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Hmm.
In the middle 90', some dance ~ 135-140 bpm records started to make real career. Culture Beat - Mr Vain, 2 Unlimited - No Limit, Let the beat control your body, Real Thing, MODO - Eins Zwei Polizei  . Anyone remembers ? 
Tell me what you want but this was played in MTV, in VIVA. It was a mainstream. What was the difference between dance / disco record (Culture Beat) and trance ? Well, for me it was - nice build-up, less cheesy melody, and overall a feeling that the background (drum, bass, leads, pads) is much more creative. But at same time, it was bringing the same happy feeling, same positive power, i could even say "life". Sometimes the melodies were cheesy, vocals too, but overall it was more polished (and much less cheesy) than "german"-dance tracks.
I was growing up with trance (and dance too, and hmm Westbam was the king ), in late 90' I had 18-19 years so it was great to hear trance tracks like:
- Binary Finary - 1999
- Thrillseekers - Synaestheasia (I love version with Sheryl Deane vocal)
- Blank & Jones - Nightfly (pretty close to dance tracks)
I don't know if someone remembers but there was such service like audiogalaxy. In my country, finding some trance was impossible but with audiogalaxy I had an access to totally "underground" genre - and it was just woooow. Sure, at the top it was for example Paul Van Dyk played everywhere - MTV, VIVA, some livesets even started to show in the Internet.
But behind PvD many artists tried to do something actually creative. Maybe the technology was lacking but the tracks were not cheesy. Actually compared to dance tracks it was just - wooow, nice. Every tune had build-up, simple melody but it was not overcrowded. And as a result it had this "something" - this unique sound, "power" etc. And the main reason why 1999 Trance was great - "everything was NEW". Rank 1 - Airwave was like a real Airwave
But then, someone decided to put "all" the trance producers on MTV, VIVA (because one Paul Van Dyk was not enough) and the real cheesy producers started to show (hmmm especially some german dance crap like Rocco, Special-D for example). People not interested in Trance were listening to the Rocco and it was just - "this trance is crap" but the fact is that it was hmm dance music similar to previous Culture Beat, DJ Bobo but souless etc.
Then I guess you know the story - Groove Coverage (but to be honest I love their first track - Moonlight Shadow), Cascade and all copying, cloning producers army, doing cheesy melodies and soon trance dissapeared from big labels, mtv, viva. It was actually good but then all this FL Studio / Vengeance era came and now everyone is copying everyone. Suddenly everyone started to use supersaw for pads, plucks, lead because it's great but at the same time - most (90 % ?) trance tracks turned into souless productions. Ten years ago the build-up really meant something (you never knew what sound will strike you later) - now you just know "ohh that's 2 minutes left to another supersaw melody".
I check audiojelly very often - sure there are still great tracks but most is just repetive. For example Paul Miller, Simon Patterson, John O'Callaghan (in his 2006 - 2007 tracks) - you can find hmm 20 ? tracks and all just sound the same, it's same sh1t... Earlier it was just - first big tracks, second clone, sometimes third... But in trance there are producers who have 10-15 similar tracks. You can say - they've got their own style - i disagree. I mean - currently it's just hard to find good trance, you need to check all those dj's charts on audiojelly, check new releases, check most popular. Ten years ago I was just entering audiogalaxy (pls let's forget about legal stuff for a second - I wanted to listen the music I loved), downloading some latest tracks and most of them were actually good.
Last edited by DNA_pl on Apr-25-2009 at 18:49
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