Looking back on the trance boom 1999-2000

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Seb Fonataine, rising drum rolls, Judge bloody Jules, spiky hairdos, Gatecrasher, "TUNE!", Mitsubishis, stupid cybergear shit, all the tunes sounded the same, Oakey, raging breakdowns....

Did anyone like this stuff around then? I used to go to a local club around here where they'd play trance and hard house (since they were the sonic parlance of the times, well, they didnt just play trance, a bit of house and techno too but mainly trance). I wasn't that into it as much as to buy any trance records or comps but it was the perfect music to compliment Mitsubishis. Those drum rolls would always guarantee to put the eyes quivering in the back of your head without fail. Abominably manipulative music but damn it was enjoyable at the time! Anyway that club didn't last long, everyone either went to the chart-dance clubs or the more middle-class clubbers went all "oh I hate that cheesy shit" and went dancing to deep house or jazzy funky rare groove type shit. I still say "Out of the blue" and "1999" are pretty good. "Cafe Del Mar" too, although I never want to hear it again. "Meet her at the love parade" as well although I think that was a couple of years before the trance boom. Trance seemed to latch on first-time clubbers and people like me who were in the honeymoon period. Kinda like that part in "The Creation Record Story" where Lawrence from Felt is talking about Alan McGee's rave epiphany. He says something like "He had gotten into rave too late. He was just listening to crappy Italian rave stuff that all sounded the same and just missed the innovative stuff". I can empathise!

― Michael B, Sunday, 24 August 2003 15:47 (twenty-two years ago)

i hated all the pop tracks that came out of it like Alice Deejay's 'Better Off Alone' - i think only people who prefer chart-pop to 'pwoper twance' could love shite like that.

i like 'Out Of The Blue' tho, pretty much everything Ferry COrsten did was tolerable to quite good.

― stevem (blueski), Sunday, 24 August 2003 15:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Those drum rolls would always guarantee to put the eyes quivering in the back of your head without fail. Abominably manipulative music but damn it was enjoyable at the time

you make it sound like this is a bad thing?

cafe del mar is actually much older than when you say (92 i think), there was certainly an eye-q issue in 93, and i dont think that was the first

the weird thing is, trance was not only much better circa the frankfurt years (93-95), but it is better again now, theres some good stuff. trance is good!

― gareth (gareth), Sunday, 24 August 2003 16:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Syntax? meh ;)

― stevem (blueski), Sunday, 24 August 2003 16:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Hey, gareth, I said it was enjoyable! I think it just got stale esp. in the wake of "11 pm til I come" you had a slew of records that lacked any kind of imagination and we're all ripping that off. Trance sets became unbelievably tedious and wearying too 'cept for when the DJ would slip in these barely audible psycho-garbage soundbites like y'know shit about Area 51 which was great when you were twatted. Basically what I'm trying to say this stuff never made any big deal for me unless I was off my head.

― Michael B, Sunday, 24 August 2003 16:15 (twenty-two years ago)

I liked it a lot back then (still do), although living in Holland & Germany at the time meant that I missed out on most the UK-specific Gatecrasher/Cream/Jules/Oakenfold/etc hype, it mostly felt like a Dutch/German phenomenon with the odd UK production thrown in.

Not all the tunes from back then have stood the test of time though, and I think that musically, post-2000 and the first wave '92-'95 trance is generally better than the '97-'00 stuff.

― Siegbran (eofor), Sunday, 24 August 2003 16:25 (twenty-two years ago)

What year was 'Doom's Night'?

― Barima (Barima), Sunday, 24 August 2003 16:31 (twenty-two years ago)

1999, but it got big in 2000.

― Siegbran (eofor), Sunday, 24 August 2003 16:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, alright then.

Not quite trance, but this reminds me that I'm sorta keen on Wamdue Project's 'King Of My Castle'.

― Barima (Barima), Sunday, 24 August 2003 16:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Has there ever been as big a tune since "Doom's night"? There was even UKG remixes of that one. I can't think of a tune since that everyone seemed to latch onto.

― Michael B, Sunday, 24 August 2003 16:59 (twenty-two years ago)

A friend of mine brought round some '92-'93 techno (as it was called then!) put out on Harthouse. It sounded like the roots of trance, but less glossy and more bizarre. That was good trance, I think - the first wave, as Siegebrand says.

I remember one name from that Harthouse era, Marco Zafaroni (?) - and actually Art of Trance were pretty good too weren't they? Not to mention Sven Vath on a good day. And Barbarella is a bit of an evergreen, as was that Ongaku track. Sorry, those were blurry days.

Speaking of Sven Vath, and digressing a little, The Harlequin, The Robot and The Ballet Dancer was a good album that was roundly castigated. Perhaps it was the name of the album that put people off. I wonder if that record signalled the decline of trance as a creative force? By 1995, Harthouse was losing their way a little. That's when the second, commercial wave, began to take off: tracks that were drawn from the blueprint set by Harthouse, only much glossier.

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Sunday, 24 August 2003 20:33 (twenty-two years ago)

classic 93 track = 4 Voice ~ Catching the Scent of Mystery on fax records,

yes i agree, about harthouse colin, some great records, the entire first hardfloor album (tb resusitation), marco zaffaranos minimalism ep, and also supernova, cybordelics adventures of dama, essence of nature blue lotus...

