| Trance | |
| deni | Trance music is a subgenre of electronic dance music (EDM) that developed in the 1990s. Perhaps the most ambiguous genre in the realm of EDM, trance could be described as a melodic, more-or-less freeform style of music derived from a combination of techno and house. Regardless of its precise origins, to many club-goers, party-throwers, and EDM adherents, trance is held as a significant development within the greater sphere of (post-)modern dance music. By some, it is even regarded as a personal rediscovery of the origins of music and the effect that rhythm and melody has on our introspective and extrospective selves.
Pre-trance music
Elements of what became modern trance music were explored by industrial artists in the late 1980s. Most notably, Psychic TV's 1989 album Towards Thee Infinite Beat, featuring drawn out and monotonous patterns with short but repeating voice samples, is considered by some to be the first trance album, but this claim is widely contested by fans citing The Orb's "Little Fluffy Clouds" as establishing the genre at British Acid House parties. The intent was to make sound that was hypnotic to its listeners.
These industrial artists were largely dissociated from rave culture, and their trance albums were generally experiments, not an attempt to start a new genre with an associated culture -- they remained firmly rooted culturally in industrial and avant-garde music. As trance began to take off in the rave culture, most of these artists abandoned the genre.
In these years first complete trance tracks started to appear. In 1988 The KLF produced the trance version of their later popular song - "What Time is Love (The Original Pure Trance)"
Trance begins as a genre\
Trance is said to have begun as an off-shoot of techno in German clubs during the very early 1990s. Frankfurt is often cited as a birthplace of Trance. Notably pioneer Trance labels like Eye Q, Harthouse, Superstition, Rising High, FAX +49-69/450464 and MFS Records were Frankfurt based. Arguably a fusion of techno and house, early Trance shared much with techno in terms of the tempo and rhythmic structures but also added more melodic overtones which were appropriated from the style of house popular in Europe's club scene at that time.
This early Trance tended to be characterized by hypnotic and melodic qualities described above, and typically involved repeating rhythmic patterns added over an appropriate length of time as a track progressed, thus creating an effect of hypnotic trance.
At about the same period of time in the early 1990s, a musical revolution was happening in Goa, India. Electronic body music (EBM) bands like Cabaret Voltaire and Front 242 came to Goa and began influencing artists like Goa Gil, Eat Static, Doof, and Man With No Name who heard the psychedelic elements of EBM, expanded on them minus the vocals and guitars and fused them with influences from Indian classical music to create goa trance.
The sound of modern (progressive) trance
By the mid-1990s, trance, specifically progressive trance, had emerged commercially as one of the dominant genres of EDM. Progressive trance set in stone the basic formula of modern trance by becoming even more focused on the anthemic basslines and lead melodies, moving away from hypnotic, repetitive, arpeggiated analog synth patterns and spacey pads. Popular elements and anthemic pads became more widespread. Compositions leaned towards incremental changes (aka progressive structures), sometimes composed in thirds (as Brian Transeau frequently does). Buildups and breakdowns became longer and more exaggerated. The sound became more and more excessive and overblown. This sound came to be known as anthem trance.
Immensely popular, trance found itself filling a niche as edgier than house, more soothing than drum and bass, and more melodic than techno. It became more accessible to more people. Artists like Paul van Dyk, Ferry Corsten, and Armin van Buuren came to the forefront as premier producers and remixers, bringing with them the emotional, "epic" feel of the style. Meanwhile, DJs like Paul Oakenfold, DJ Ti#235;sto, and DJ Jean were championing the sound in the clubs and through the sale of pre-recorded mixes. By the end of the 1990s, trance remained commercially huge, but had fractured into an extremely diverse genre. Some of the artists that had helped create the trance sound in the early and mid-1990s had, by the end of the decade, abandoned trance completely (artists of particular note here are Pascal F.E.O.S. and Oliver Lieb). Perhaps as a consequence, similar things were happening with the DJs as well. For example, Sasha and Digweed, who together had helped bring the progressive sound to the forefront, all but abandoned it by 2000, instead spinning a darker mix of the rising "deep trance" and "tech-trance" style pioneered by producers and DJ's like Slacker, Breeder, and the duo of Sasha and Digweed (as marked by the duo's 2000 release, "Communicate"). However, Sasha and John Digweed (two completely different people who now DJ less often together) might argue that "Communicate" not be called trance.
Contemporary trance culture is heavily intertwined with recreational drug use. At present, trance is as much about who plays the music as it is about what it sounds like. Trance has transcended the underground scene to become the most popular form of electronic dance music, and a figure in the realm of popular music.
For more concrete examples, check out any number of purported trance compilations; perhaps the most highly recommendable source would be the Global Underground series, including its "Nubreed" sub-series, because it captures the diversity of the genre as expressed through many of its brightest DJ talents. Also recommended as source material would be the Tranceport/Perfecto Presents... series, any of Sasha and Digweed's Northern Exposure mixes, and any of the mixes in the Renaissance series. The Labels to reference would include 3Beat, Bedrock, Devolution, Fluid, Fragrant, Hooj Choons, Hook, Perfecto records, Vandit, Armada, Black Hole, Positiva, Harthouse, Eye Q, MFS, Platipus records, NOOM, R&S, Anjunabeats, Anjunadeep, Yoshitoshi rec, and ATCR Trance Music.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trance_music |