lift the other day and was subjected to 2 hours of trance, which grew on me very quick;y. However, I know nothing about it. Partly, because I am a radio listener and I have never really heard trance on the radio, except for occasioanlly on Radio 1. So I went t HMV yesterday and was faced with mountains of Trance compliations, all with various sub-genres that meant nothing to me. Result: I bought nothing.

So could I possibly have a quick crash-course from any knowledgable (sp?) persons? Just a few explanations of the various types, a few names to get me started, would be great and much appreciated.

NO!!!

Okay - I was being flippant - just keep your love of trance under wraps from electronic snobs...

What is currently known as Trance is a bit different to what it used to be. In the early 90s, trance was the melodic pyschedelic offspring of techno. Some bands developed a faux-mystical mythology. Bands like Transwave and Astral Projection called their songs 'Vision Quest'. There were further sub-genres like Goa Trance, but I won't go into that right now...

I used to like all that stuff, then along came bullshit like Sash's 'Ecuador' in the mid-to-late 90s, and this became popular for a while.

Now, trance in record stores is the more uplifting but electronic side of popular clubbing music. Among the good artists, and you should check these out are - Paul Van Dyk, Tiesto and Ferry Corsten - excellent DJs and artists in their own right.


Here's an excellent guide to Trance:
Trance Guide

Thank you Jessop, what a lovely chap you are (the flippancy notwithstanding)!

Pickle, if you want to try a compilation, I 'd say as a rule *don't*, but a really excellent one from last year is Ferry Corsten's 'Infinite Euphoria'.

It has everything from current pop/club act Deepest Blue, to Vangelis, the Prodigy and Barber's Adagio for Strings! Superb.

yeah, please steer clear of trance.

for your own mental stability.

Thanks, I'll give it a bash

The Euphoria albums are a good place to start - the 'chilled out' euphoria series is really excellent as well, it's ambient trance mixed with various other types of downtempo electronica and dub, really mellow cool stuff.

Placing a Euphoria album in the microwave for ten seconds improves the sound quality around 70%. This trick only works with trance and opera i'm afraid.

nothing wrong with a bit of trance.

I agree but from about 2000 onwards the downward spiral began and went from:

DJ Tiesto to

DJ Sammy (if there were a vomiting smily he would be placed here)

DJ Sammy..pass me a gun. It's shoot a Finn day.

Is she the one who covered Boys of Summer? That was one of the most hideous songs I've ever heard.

I believe so, but isn't Sammy a bloke? Anyway, tracks like that are the extreme end of the trance spectrum, where things get very cheesy and commercial. It's the tendancy for a lot of European artists to fuse their own awful euro-pop with trance beats to play in clubs, and the result is stuff like that. There is better trance out there, but you can see why some people get annoyed at it!

an album to check out is Agnelli and Nelson's Hudson Street - top album from Larne's top dance duo.

Trance used to mean stuff off the Dragonfly label or Flying Rhino. Now its just bollocks nosebleed music for chavs to play at full pelt in their Ford Fiestas.

Check out anything on Platipus or one of Sasha's Global Underground Mix CD's for some excellent trance action.

Yeah, good call on Sasha - his Involver LP is really good too, although that's straying into progressive and breaks territory rather than trance. Intelligent Dance Music all the same.

I just tend to stick to the Euphoria complilations, they have 'bangin beats' that are very uplifting.

trance makes my ears cry

That is possibly one of the nastiest images I could wish to imagine.

Do they cry bloody audio tears?

Seriously, it's not ALL bad.

Ah I've just foun the DJ Sammy smily:

I dont know much about trance but my m8 has a album calle dthe mash up mix which is very good. It has a great mix of kenkraft 4000 - zombie nation and some other song called pump it up.