In my going out days I thought this was pretty deep:
craiggarner
I'm finding a lot of the time what John 00 Flemming refers to as 'deep trance' in his GTG show ends up just sounding like swooshy white noise Drumcode style techno
MSZ
Dancerecords had the sublabel floating around in their catalogs, I wish there was a backup of that place because it would surely be interesting. I believe it was either introspective progressive trance or mcprog, cant remember correctly, anyhoo thats what I would consider it as anyway.
Floorfiller
So I know this isn't the "deep trance" that this thread is about, and maybe not trance at all, but if I was going to determine what deep trance was...it would basically be this...
on a side note, this whole album is pretty excellent. if you're not familiar with Miwon, check it out.
SYSTEM-J
quote:
Originally posted by craiggarner
I'm finding a lot of the time what John 00 Flemming refers to as 'deep trance' in his GTG show ends up just sounding like swooshy white noise Drumcode style techno
Yeah, it's the same when you see his fans on Facebook reply to his posts with "techno that sounds like trance", it's all massive main-room . I remember posting some arp-y Detroit track as a reply and got people saying "This doesn't sound anything like trance to me".
The unfortunate fact is 90% of his fans these days come from either the psy scene or the unicorn trance scene, neither of which is notable for producing anything remotely deep or subtle. J00F is their first exposure to this kind of thing and to them it probably is "deep" compared to what they're used to, just like how most commercial "deep house" probably does sound deep to kids reared on Hardwell.
In reality, even compared to the fairly meagre crop of DJs still playing progressive house these days, J00F isn't remotely deep. In a club he just defaults to banging as soon as possible. I saw him play an open-to-close set back in December and was in there from the start, rubbing my hands and waiting for him to warm the room up with some deep melodic stuff. Instead he played 45 minutes of downtempo stuff until the room filled up and then turned the Funktion One system on and went straight into what you've described - boomy Drumcode-esque techno. I've seen J00F at least a dozen times now and you never get more than 2-3 deeper tracks, always at the start of a set when he's easing out of the warm-up DJ.
He is a good DJ but I think he's been able to re-write the discourse on "deep trance" because he's the only relatively big DJ who still openly associates with the word "trance" (even when he's playing more techno) who isn't complete and utter dog. He labels himself as deep trance and in today's pitiful trance scene who can argue? But anyone who has been in the game a while and has a few mixes by the millenial prog crew of Sasha/Digweed/Seaman/Howells/Warren/Etc. knows that this is not the "return to the deeper side of trance" that J00F bills it as.
RebeL9
I agree with the above. Even if you go back to the end of 90s you can see in J00Fs set that he tries to combine goa/psytrance with progressive. And they do differ alot in structure and tempo. It seems that he struggles to play either a plain progressive set or a psyset.
In the first half of the 2000s you could also see that he started to play full on trance (such as Astrix, GMS, Psysex etc) but alot pitched down. I can't remember any other DJ doing that back then and the result was quite good.
I personally think he is at his best when he plays the deep stuff such as the first halfs of his EM 2001 and 2010.
And the first half of his ID&T set 2003 is probably the best deep progressive stuff I've heard him play:
01: '00' intro
02: Rouzbeh Delavari - 020227
03: James Harcourt - Diaspora (Luke Fair Mix)
04: Ivan - Red Star (Pad mix)
05: Powerplant - With Or Without You (Blackwatch Remix)
06: Progresia - Stockholm
07: The Gift - Love Angel (M.I.K.E Remix)
08: The Digital Blonde - Gothica
rubez
this necessarily isn't about j00f. he is just one of the people using this phrase - doesn't mean to say everything he plays is deep. frankly i don't think the music is even there to do that, even the 'good' stuff today is far too pedestrian, the has no balls. can only work with what he's got.
i am going to look into it, i expect to find some decent tracks, but i'll be damned if i get blown away.
i am waiting for the moment the scene gets to a place where he can release whitelabel euphoria 3 and for it not to stink, then we can say we've turned a corner :D
i think the only stuff with balls is coming out of the platipus stable... but that's only a trickle. still waiting for something to top the fantastic gibbon. a modern day masterpiece.
RebeL9
The restart of Platipus was the best thing to happen. And their releases during the last couple of years have been some of my favourite trance releases. Proper good trance, no bulling. Union Jack is active, Mark Brogden is back together with Claudio Giussani and it's all really jolly good! They don't spit out releases but when they do they always seems to be really strong releases.
AY STAR
quote:
Originally posted by RebeL9
04: Ivan - Red Star (Pad mix)
07: The Gift - Love Angel (M.I.K.E Remix)
good ones for sure. old school lieb and M.I.K.E. def added some dark,deep and moody sounds and vibes to their tracks
another real deep journey one from push
John 00 Fleming
My name keeps popping up in this topic so rather than people making sweeping statements, I though I’d answer them myself.
Firstly I’ve been in this game long enough to know the difference between Techno and Trance, in fact I was supporting both upon their birth in the late 80’s early 90’s. I never ever refer to Techno as Trance on GTG, I hardly play much Techno at all on GTG because I find it’s not radio friendly and does its job much better in a club. Techno takes a certain style of mixing to make it sound interesting in a club. Also take in mind I’m a Trance guy at heart, Techno is only a tiny part of my sets.
