|
| quote: | Originally posted by Cobalt
Really, I think this is more recent than that. Even the Anthem Crash and the 2000-01 aftermath were part of the evolution of trance. Things only really began to stagnate in 2002.
I think your idea of trance ending its growth in 1998 or something is much like saying a person ends his or her growth in life at twenty-five because from then on they cease to physically change. Letting a sound flesh out within a paradigm is also part of a musical progression, which trance was doing in the 1998-2001 time period.
|
I disagree. I had gotten sick of all the paint-by-numbers anthems as far back as 98, even pitting Oakenfold's "Tranceport" as the death knell of good trance, due to its formless, aimless nature. It represented what I hated most about trance DJs and trance sets of the period: that they had become uninteresting marketing extravaganzas, human jukeboxes who don't mix, but just piece together the day's chartoppers.
I mean, just look at it. 12 tracks. 12 TRACKS!!! What the hell kind of boring set only has 12 tracks? That's not DJing, that's being a glorified stereo. That the tracks are different flavours of Epic, Anthem, Dream and Progressive trance hardly makes up for the fact that the set as a whole is a bunch of disjointed, unrelated different set pieces. Remember when trance sets were about taking you on a journey? Tranceport is no journey. There's no tension or release in any of it. It's just a bunch of top10 hits. The amazing thing, however, is that this formula worked, and every Ibiza Trance Nation Tunnel Mission Force Club Anthems vol. 847 tried to rape the same formula (with varying degrees of success).
That the music managed to fester for a few years longer had nothing to do with its value or self-worth, but rather its pop accessibility. Audiences not keen on earlier trance in its bizarre, spacey, repetitive, unresponsive ethereal state could now enjoy it at the top40 level due to its easily memorable hooks and pop melodies. When that happened, there was the big rave explosion, in concert with the rise of Big Beat and French/club house. But the music itself was so shallow and unfulfilling that those who engorged themselves on it eventually grew tired when it lost its effect on them. Hence the "9 month raving career" paradigm. They simply burnt out and left. The only thing that kept it going, then, was the influx of newbies. More people were coming into the scene than going out of it, and this hyper-inflated the status of the DJs and the value of the music to ridiculous proportions. Like the dot-com bubble, any trend this flimsy was bound to come crashing down like a house of cards, as soon as it reached its saturation point.
That critical mass came in 2001. Much of the genre's elite fled, going instead to house or progressive or other, low-key scenes. But the rest? Now this is interesting, and this explains exactly what the dutch trance scene is now all about : the rest decided to go for bigger, fuller, more euphoric anthems. Like a drug, the emotional effect of last month's hit anthem keeps wearing off, so each track they release has to up the dosage to maintain the high and to keep the few remaining stragglers clinging to it.
People's tolerance for anthem trance is now extraordinarily high, which is why the big, overblown "wall-of-sound" anthems have to keep getting bigger and more euphoric to maintain their interest. As you can guess, this simply cannot last, and the anthem trance producers are simply working on borrowed time.
|
