i guess most of us agree that 2005 witnessed a truly healthy year concerning trance with the decrease of cheesy commercial tracks and a whole shape up of new innovative trance sounds. Now getting more into details we can clearly see that Progressive managed to break out of its dominant dreamy subtle style of Andy Moor and Markus Schulz to go on wider and incorporate different sounds raging from the somehow housish sounds of Gabriel and Dresden passing by Moor's and Schulz's still growing style towards the old faster and sharper style for the likes of PUSH, the Klinkenberg boys and Hydroid while shading more light on the emotional layed back progressive sound for the likes of Mark Otten and Menno De Jong
As for Melodic/Uplifting Trance, we witnessed a decrease in the euphoric subgenre as it seems most of the melodic vocal trancers tend to go on more and more harder on their productions favouring the faster uplifting structure over the pure euphoric old sound. While Melodic Trance is very hard to die as it used and will always represents trance as a musical style, we can say firmly that the sound was reshaped and given more power and groove to evolve in a way with the current productions. While the same old names seems to still manage to deliver quality upifters (like Armin and Ferry we cant but to notice a new wave of decent producers delivering fresh new sounds like Filo and Peri, Smith & Pledger and the ever improving Above and Beyond
Hard Trance seemes to have experienced a somehow tougher year as really very few hard trancers made it to the spot light in 2005 since the hard edgy sound has taken a more innovative form that we'll be discussing in details later on..
Psy Trance kept on his low profile while having some really innovative producers/DJs who are taking its sounds on their hands (like J00F, IM, Astrix and Wizzy Noise to name a few) i cant but to mention that Psy faced 1 prob which is the over production of tracks sounding almost the same, having same structure with different random instruments that might work well on the dancefloor but can get irritating for home listening.. (am sure Gen can ellaborate more on that if he wishes to..)
Finally we get to the new style that almost swept off dancefloors all over the world and took 2005 by storm.. (a new personal favourite subgenre) Techtrance
While this style got his early introductions back few years ago with some very famous tracks like Tiesto's Lethal Industry & Flight 643 that were the first foundations of this new subgenre, 2005 witnessed a huge focus in this direction having some old producers getting back into the scene with the techy sound, better than ever! (like Bart Claessen, Randy Katana, Svenson, Gielen and Ralphie B). Also 2005 introduced new wave of innovative producers who delivered one bomb after the other causing tech to invade everyone everywhere. Some of these new producers are the like of Fred Baker, Marcel Woods, Nico Parisi and the boys of Black Hole Recordings Montana and Cor Fijneman... it was clear that everyone wanted a to be a part of this tech invasion and everyone wants to try his luck with this new sound..
I hope this resume would shed a little light on trance in the passed year. Suggestions and comments are always welcome and if some of you disagree regarding any of the above mentioned pls feel free to discuss..
Finally, the question that everyone would ask is "what 2006 will have in store for us?! which styles are to advance and which will remain the same if not set back.. will Tech keep on his invasion or maybe a new style would emerge and dominate?!" questions that only time is capable of answering..
Trance on!
.Sam
