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How trance has matured in modern pop
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| alan |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/201...dy-gaga-rihanna
Everyone who reads, writes or talks about music much comes to dislike particular words. The gulf between the glorious variety of music and the relative laziness of common language means words such as "soulful" or "ethereal" or "raw" become sketchy markers for huge clouds of effects and feelings. My personal bugbear is "cheesy" – that catch-all for any music that's a little too direct in its desire to please. It's such an idle, dismissive word. But like most words, sometimes it seems to fit exactly.
Take trance music, for instance. Like every dance genre, there are 100 varieties of trance, whose devotees wage sullen war against anyone who gets the details wrong. But for the casual listener, "trance" means the kind of dance record that got into the Top 40 in the late 90s: Fragma's Toca's Miracle, Chicane's Don't Give Up, ATB's 9am (Till I Come). I remember listening to the radio then and thinking first that this stuff was the very definition of cheese, and then wondering where pop would go from here. What kind of music would trance inspire?
Well, now we know. Trance, as Simon Reynolds and others have pointed out, infests modern pop. Its signature sounds – the huge, airy keyboard lines and uplifting chord progressions – are the backbone for a host of recent hits (Think Rihanna's Only Girl in the World, for an obvious example). Trance got little critical respect in its heyday and the pop that borrows from it faces many of the same criticisms: that it's homogenous, unimaginative, its perpetual euphoria is quickly exhausting.
But what happens when musicians start using that euphoria in more interesting ways? The greatest quality of trance was always the scale of it – it was most popular in dance's superclub era, its DJs were also globetrotters, and its riffs were the sonic equivalent of laser lightshows: spectacular but weightless. The music worked to turn any space into an aircraft hangar. So producers using trance now are playing with that idea of scale: often just for its own sake but sometimes more intelligently.
Lady Gaga's album Born This Way, for example, is stuffed with trancey sounds. Gaga's songs are often about self-empowerment, which the euphoric enormity of trance seems an excellent fit for. But empowerment in Gagaland isn't a glib process with a happy ending – it's something messy and unfinishable. So the album is also filled up with any other kind of swagger she can think of: classic rock moves, rolling ballads, a sax break from the late Clarence Clemons. The trance riffs don't get the soundfield to themselves – they have to fight to cut through, work for their uplifting payoff.
The most exciting use of trance I've heard, though, is 22-year-old hip-hop producer AraabMUZIK, who samples the music extensively. In a hip-hop context, trance makes a surprising amount of sense – on the Diplomats' Salute, which AraabMUZIK produced, the echoey vastness of the keyboard riffs makes it feel as if the MCs are filling and dominating a colossal space. But it's his instrumental cuts that really catch the imagination. Last month he released Electronic Dream, an album of trance-derived beats and one of the year's freshest and most beguiling records.
Electronic Dream zeroes in on the vocals in pop trance, sampling tracks such as Jam & Spoon's Right in the Night and cutting in rushing, skittery beats. AraabMUZIK has a reputation for virtuosic real-time sampling and groove-making, in which he often burns out or breaks his equipment. But on Electronic Dream that energy is held back. Occasionally, as on Underground Stream, AraabMUZIK drops in a thrillingly sudden breakdown, but mostly the mood is a strange combination of intimacy and scale. It's as if the heaving club spaces implied by trance have been emptied out, their euphoria a happy memory not a bludgeoning presence.
Is Electronic Dream "cheesy"? Its source material might all have been called that – but AraabMUZIK finds surprising angles on trance without ever trying to subvert it. His affinity for the music is one of the things that makes his album such a pleasure – as well as a welcome reminder that even the most disrespected sound of the past can still be sparked into life. |
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| 72hrpartyanimal |
I like and agree with most of the people writing comments.
| quote: | | Trance has done nothing but to lower the standard. Facile to the hilt. More lazy journalism from the 'I'll just phone me mate and ask him' school. |
I don't like this article. |
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| system-7 |
| Can someone recap this technical paper but in plain English. Would save me thinking time. :P |
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| 72hrpartyanimal |
| quote: | Originally posted by system-7
Can someone recap this technical paper but in plain English. Would save me thinking time. :P |
trance has become the new Pop Music Sound all the youngsters are listening to.
ty ing article.
I really don't think the guy enjoys/appreciates the music at all. |
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| Brian Scott |
| What we're seeing is a revitalization of the Europop craze of the late 90s and early 00s, made popular by the Ministry of Sound compilations. Look that up from that time. It's eerily similar to what's being put out as top 40 here in the US today. The melodic progression of the songs is quite similar to trance, only dumbed down for the masses. Add the generic pop-diva vocals, and you have today's top 40. |
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| drEamer |
| isnt it more the dutch house sound that is the new pop music? |
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| Jim Carson |
| If you listen to Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" album it isn't so much "trance" as it is "bubblegum, German techno/electro-pop" that borders on sounding half-way decent. |
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| Quazar |
| quote: | Originally posted by Brian Scott
What we're seeing is a revitalization of the Europop craze of the late 90s and early 00s, made popular by the Ministry of Sound compilations. Look that up from that time. It's eerily similar to what's being put out as top 40 here in the US today. The melodic progression of the songs is quite similar to trance, only dumbed down for the masses. Add the generic pop-diva vocals, and you have today's top 40. |
I agree. People keep saying "Wow, pop is starting to sound like EDM!".
Pop has sounded like EDM off and on since the late 70s. The only difference is now the DJs/producers are actually putting their names on the songs.
"Missing" by Everything But the Girl. "What is Love" by Haddaway. "Where Do You Go?" by No Mercy. Pretty much everything by Ace of Base. All basically euro-house tracks that happened to become pop songs.
Hell, Madonna's "Ray of Light" album is EDM, and that's from the late 90s. |
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| justin |
| quote: | Originally posted by drEamer
isnt it more the dutch house sound that is the new pop music? |
yes it is :nervous: : puke |
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| MR STROKE |
| quote: | Originally posted by drEamer
isnt it more the dutch house sound that is the new pop music? |
Probably a mixture of both
Lady Gaga
J Lo
Britney Spears
all of these new albums sound like a mix of cheesy electro and trance mixed with female pop vocals |
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| gerard6975 |
| quote: | Originally posted by drEamer
isnt it more the dutch house sound that is the new pop music? |
there are pretty good dutch house dj/producers like 2000 and One, Lauhaus, Julien Chaptal, Anton Pieete, etc. just don't mix it with the dirty dutch sound of Chuckie. |
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| justin |
EDM has been influencing american mainstream dance since Madonna's days. there not much different in lady gaga's music that is different except for a liking to fidget in todays society.
As far as trance where art thou? what has happened to my love? has it turned into mainstream music. No.
Atleast not in America. Give me a four to the floor beat with an electro, house or dubstep buildup, add some lyrics and slap a mainstream label on it and i tell you trance is dead. |
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