For many here it's just being a kind of hipster, it's hip to loath trance and criticize it's producers for being unimaginative.
For others it's a case of not liking the current sound of trance and the borification and popification of their beloved genre.
I can understand the first, but condemn it.
The second i also understand, i too hate much of the pop-trance around and the trance that mimics stuff that has already been done too much.

Yet i still believe that trance is very much alive and kicking.
I still hear new and original trance coming out, although it's drifting in a sea of worthless shat.
But isn't this true for any music style?
Gems adrift in seas of shat...?
I just happen to like trance more than any other style, even though my definition of trance is somewhat different than that of many people.
For me the trance of olden days is mostly not interesting enough because it's more hypnotic than harmonically melodic.

James Holden?
Oh, i found this gem by clicking around, i absolutely love this track:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=fWgrK...feature=related

quote:

Originally posted by THE_MARSBAR Since 1999 actually. Bought my first vinyls in the beginning of 2000. What is wrong with a music genre changing? I still think there are loads of underground trance music nowadays. But first I'd like to hear what "classic" track you'd call underground in particular, in order to define what you mean by underground. As trance isn't being played in mainstream radio anywhere that I know of! The last track you posted is cool, and yes In and out of love is a disgrace to trance music. But don't you think anything after that second track you posted was creative? For instance, what about : http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZzD7...feature=related ? How do you define creativity in trance music? According to you, trance IS dead, or what do you think? If so, did the big parties ruin it? Did DJMag's top 100 DJ list ruin it? Did Armin's radioshow ruin it?

There is nothing wrong with a music genre to change, but to change for the better, and do not misinterpret me, there were many creative tracks at those times and even today. No, I'm not giving the "oomgg trance iz dead" card, but it's popularity has sky-rocketed that the amount of idiots and unexperienced people listening to "trance" is amazing. For instance, I was once passing in a mall while "Going Wrong" was on radio and a couple of teenage girls we're saying "Gosh love this track etc". Trance isn't only a music-style, it's an entire culture, an entire culture spawned for the club, not to be played on radio. For that there is POP music.

I do not have anything against evolution and I myself was once a fan of uplifters - in my opinion that's what's so great about it, the variations in trance are amazing, everything from psychedelic to uplifting et cetera, and they all fall under the same genre. But it's too excessive, and that's where the problems lies. If you make an uplifter, then your friend wants to make an uplifter. People do not take things into their own hands, do not experiment, and that's why we have so many uplifting traks right now - because it's a bulletproof way of gettin signed by a big label such as Armada or Blackhole Recordings, labels bent on consumption, on traffic and making money.

You asked me about the big parties. My theory about it is that back in the days, the good days when Tijs and Armin produced good solid tracks, the scene wasn't as big. However, now that there are so many new producers bringing tracks, in order for them to maintain their producer/DJ superiority they have to do something extra. Making anotber uplifter doesn't take out of the crowd. That's the reason why Armin and Tiesto keep on remixing all these Justin Timberlake and so on. They have to do something extra to be ahead of the others - and of course, labels such as Sony BMG will give the remix parts to a guy that scored #1 or #2 on the "prestigious" DJ mag list.

Armin, Tijs and Above & Beyond have made different camps in which they have strongholded the scene by the balls (talked about this in previous posts as well). If you as a producer make something, you need to send it to them, to gain publicity. In this way Armin is spinning your record on Ibiza while you sit at home listening to your track on live stream or something. Markus Schössow once said "Trance isn't about talent, it's only politics" (I'm no fan of him, but it was a good quote).

Creativity is a hard, long, debateable subject. Even if there are tracks in all the genrés I do not like, I appreciate the style it was made, the work put into it, the master, the way certain parts fit with eachother, the whole package.

So do not blame your friends for sticking with techno, it's all we have left as it seems.

If you ask me in previous years what my favorite genre of music was in previous years, I would have either answered trance or progressive house without hesitation, depending on my current mood... but now I will just answer either prog or funky house, this was probably the first year I became seriously disillusioned with trance and what was going on with it, I've found very few trance songs in 2008 I actually enjoyed ("Hybrid Harm", "La Guitarra", and "Fake Awake" being the only that come to mind) - keep in mind I'd consider stuff like on Anjunadeep progressive and not strictly trance.

Here's what got to me:

-Over commercialization of the music, I know trance was heading this way but it hasn't been nearly as blatant as it was this year.
-Songs that sound like commercialized pop, First State bootlegs of the Plain White Tees (a band that's played on adult contemporary stations for Christ Sakes), Snow Patrol remixes, Going Wrong, etc. I didn't mind "Anthem" when it came out but that song was the beginning of the end for trance.
-Trance events getting even shittier in NYC. Every time I go to see a big name trance jock, the crowd is packed with guidos and perverted old Asian men. Even Ferry Corsten, who in previous years typically had a medium-sized but devoted crowd at his show, was packed this year with trash. The crowd for Armin has gotten uncontrollably bad, from previous years.
-Raping and pillaging of classic songs I grew up with. "Carte Blanche" being the perfect example, and Richard Durand, Cosmic Gate, Sean Tyas, Marcus Schossow being the main culprits.
-Too many songs sounding like templates, using the same structure/breakdown, same sounds, and really similar riffs. I blame bedroom producers trying their hardest to make uninspired songs that will get played on ASOT. Along with Armin pimping songs from the usual cookie-cutter producers like Aly and Fila and Filo and Peri.

I'm not the world's biggest minimal fan by any means, but the last thing you can say about the genre is that it's predictable. I haven't really found any other genre where I could go from absolutely loving one song and finding another song dull as dogshit.

