Trance is a four beat genre typified by detuned saw wave synthesiser sounds with catchy euphoric chord progressions and build-ups and often featuring female vocals ranging from 130-150 BPM. Trance has its roots in the early 90’s European club scene and since its inception has diversified into many sub genres.

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The party island of Ibiza, played a core role in the development of early trance sound with the release tracks like Energy 52’s “Café Del Mar” in 1993. This “Classic Trance” genre continued to develop through the late 90’s, it’s uplifting and deep sounds typified by artists such as Art Of Trance (“Madagascar”),Push (“Universal Nation” and Transa (“Carla’s Theme”). By the dawn of the new millennium Trance tracks had secured regular places in the pop charts, however these predictable and formulaic vocal tracks bore little resemblance to the genre’s diverse and more underground beats.

Goa Trance, at its hayday in the mid 90’s is a sub genre of Trance which gave birth to the modern Psychedelic or Psytrance sound. Now Charactised by ultra clean production, dry sounds and trippy effects, Psytrance is ever popular, notable artists and DJ’s being; Infected Mushroom, Asterix and Eskimo, the latter having blurred the boundaries of the genre by incorporating elements from the Hard Dance genre.

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Hard Trance, now in the UK often grouped into the umbrella term of Hard Dance features a blending of classic trance elements with harder and often more acidic (TB-303) elements and makes more use of cutting High Pass filters. The German Hardstyle club sound could also be grouped into this sub-genre, characterised by very hard or distorted kick drums and off-beat filter enveloped basses with processed male vocals and shrill harsh synthesiser lead sounds. Notable Hardstyle DJ’s are Blutonium Boy and Lady Dana.

Modern trance continues to be as popular as ever championed by the world’s number one DJ Armin Van Buuren, Tiesto, Above & Beyond and labels such as Anjuna Beats.