I’m going to be brutally honest here and spill my heart out. For the more specialist Trance DJ’s and producers its been a difficult journey over the past decade, the tag ‘Trance’ has been bastardised by the commercial world, with the underground form of Trance being pretty much forgotten about. Many of us started to get ashamed to say the word Trance as it became a joke within the more underground industry, Trance = EDM to them.
It started to become dangerous for the likes of myself (and many others), my career has always been a big part of the underground world, but the tag ‘Trance’ would deter them booking anyone from this world. We all played too deep for the regular Trance world, who’s crowds wanted EDM style Trance so found ourselves in no mans land.
So here comes the difficult decision, do I turn my back on a genre that I’ve dedicated the past 25 years too and watch the specialist side die a slow death? It’s a frustration thats been inside many, in fact we have lost some good men on the way, Vibrasphere being the main one for me. I fought hard to convince many to stay, fight and fall in love with Trance again; Airwave, The Digital Blonde, Platipus, Rick Pier O’Neil and many more . We could have lost them. I still spend hours and hours talking to many getting them motivated again.
I’ve never turned my back on my take on Trance to chase $$$, I actually do the opposite.
System-J/Jack you’re taking one personal experience (from a while back) and making a sweeping statement I play like this all the time? Every territory around the world is different, the underground momentum is moving at very different paces, some cities/countries give me more musical freedom to play what I want than others. The UK is generally a difficult place to play with crowds that have a short attention span, in Brighton where you attended, no matter what guests we have played, the magic sweet spot is between 12-2am, after that they go home. It’s the territory that dictates how you play. The Australian’s reading this have just witnessed my 7/9 hours sets where I played mostly deep, lush progressive Trance, not much Techno at all. It’s the same story in Toronto, LA, Argentina etc.
I love my home country and sacrifice a regular weekend of paid gigs to put on events to offer something different in my home town that we earn no money at all from. But we’re seeing the gradual difference, today crowds stay later, getting more open minded and larger..so much so we’re moving to one of the biggest clubs in Brighton. It’s shows change is coming, we’ve pursued with this journey.
You need to have dreams in life, a goal to chase and belief in yourself. Its why some succeed and other don’t. It’s why I’m still here nearly 30 years in my career, I followed that dream of being a DJ and producer while others failed due to being negative. I love the deeper side of Trance and 10000% believe its making a resurgence, I say this with confidence due to the many conversations I’m having with some big players who are tired of the EDM world and want to get back to being artistic and creative once again. More and more are joining this ship including promoters, festivals, clubs and wonderful changes are currently happening. I see first had the changes as I play these venues around the world, the crowds are changing…..its all part of the wonderful musical eco system that creates the musical cycles.
I don’t care what anyone else says, I’ll still follow my dreams that keep me in love with the music I enjoy. I’ll keep making those dreams happen and be surrounded by likewise people.
So back to the main topic ‘Deep Trance’. I can see this term being coined to distance itself from the regular commercial Trance to give a clear message its something a lot different.
Lews
quote:
Originally posted by John 00 Fleming
The Australian’s reading this have just witnessed my 7/9 hours sets where I played mostly deep, lush progressive Trance, not much Techno at all. It’s the same story in Toronto, LA, Argentina etc.
I love my home country and sacrifice a regular weekend of paid gigs to put on events to offer something different in my home town that we earn no money at all from. But we’re seeing the gradual difference, today crowds stay later, getting more open minded and larger..so much so we’re moving to one of the biggest clubs in Brighton. It’s shows change is coming, we’ve pursued with this journey.
Could you play more of that deep, lush progressive trance in the UK? Obviously you need to play to the crowd, but isn't part of the job of the DJ to lead the crowd, as well? I've seen you 3 times over the last 3 years and enjoyed every time a lot - KOKO a few months ago was particularly fun - but the two times in Brighton I've seen you were rather banging-tech-focused.
I will say, on the topic of the 'revival of trance,' that after spending the last week perusing Spotify and Beatport for new music, I've found some surprisingly decent 'deep trance' / progressive trance tracks from names I would have written off completely three years ago. I hate to be optimistic about it, but there seems to be a bounty of good tracks floating around right now.
SYSTEM-J
quote:
Originally posted by John 00 Fleming
System-J/Jack you’re taking one personal experience (from a while back) and making a sweeping statement I play like this all the time?
As I said, I'm taking it from the dozen or so times I've seen you in the last years, from Leeds to Manchester to Sheffield to Coalville and down in Brighton. I can only speak about UK events and UK crowds, of course, but I can hardly be written off as someone mouthing off after a single disappointing set.
quote:
The UK is generally a difficult place to play with crowds that have a short attention span, in Brighton where you attended, no matter what guests we have played, the magic sweet spot is between 12-2am, after that they go home.
But you have always had at least one warm-up DJ, often two (Mark Iliffe and Jon Cockle, for example) who will play slower, deeper, progressive stuff for the first couple of hours. The night in December started at 10pm, so even if the "sweet spot" is 12-2am, why would you not warm the room up yourself in a similar manner? When I see "open to close" next to a DJ's name I want to hear the full range of that DJ's sound, and in this instance I was particularly excited to finally hear the deeper side of John 00 Fleming. Instead, of all the nights I've attended under the J00F Editions banner, this was the night that had the least "journey" to it: it was banging practically from start to finish.
If ever there was a time to educate your listeners it's at the start of the night. You trust your residents to warm-up properly and play the deep stuff, why not trust yourself?
