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Originally posted by DNA_pl 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.

This is interesting and I too (having a swiss girlfriend) thought viva for a while was a pioneer in music. There used to be so much good stuff on there in the mid-late 90's - often I found music on there would correlate timewise with what you'd find as promo's in the record store - and it wasn't payola bullshit like all music channels are now - they actually often played cutting edge EDM and had interviews with upcoming DJ's that are now legends.

Your points about culture beat, 2 unlimited etc. though are way off base - for people in to dance music (as it was known then) whether you were in Poland or the UK, this was POP/cheese, NOT good dance music. People knew it. It was not music made by dance producers or respected DJ's - it was made to sell records and get played in your local tacky disco - the fact that it had a faster BPM and electronic sounds is just the vehicle they used to make money. There's no difference between them and modern POP producers such as Cascada, unltabeat - fuck even that old fart guy behind Milli Vanilli. It's all just to sell records by tapping in to youth culture.

MTV europe was wicked - I remember on weekend nights they just used to play continuous mixes with visuals, tracks like usura - open your mind etc. It was a sad day when the UK got MTVuk and I think now they just closed it down because it was so bad.

For me - I stay away from charts on any music portal for 2 main reasons:

1, Even though it can be easy to find tracks in a particular genre by doing this, I don't want to play what other people are, especially becuase they have already caned it for a while before they'll admit to owning it and putting it their chart.

2, If you've ever worked in PR/marketing/entertainment you'll know that all charts are simple manipulations designed to sell things for certain reasons. I don;t trust charts and this is proved to me so often when I hear some charts and know what that DJ plays like, they selected for sales/favors/marketing/political/etc. reasons.

IMO what happened (and why I've just stated what I have above) to EDM (then vs. now) is the commericalisation of underground movements - it happens with everything, even with EDM which constantly evolves. I seen it happen to clubs, which went from promoters just doing it for the love of it and turned into guys who just wanted the cover charge, and seen it happen to producers who loved the scene but wanted their paycheck - that's often why I think that producers stick to that identity thing you weer talking about (clones where tracks all sound the same) - it's about creating a product, so when you hear a new track by that producer, even though you don't know THAT song, you know it's them. Their producing soley because they love the music or the art of it, it's about cashing in as fast and as hard as you can.

If you look at the producers who have been around a long time and became those legends (and many "big names" around today don;t qualify as they'll soon be fade), has an identity but tried to do something unique and different......

.......that's the way to make sure EDM keeps going