"All the excitement that I felt in the mid-eighties, when I came across white labels in Chicago, and all the excitement I felt when people began doing drug-riddled events in Britain, which were later called "raves," but at that time were just drug-riddled events, you know, is gone. I feel there's just formalization, commodification, assimilation -- all the things that were the enemy in the seventies are back with a vengeance and it doesn't excite me. I was excited by music in the sixties because it was sexy, rebellious, and everyone hated it. It confused even me. I'd never come across it before, and I didn't know what the next sound was going to be. Adding to this appeal was the fact that often I couldn't go out and buy it anywhere. I couldn't see it on television and it wasn't in magazines, except scare stories saying it was destroying civilization. I liked that, you see. I think that's what we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to scare everyone. We're supposed to try and find things that are sexy. We're supposed to feel confused and exhilarated and to have experiences we never had before. We're not meant to get jaded. We're not meant to know the ruling peer group's approved mode of dress or how to dance to it in advance. The expected is the enemy. When I woke up one morning and realized I knew what the flyers for the raves would look like and what software was used to do the graphics and that there would be Hindu deities on the back, even the choice of typefaces and how long it was going to last. When I even knew all the DJs and what they were going to play, and I knew the people who did the light show, and I knew exactly what videos they were going to use I thought, "Why do I go? Why on earth would I go to this?" "So it's on a beach...big deal. You know, I can go to a beach and take drugs anyway. I don't need to go and deal with 10,000 people who do not think, you know?" The joy of true creativity is the exploration of the unpredictable. At the point that creative energy becomes fully predictable and formularized, the flickering spirit of the divine is extinguished and camouflaged conservatism takes over, fed by the desire of many to be safe within the familiar."

- Genesis P-Orridge (from Modulations: A History of Electronic Music, 2000)

You can only listen to the same ideas at 135+ bpm for so long.

___________________

My Set Archive - MY BLOG

quote:

Originally posted by woscar You can only listen to the same ideas at 135+ bpm for so long.

Why does the BPM make a difference? Listening to the same ideas again and again is boring at any speed...

quote:

Originally posted by Mr Game+Watch -Trance events getting even shittier in NYC. Every time I go to see a big name trance jock, the crowd is packed with guidos and perverted old Asian men. Even Ferry Corsten, who in previous years typically had a medium-sized but devoted crowd at his show, was packed this year with trash. The crowd for Armin has gotten uncontrollably bad, from previous years.

The cracked out Asians have always been an issue in NYC. Half the dancefloor at Club Exit was asians. If you walked through there they did not treat you nicely. This goes back to when I started going there in 2000. From 2001 to 2003 they were a problem at Sound Factory. Hanging in the bassbins completely obliterated.

Its not that they are worse, its that you're less tolerant of a substandard party as you get older

quote:

Originally posted by Chimney ...

Good points I might have to agree with you on some of it.

I don't blame them, as I already said, I like techno very much myself. But I just don't think trance is THAT bad. Yes, the generic stuff you mention is bad, but if one is willing to dig through pile after pile of shit, good stuff will be found. IMO.

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles - Genesis P-Orridge (from Modulations: A History of Electronic Music, 2000)

I love Throbbing Gristle. If people knew what Genesis looked like, they'd probably be less inclined to listen to his actually remarkable insight.

But it's interesting to think about - image truly is almost as important as the music at times, even if it shall always be second-place. What is the image of trance anymore?

More interesting is the timeframe in which genres flourish. Every musical "movement" and style goes through transitional periods that appear to have patterns truly inextricable with what has become the new standard for "mainstream". Not to imply what is and isn't underground, as that's such a dicey term in the first place, but music, just as politics, experience times of conservativism and liberation - periods where harkening back to the "good old days" (aka rehashing old shit) is popular, as opposed to periods where experimenting and progressing is what's popular. Of course, "what's popular" is not to imply "what's good", as that is entirely subjective, and even unpopular sounds can cause a shift in the paradigm just as the paradigm can cause a shift in the sounds. It's really quite an amorphous concept, but almost every type of creative endeavor goes through similar shifts.

Electronic dance music in particular is suffering from a really harsh shift as it is not only relatively young when considering the scope of audio as entertainment, but it was also a 'movement' of sorts that represented both a political and an escapist apolitical aim, burning extremely bright but for a very short period of time. People grow older, the world changes, people change with it, the sound must also change. In an equally escapist sort of nostalgia though, conservativism rehashes 'old sounds' as said generation wishes to re-live a past that could never truly happen again, well, not for them at least. But the genre was one practically built on rebellion and youth and progression and lights; the magic of first experiences. It will come back though, it always does, but will the people who claim it's dead ever see it alive in the way that they remember? Doubtful.

And so, people seek different sounds, ones that are fresh and new to them, getting caught up in yet another movement destined to die down for a time and re-light when it's often too late to effectively garner the attentions of the same generation. But that's the human experience: a new generation gets to discover these same sounds for the first time, and be in awe.

___________________
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

quote:

Originally posted by Barachem James Holden? Oh, i found this gem by clicking around, i absolutely love this track: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=fWgrK...feature=related

You must have been doing an awful lot of clicking around to find a gem like this.

___________________

d&b session 20090519
My take on... (various mixes planned, updated when I can be arsed)

because sooner or later you realize that those imaginary apples you keep trying to pick do not exist.

___________________
Le Freak - Set Archive

Le Freak - A.D.D & Chimichurri [Techno/Tech House/Music to put on burritos.]*click bitches*

Keep those thoughts coming, it's interesting to hear what you think.