Herb Sundays 141: Trance (Disc One: Slow Trance)
Enter the Flouro Continuum, part one: An inquiry into the delights of one of the most maligned variants of electronic music, including some key voices of the faithful.
Herb Sundays 141: Trance Disc One: Slow Trance by SV4 (Apple, Spotify)
Art by Michael Cina.
“There’s a beautiful paradox at the heart of trance—both the genre and the mindstate. The use of repetition to invoke a state of hypnagogic bliss is, on the one hand, about a dissolution of the self; when done as part of a crowd, it can be deeply communal. It’s also a kind of psychic luxury. The sound that emerged within the electronic dance firmament in the early ‘90s—whether in its “gnarled hippies at a 17-day rave” form or as chart-topping pop—has that same dichotomy of transcendence and indulgence: The province of both the most collective of scenes and, unfortunately, the most ghastly of superstar egos.”
- Joe Muggs for Bandcamp
A quick Rorschach test: Look at the pic above from 1999 of the Welsh DJ Sasha in San Francisco. What does it make you feel? Your answer might tell you all you need to know about your proclivities for Trance, and it might suggest it’s time to close this page.
The image is charming in its pre-phone, pre-smoking ban, pre-CD-Js moment. The most stressful part of the photo for me is how easy it would be for someone to bump his turntables, but that’s my cross to bear. The image's punctum is indeed the rapture of it all; even though it is a club scene, it is oddly serene. The thing that may put you off is something deeper: The DJ, a playback engineer, as an object of worship. Even though in a post-Boiler Room world, we’ve seen the DJ move from deep in the booth to the focused center, DJ idolatry at the time felt more squarely focused on a chosen few. The photo belongs to the archives of Global Underground, the DJ mix series that was one of the great drivers of the peak Trance era (which, for this piece I’m pegging at 1998-2002). It’s taken about 25 years to see this image again and hear the corresponding music without defensiveness or a necessary wink; many still can’t and never will.
Although Trance music is seen as either the product of the late ‘80s (if you count the nomenclature of the KLF, who I covered here) or an early ‘90s phenomenon, where the genre took flight, the Trance industrial complex hit its stride as a Y2K concern and came down (pun intended) from its heavenly heights to make room for more earthly, and subterranean delights (Grime, Dubstep, et. al) more in-line with Simon Reynolds’ concept of a Hardcore Continuum or an expanse that connects UK Rave to Drum & Bass/Jungle to 2-Step Garage and beyond. Trance (or its more socially acceptable form as Progressive House, though we’ll stick to T word here) is in Herb parlance, part of the Flouro Continuum, a train line that perhaps starts from Berlin-School synth with quick stops at “I Feel Love” Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder, the euphoric Rave canon, the commercialized New Age (Enya, preach), Italo Disco, Eurobeat/Hi-NRG (you can take a shuttle to Jock Jams from there) and then arriving at Trance, with new tunnels continuing to Hyperpop and PC Music, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
By the mid-late 90s, America was a beat behind in dance music popularity after its innovator status with Chicago House and Detroit Techno. It had been re-marketed back its wares as Electronica in the late ‘90s as credible but Rock-adjacent UK stadium-ready acts (The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, etc.). Still, the groundwater of the grand European tradition of Trance (the pomp of Western Classical is a forebear too) would seep into this soil. Canny artists like Madonna got the memo and would employ the Trance/Prog palette via producer like William Orbit on records like Ray Of Light (1997) and the sound would further infect curious Americans thanks to the second wave of US raves, the rise of the “superclub” as a global concern, and CD mixes like the aforementioned Global Underground series, which in a pre-social media context, acted as travelogues for the landlocked and curious. DJing was becoming an almost Bourdian-like pursuit, a profession allowing one to see the world, photographer and record bag in tow.
