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Backlash against Trance is in vogue these days... (pg. 2)
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| Jukx |
| quote: | Originally posted by Eugene
In fact, here's another truth: It's always been difficult to find lots of CD's with good Anthems. Apart from the obvious Tiesto and Acosta offerings.
So whenever someone says "let's put this aside, we've had enough," I disagree. Personally, I've had very little!! |
Maybe that's because you life in the USA... here in Europe (where most of the djs/producers come from) epic/uplifting-trance has become VERY MAINSTREAM. This is taken from our national pop-hitchart of this week:
36 - 1 castles in the sky - ian van dahl
32 28 15 we come one - faithless
31 36 4 dance valley theme 2001 - system f
26 32 2 the sound of goodbye - perpetuous dreamer
21 19 8 such is life - rank 1
11 20 3 flight 643 - dj tiesto
And because electronic music isn't meant to be mainstream a lot of djs move away from the predictable and overplayed epic/uplifting trance. Which, in my opinion, is a very good thing!!! |
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| trancaholic |
I think the problem is that many people associate trance with epic/uplifting, and therefore regards a shift in music-styles as the death of trance.
Actually "popular" trance has been bouncing from one genre to another over the years. In the early nineties we had what I would label as the original trance (music that would induce you in a trance-like state) with Jam & Spoon, Abfahrt etc. Then came the mid nineties where Goa was the big media-thing that everybody associated with trance, after that the golden years (according to me) with Sosa, 1998, Café del Mar - mainly german club music being associated with trance, and then in the late nineties epic/dutch-inspired trance.
Now it seems we're in a new transition period. Some will hate the new dominant style, some will love it, but remember that during all those years there were other types of trance than the most popular ones, and if you went looking for them you would find them. |
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| mindshooter |
| quote: | Originally posted by Jukx
36 - 1 castles in the sky - ian van dahl
32 28 15 we come one - faithless
31 36 4 dance valley theme 2001 - system f
26 32 2 the sound of goodbye - perpetuous dreamer
21 19 8 such is life - rank 1
11 20 3 flight 643 - dj tiesto
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Do they actually call that a Pop-list?
I woulndt like Trance to go mainstream either....but there will always be underground uplifting trance to.....trax that no-one has... |
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| Spad |
| quote: | Originally posted by Eugene
In fact, here's another truth: It's always been difficult to find lots of CD's with good Anthems. Apart from the obvious Tiesto and Acosta offerings.
So whenever someone says "let's put this aside, we've had enough," I disagree. Personally, I've had very little!! |
I hear you, but I think maybe that's the difference between Europe & the US. Over here it's not at all difficult to find CD's with good anthems. If you turn on the TV these days you'll see ads for loads of Trance CD's. Turn on the radio and you hear Castles in the Sky twice an hour. Even worse, they play goodtunes until you've heard them so much you can't stand them anymore. Go to a trance nightclub in the UK and you don't get a room full of Trance-lovers. You get drunken idiots and 15 year old girls who come to the club because trance is "cool" now.
I'm not dissing Epic/Uplifting trance at all, I just think that these days it's hard for DJ's & producers to be original with this music. Like I said I don't think that they're dissing the music, just the way the scene is at the moment.
| quote: | Originally posted by plastikE
""trance needs to evolve"" ""epic/uplifting style needs to be put on the shelves and take a breather"" ..... *sigh* First of all, ALL YOU GUYS SOUND LIKE A BUNCH OF POP/RAP/HIP-HOP FANS WHEN YOU MAKE COMMENTS LIKE THESE! I mean honestly, ''take a breather''?!? wtf? I don't know what you people are talking about, but I think there've been plenty of epic/uplifting tracks released this year (Souvenir De Chine, Urban Train, Flight 643, Lost Emotions 2001, etc...). Maybe you guys aren't as ''addicted'' as you thought. Maybe the only reason you listen to trance is to be 'cool' and be part of the 'in' crowd. Personally, I listen to trance because it makes me feel good. Not because it's ''hip'', that's just pathetic. You need to re-adjust your thinking before you start listening to 'Nsync and watching MTV just to see who made it to the top of TRL. Other than that, ''with its current status, Trance has nowhere to go but up''... unless people like YOU screw it up. :D:D:D:D PLUR |
Woah hold on a sec! Lets get one thing straight here... I LOVE trance. I don't listen to Trance to be cool. If I was trying to fit in I wouldn't be constantly pleading and begging with my mates to come to places like Slinky. I wouldn't be the group outcast (in the nicest possible way :)) because I never want to join them at the cheesy 70s/80s bars they love to frequent.
