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First of all, the sound must get rid of supersaws, cliche lead-lines and anthemic end-of-summer melodies, large breaks and overproduction. Enough is enough! I took a listen to these new tracks my Mike Nichol and Kamil Polner, and i couldn't distinquish one melodic element from another. Its like a maelstrom of ultra-reverbarated saw elements which in the end sound disturbing and unpleasant to the ear. Not to mention the trance-lead by numbers. BPMs sould also decrease. Now of course, you have this slower trance, proggier, "Anjuna-Deep" style or whatever, and this is boring as hell, the melodies are IMO cliche and uninspired.
Trance should drop all these elements and rediscover itself. And this probably doesn't only go to Trance, but to Progressive and Techno and House and generally, to the majority of current EDM. Its just that Trance has become the most formulaic of the lot, causing the most boredom and hate!
Yes, anthem trance was good and i'll personally remember the end-of-90s "Epic" sound with Solar Stone, Chicane, Katcha, Lost Tribe, Paul Van Dyk, Kamaya Painters, Airwave, Push etc...those were great sutff and they'll be remembered, the great epic, lush sound of the end-of 90s. But, you know, now its 2008...its been 10 years since this stuff were at their peak. Its stupid to still try to make something similar to that older stuff just because it works at the dance-floor. Not only you currently produce a low-quality product by using once-great elements in a generic way, (at times just for the puspose of selling), you also "distort" the sound's past, giving the impression that the music was always shit, and that you were also stupid for listening.
My opinion is drop the BPMs, give trance its lost early-90s rhythm. Back in that era, the rhythms were integrated with the melodies. They were not just providing the fast, generic backbone of the track. Furthermore, produce melodies with more types of synth-sounds rather than the typical saw-synth. IMO, the use of more analogue, real, organic instruments like violins, cellos and quitars could give an extra arty twist to the sound ("art-trance" anyone?) and a more refreshing feel, free of that plastic riffage which we are used to.
The most important: Stop producing "Anthems" for the sake of producing them. The era of anthem-trance is over. Its time to make trance with more varied melodies, atmospheres and moods and not the typical "end-of-summer-anthem-nostalgia" which almost all tracks from 1997 seem to express. Its time to make happy melodies and sad melodies, angry melodies, dark melodies, enigmatic melodies, uncertain melodies, post-apocalyptic melodies, heavenly melodies , utopian melodies, nightmarish melodies, hellish melodies, epic melodies, mysterious melodies, mystical melodies, dynamic melodies, ecstatic melodies, universal melodies. There is such a vast range of human emotions, such an endless combination of musical layers and so much advanced technology, and despite that, musicians have become one-trick ponnies, pressing the same buttons and using the same tricks, tricks which are only secret and unknown to the very young of listeners (before realizing themselves that these tricks are quite old...). Music, Technology and the Human Mind are vast. Why just use the 1%?
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