|
Of course trance is innovative and evolving! Just listen to A State of Trance each week. Always something different, pushing the limit!
Anyone who thinks trance hasn't been stagnating for the last two years or so is fooling themselves or new to the genre. I can listen to livesets from 2000 or earlier, and not only do today's productions follow the exact same formula, the work in these older sets is generally better in quality.
Tech-trance and electro-trance is the only salvation I see at present; Marco V, Katana, some Mauro Picotto (New Time New Place), some Ferry (Right of Way), and some Tiesto (Traffic). Progressive trance has been dead for years save some work from James Holden, Sasha, and Junkie XL; the Gabriel & Dresden and Markus Schulz variety definitely doesn't count. Uplifting is in worse condition, snowballing uncontrollably into the garbage bin that Armin plays on ID&T every week. I should also note that John OO Fleming is putting out some absolutely fantastic material, but more producers need to follow suit for his sound to gain momentum.
For trance's own health, uplifting just needs to die for a while. Sadly I don't see this happening. The ratio of good uplifters to total slices of cheesecake is just too small to justify keeping it up. Masters & Nickson - Out There (5th Dimension), Fictivision vs C-Quence - Symbols, POS - Remember (Summer Sun), Agnelli & Nelson pres Ultra - Holding On To Nothing (Club Mix), and Ferry Corsten - Indigo are just about the only uplifting trance tracks I think were worth the vinyl they were pressed on last year. That's still a decent number of great productions, but compare that with the mountains of crap that came along with it.
(Paul van Dyk is still a wild card. He's at a very critical point. He could either overhaul his sound and emerge the stronger or take a further nosedive into commercialism, effectively destroying his status in the trance community.)
|