And you're right, there have been some amazing tracks this year. By saying "put Trance on the shelf" for a while I simply meant that it would do some good to take it out of the limelight, let something else become the new craze. Then maybe tracks like the ones you mentioned would be in the majority rather than the minority. |
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| Renegade |
Amen Leigh. :)
I'm sure I've discussed this in a different topic, but I used to love the mainstream euro-trance that you guys are talking about here. Started listening to it in probably 97 or something (when I was about 14) and listened to it and not much else for like three years straight. Now I think back to 1998 and think of all the truly great trance tunes there were: Binary Finary, Out of the Blue, Gouryella - I could go on for days. The sound was fresh and exciting and I couldn't get enough of it. But, for me, the sound grew old very quickly. Every man and his dog started ripping off the Rank 1/System F "sweeping-synths-followed-by-loud-breakdown" method and it all started to get very unimaginative and very boring in a hurry.
Can you guys name one trance track released in the past 12 months that's going to go down as a classic? I can't....... Urban Train? Not bad but nowt special. Flight 643? Nope, but bordering more on the side of prog anyway. Castles in the Sky? Can you spell euro-pap?
Trance, as you guys know it, is dead. The only producers left are simply cashing in late on a fad that peaked in 98, and there isn't much left to get excited about. PVD has moved on, Tiesto looks like moving on, Ferry Corsten's disappeared off the face of the planet. Now someone before was saying how trance needs to evolve? It already has/is.
Progressive is not some evil form of music that just came out of nowhere because people didn't think that "normal" trance was trendy enough anymore, and everyone listens to it - and they secretly hate it but play along just to look trendy - just because all the big dj's play it. Progressive is the next natural step. I've noticed that the majority of people arguing that mainstream euro-trance isn't dead are either American (where the club scene is three years behind anyway) or too young to have been listening to it for long enough to understand where I'm coming from.
Progressive is simply the direction that trance has to head in in order to survive. The big-synth euro stuff has become cliched and lost all of its original impact, whereas the progressive sound is fresh and exciting. To the people who are bagging progressive, have you actually tried listening to it? I mean apart from buying GU19, playing it once and then whinging about it? The majority of people who have actually gone out of their way to appreciate progressive (by hearing it in a club, downloading a wide variety of artists) end up preferring it to mainstream trance. I mean sure, in 3 years I may be sick of progressive and I'll have to take the next musical step, but for now progressive dominates my life and rocks my world. In the same way that trance did 2-3 years ago. But the music's evolved since then and so have I.
Anyways, instead of feeling threatened by progressive because its something slighty different, perhaps you could try listening to it and give it a chance instead of desperately clinging onto your collection of 98/99 trance anthems? I mean don't get me wrong, I still love trance and still listen to it. Binary Finary - 1998 is still my favourite track of all time. But, in my opinion anyway, that euro-trance phase is over and it really doesn't have anywhere left to go, without evolving into prog or some other genre. Too much of anything is a bad thing, and I think that trance has run its course. You can't flog a dead horse, and no matter how desperate you may be to keep the euro-trance genre going, I really don't think it has anything new to offer. Vive le musique de progressive. :) |
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| mindshooter |
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
"Can you guys name one trance track released in the past 12 months that's going to go down as a classic?"
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Fire&Ice - Souvenir de chine
I dont know if Jan Johnston - Flesh (Tiesto mix) was released this year but that IS a classic and its different from other trax....
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
"Ferry Corsten's disappeared off the face of the planet."
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He just released a new album which is VERY good....he is also releasing several singles quite soon.....
As we all know Gouryella is Corsten and Tiesto...they are releasing new track soon.... |
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| Renegade |
Well it's interesting you should mention Sovenir De Chine, because it illustrates my point perfectly. It's a nice track certainly, but nothing special because we've seen it all before.