― gareth (gareth), Monday, 25 August 2003 00:29 (twenty-two years ago)

always loved the earlier, ruffer trance--Age of Love is one of my fave records ever, there's a seething menace to it just under the surface that the diva and "come on dance w/me" counteracts in a nice way. I felt like that undertow was missing from the later stuff which is fine in itself but there wasn't much there to take its place in the interest department. that said, I probably enjoyed some 99-00 stuff more than I ought to have

― M Matos (M Matos), Monday, 25 August 2003 02:14 (twenty-two years ago)

trance irritates me a lot more when i am "under the influence" than not
it just seems like a waste of drugs or something
also,there is a psy-trance scene emerging in dublin,is this happening anywhere else?
it seems to be just like shit techno,to my ears,but its getting fairly popular
its like umek style techno with rushes and buildups and so on

― robin (robin), Monday, 25 August 2003 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Twilo should get a mention here - the Sasha and Digweed legacy that defined what big-room music was for the current generation of bridge and tunnelers, writers and marketers in NYC; when people say techno in New York, most people who don't follow it or pay attention (i.e. most people) think of Sasha and Digweed first

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 25 August 2003 15:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Psy-trance has been kicking around the home counties for a while, although from what I can tell it's been stuttering to a halt over the last year.

I played a gig down there doing improv guitar over some DJ's which was fun even though the drugs were abysmal. Since then I've been on a mailing list to check out what they're doing and it seems to have gone from "were doing a night at this 2000 capacity club with 3 rooms" to "I'm DJing in a cafe in a small market town at lunchtime on a Tuesday, admission is free".

From what I could make out about the people involved, they seemed very close-minded and a bit rubbish (the promoter spent two hours talking in my ear about how he'd got a psy-trance version of, wait for it, the Star Wars theme and it was the best thing ever).

― Lynskey (Lynskey), Monday, 25 August 2003 16:04 (twenty-two years ago)

But didn't Sasha & Digweed always spin progressive (with the odd trance track yes, but still)?

― Siegbran (eofor), Monday, 25 August 2003 18:18 (twenty-two years ago)

i never understood british trance music, to me it seemed to blend with this progressive sound, something that never intereted me, trance has always been european to me

― gareth (gareth), Monday, 25 August 2003 19:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, they did Siegbran, and it got more and more "progressive" as they went on, too, but I thought it fit because of the thread title; 1999-2000 was their boomtime

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 25 August 2003 19:16 (twenty-two years ago)

The 1999-2000 boom was *all about* the convergence of trance, prog and pop, no? Hence "Xpander" being so heralded.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Tuesday, 26 August 2003 01:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmmm I think that "Xpander" was fairly atypical amongst the big Dutch & German club hits at the time (Ferry Corsten/Armin van Buuren/Rank 1/Tiesto/Johan Gielen (Airscape)/Blank & Jones/ATB/Fragma/Paul van Dyk/etc). 1998-2000 was when 'popular' trance finally split into the populist "uplifting" variety with the big breakdowns & snare crescendos (which in turn quickly inspired every eurodance producer to transform it into that awful blue-eyed diva poptrance) and the more elitist "progressive" kind that was all about gentle hi-fi production, eight hour sets and DJ's "taking you on a journey" where little actually happened.

― Siegbran (eofor), Tuesday, 26 August 2003 13:58 (twenty-two years ago)

two years pass...

y'know the gatecrasher ad w/the people jumping up & down on sofas/armchairs in the streets &c? what was the music playing? was really k-omnipresent as "that gatecrasher track", um . . .

― etc, Thursday, 10 November 2005 05:46 (twenty years ago)

nine months pass...

oh c'mon, surely someone must know?
(can't find any of the gatecrasher ads on youtube; googling brings up . . . this thread.)

― etc (esskay), Friday, 18 August 2006 11:59 (nineteen years ago)

four years pass...

friends and i had a gargantuan goofy discussion on facebook about ibiza uncovered etc, "the gateshead lads head to san antonio but scott catches the attention of the local constabulary" etc...and it's sparked endless posting of ibiza trance and house youtube vids on each others walls.

there's one tune tho, a CLASSIC signature ibiza uncovered tune, i can hear it in my head but i can't place who it is. it's not "out of the blue" or "energy 52". it starts off with just a solitary tom drum in a sort of call and response then it all goes really quiet and has a huge arpeggiated melody, it's prob one of the biggest ibiza hits ever. anyone care to blanket bomb the thread with youtubes till i find it?

― I see what this is (Local Garda), Friday, 28 January 2011 15:59 (fifteen years ago)

I will be back in Ibiza this year after a 13 year absence! Can't wait.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDKeIhASmFM

― mmmm, Friday, 28 January 2011 17:39 (fifteen years ago)

Ronan - could be this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFA56VwdQ3A

― orange and teal.css (I am using your worlds), Friday, 28 January 2011 18:56 (fifteen years ago)

that's it! haha, ah hilarious.

― I see what this is (Local Garda), Saturday, 29 January 2011 16:58 (fifteen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.