ABSTRACT
Trance is possibly one of the most ambiguous genres of dance music because it appears in so many different forms and few can actually agree on exactly what makes the music ‘trance’. However, it’s fairly safe to say that it can be roughly generalized as the only form of dance music that’s constructed around glamorous melodies which are either incredibly vigorous, laidback or pretty much anywhere in between. In fact, it’s this ‘feel’ of the music that often determines whether it’s ‘progressive’, ‘Goa’, ‘psychedelic’, ‘acid’ or ‘euphoric’. Even then, some will place euphoric trance in with progressive and others believe that acid trance is just another name for Goa. To make matters worse, some forms of trance are given numerous titles by both DJs and clubbers. For example, euphoric trance may be subdivided into ‘commercial ’ or ‘underground’, each of which are different yet again. This obviously presents a dilemma when trying to encapsulate it for the purpose of writing an example track, since it becomes a Hobson’s choice.
Nonetheless, much of how the music is written can be determined by looking at its history and one thing that is certain is that trance, in whichever form, has its roots embedded in Germany. During the 1990s, a joint project between DJ Dag and Jam El Mar resulted in Dance2Trance and their first track, labelled We Came in Peace, is considered by many to be the first ever ‘club’ trance music. Although by today’s standards it was particularly raw, consisting solely of repetitive patterns (as techno is today), it laid the basic foundations for the genre with the sole purpose of putting clubbers into a trance-like state.