Besides that, a lot of people would disagree that it's a particularly good track in the first place (there's a thread on these boards somehwere that says as much) and secondly I don't think I've seen this track mentioned on any other forum apart from this one, including by people on these boards who are self-confessed trance-fans. Now just because no-one else on any other board that I visit (HoM, P4DJs, Insomnia) has mentioned it, it doesn't mean that it's not a good track, just that it can hardly be considered a classic. |
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| Eugene |
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
Can you guys name one trance track released in the past 12 months that's going to go down as a classic? |
D-Mention - Daydream
An excellent epic/uplifting track released in 2001! Has anyone heard it? If there were more tunes like this released this year, I'd be much happier.
| quote: | Originally posted by mindshooter
And to the one that said that there are no good uplifting tracks produced theses days....i have ALOT of them..... |
Oh really? Can you name a dozen? Only please don't include "Souvenir de Chine" because that was a formulaic attempt to return to the "epic roots"!
| quote: | Originally posted by Leigh
i get pissed off when i have to constantly waste my time sifting through this crap (the shop was too and have decided to stop dutch shipments) to find the occasional good one. i sympathise with the big name DJ's that have to go through thousands of talentless promos to find something worthwhile and it isnt suprising to see everyone turning away from it.
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Well first of all, my friend, that's a DJ's job -- to sift through everything available and choose what they like. Okay? You don't need to f**king "sympathize with them," it's what they do on a regular basis, and that's why they get paid big bucks. And, it's always been hard to find good stuff. The market has always been saturated, perhaps up to 90% or so, with formulaic crap and cheese and people trying to rip off, so finding a good record has always been difficult -- this year, two years ago, doesn't matter. That's a fact of life. To find a gem, you always must sift through a load of crap. I'm thinking of something like Green Court - Trancefiguration, my God, what a formulaic tune!! On the other hand there's great Dutch trance. Like Armin - Communication, Major League - Wonder. As for people who say "typical breakdowns" and "predictable drum rolls," well, that's a feature of the genre! I'm sorry, but every genre has its characteristics, and if you were asked to describe Epic/Uplifting you would mention these exact attributes! Nothing wrong with that... unless it becomes *extremely* predictable and formulaic. |
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| Jukx |
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
Amen Leigh. :)
I'm sure I've discussed this in a different topic, but I used to love the mainstream euro-trance that you guys are talking about here. Started listening to it in probably 97 or something (when I was about 14) and listened to it and not much else for like three years straight. Now I think back to 1998 and think of all the truly great trance tunes there were: Binary Finary, Out of the Blue, Gouryella - I could go on for days. The sound was fresh and exciting and I couldn't get enough of it. But, for me, the sound grew old very quickly. Every man and his dog started ripping off the Rank 1/System F "sweeping-synths-followed-by-loud-breakdown" method and it all started to get very unimaginative and very boring in a hurry.
Can you guys name one trance track released in the past 12 months that's going to go down as a classic? I can't....... Urban Train? Not bad but nowt special. Flight 643? Nope, but bordering more on the side of prog anyway. Castles in the Sky? Can you spell euro-pap?
Trance, as you guys know it, is dead. The only producers left are simply cashing in late on a fad that peaked in 98, and there isn't much left to get excited about. PVD has moved on, Tiesto looks like moving on, Ferry Corsten's disappeared off the face of the planet. Now someone before was saying how trance needs to evolve? It already has/is.
Progressive is not some evil form of music that just came out of nowhere because people didn't think that "normal" trance was trendy enough anymore, and everyone listens to it - and they secretly hate it but play along just to look trendy - just because all the big dj's play it. Progressive is the next natural step. I've noticed that the majority of people arguing that mainstream euro-trance isn't dead are either American (where the club scene is three years behind anyway) or too young to have been listening to it for long enough to understand where I'm coming from.
Progressive is simply the direction that trance has to head in in order to survive. The big-synth euro stuff has become cliched and lost all of its original impact, whereas the progressive sound is fresh and exciting. To the people who are bagging progressive, have you actually tried listening to it? I mean apart from buying GU19, playing it once and then whinging about it? The majority of people who have actually gone out of their way to appreciate progressive (by hearing it in a club, downloading a wide variety of artists) end up preferring it to mainstream trance. I mean sure, in 3 years I may be sick of progressive and I'll have to take the next musical step, but for now progressive dominates my life and rocks my world. In the same way that trance did 2-3 years ago. But the music's evolved since then and so have I.
Anyways, instead of feeling threatened by progressive because its something slighty different, perhaps you could try listening to it and give it a chance instead of desperately clinging onto your collection of 98/99 trance anthems? I mean don't get me wrong, I still love trance and still listen to it. Binary Finary - 1998 is still my favourite track of all time. But, in my opinion anyway, that euro-trance phase is over and it really doesn't have anywhere left to go, without evolving into prog or some other genre. Too much of anything is a bad thing, and I think that trance has run its course. You can't flog a dead horse, and no matter how desperate you may be to keep the euro-trance genre going, I really don't think it has anything new to offer. Vive le musique de progressive. :) |
And he has spoken...
I totally agree with you Renegade!!!
Come one people, don't be so narrow-minded! I don't say the trance you like is already dead but it is at least bleeding to death! Can't you see it????
I also used to be a huge epic/uplifting trance lover but it all became to predictable/boring/cheezy/formulaic so I moved on to something else... techno. I don't want to push you to leave the epic/uplifting trance behind but at least show an open mind towards other forms of electronical music.
And don't think epic/uplifting is the one and only form of trance... coz it ain't true!! epic/uplifting is only a hype from the last few years, and we all know that hypes don't last forever.
| quote: |
Fire&Ice - Souvenir de chine
I dont know if Jan Johnston - Flesh (Tiesto mix) was released this year but that IS a classic and its different from other trax....
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give me a break! those tracks wont be a classic!! Flesh ain't a classic at all and neither will souvenir de chine be! The ONLY classic I can think of from the last 2 years is Delerium - Silence (tiesto remix)
that's the only one... |
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| plastikE |
Jukx
so you choose to like techno and move away from epic/uplifting. good for you. i've had the ''open-mindness'' to look through other genres, and i clearly see that epic isn't dead, neither is uplifting. i also listen to a lot of progressive, and that is far from dead (we've already come to that conclusion)...i've listened to techno, progressive, goa, psy, house, hard house, etc....i like epic the best (imho)....""TO EACH HIS OWN"" |
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| trancaholic |
Although I basically agree (on this subject) with Renegade & Jukx, I think this is turning into a slating of uplifting fans. True, the repeating posts whining about the lack of new classics/quality-tunes is tiring, but on the other hand I know (I'm an Amiga-fan) how frustrating it can be when your true love and devotion is wasting away and you can't do anything about it and how you start bothering everybody with the unfairness of the situation.
I'm not sure my attempt to explain my position will be more succesful but here goes:
The genre is, although it might have a classic or two left in it, apparently wearing thin and creative people (the producers) is starting to look elsewhere for opportunities for development. Face it! That doesn't mean that uplifting is gone but that only a select few will continue producing it and as such the number of great tunes per time unit will drop. Basically the same pattern as can be observed with other subgenres of music such as brit-pop, jungle, hard rock etc.
Finally, the focus on progressive trance as the opposite of uplifting in terms of electronica is really not adequate. There's heaps of genres that are experiencing hey-days (or at least evolution) right now: Technolectropop (Tok Tok, Lexy & K-Paul, Westbam etc.), Techno (Adam Beyer, Chris Liebing), hard trance, minimalistic and so on. Try listening to some of it, you might like it. |
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| Eugene |
trancaholic, I appreciate your understanding of these problems, and I commend you for your insights. Very good post. In fact all your posts are interesting.
At least that's better than saying "it's over, move on." The lamers who say that, have never actually appreciated the beauty and power of epic/uplifting, they always have their noses out for the "next thing" and don't stop to think about the music and feel it. For THEM, it was nothing more than some synth-lines and breakdowns, maybe a little catchy but that's it. (That's why you see them refer to epic/uplifting with these exact cliches, synths and drum rolls.) But for ME, and many others, it was much more. It was emotional music.
I for one HAVE experienced the uniqueness, beauty, emotionality and magnificent power of epic/uplifting. Maybe I've heard some anthems that you haven't. That's why I'm extremely upset. :rolleyes: |
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