Unlike holy House, serious Techno, or brainy IDM, an interest in Trance was and is seen as symbolic of a moral failure. Serious heads find myriad issues with Trance, many of which are justified. Trance’s purely serotonergic properties (apart from House and Techno’s more political or DIY roots), its sonic maximalism, and indeed the vessels of the music itself, prominently white self-serious, overpaid DJs. Indeed, Trance can feel like the furthest point from the Black and Brown gay roots of dance music; it is decisively European/English and very white. Unlike the dynamic mixing styles of other genres, namely the seismic power of Jeff Mills-ish Techno, who employed Hip-Hop-learned urgency to mixes, Trance favored long, smooth, airless mixes where the fingerprints of the DJ were nowhere to be seen. Trance, from the records to the mixes to the marketing itself, formed a polished solid, the long curves of a Koons steel balloon dog and a murderer’s row of debauched DJs playing records made by mostly unfortunate-looking men that were produced within an inch of their eight-plus minute lives. We loved it.
The New Wave
But there is an upside for modern Trance fans: a more diverse producer and DJ community and a renewed sense of playfulness. A new generation has been slowly stirring these trace elements back into the water supply, sourced via childhood memory, the presumed twenty-year pop culture cycle, or both. Some kids were just born into it, or as Isabelia Herrera found when covering scene hero Evian Christ for the New York Times. Christ, from his press shots wearing Cream (the legendary Liverpool club, site of former Trance glories) bomber jackets, tight Emporio Armani tees, and futuristic shades, looks straight out of 2000, which is fantastic. His TranceParty series of parties features graphics from David Rudnick, not a million years from the stately works that The Designers Republic spun up for Sheffield Trance haven, Gatecrasher many years back. The piece is entitled Trance Music Is Coming Back. Evian Christ Is Part of the Revival:
His reverence for dance music was planted early. Christ fondly recalled playing the 1996 racing video game Wipeout 2097, which had a soundtrack featuring acts like the British electronic producer Sasha and the rave duo Orbital. “I was obsessed with the feeling of driving these spaceships around and listening to this music,” he said. His stepfather, who D.J.’ed on the weekends, had a room at home where he kept records and turntables; often he’d play compilations from the influential clubbing brand Gatecrasher.
Christ was immediately infatuated with the flashy Y2K album artwork of the genre: colorful, sci-fi dreamscapes that featured skyscrapers or hovercrafts from the 22nd century. At the end of trips to the supermarket, his mother often rewarded him with trance CDs to play on his Walkman. “Trance music is quite childish in a way,” he said. “I found this music really exhilarating, really futuristic.”
With the arrival of Oklou’s fabulous choke enough (True Panther) LP this month (which, like Ray Of Light’s art direction, is dripping in gossamer blues and greys), it feels like the starter pistol of a proper new Trance era. Co-producer Casey MQ brought in Danny L Harle and Nick León (Herb 140) to sparkle up Oklou’s most overt Trance ripper, “Harvest Sky,” to significant effect. León, who made a secret Trance classic in “Bikini,” just opened for Tiesto in Miami and doesn’t hide from the T word.
There have been other strings, Baths, aka Will Wiesenfeld, who got bug via the Trance Pop of Eiffel 65 (“Oct, 1998— I remember being obsessed with the song "blue" by eiffel 65 when i heard it on RADIO DISNEY when that was a thing~ i would listen on my shower radio when i was literally 10 years old…”) who has been the only person I have been able to share Trance texts with over the last decade, has a new album coming this week, the lead single of which is Trance-informed, it’s a beaut.
The great Chal Ravens ( No Tags is a must…) reviewed the new Barker single on the Smalltown Supersound label for Pitchfork with a Best New Music designation: “It’s coming up, it’s coming up… like a big techno drop with a brainy twist, the payoff pairs the minimalist logic of Steve Reich with the emotional heights of trancelord Sasha.” The beautiful Kim Hiorthøy cover art is not that far off of a Designer’s Republic (Herb 107) motif, slightly askew. Even last year’s Burial’s 2025 arsenal dabbles in The Stuff, although Reddit tells me this is nothing new.
To make sure I wasn’t crazy, I googled "trance pop” or something this week, and sure enough, the Switched On Pop podcast came up, which posits that Trance is indeed in the air, with FKA twig’s new album as an example. The title track on Eusexua trades in arpeggios and rounded edges. Check the credits. It's the great Koreless as a co-producer, along with who else but Sasha, in the mix.
I, of course, had to ask Shawn Reynaldo of First Floor (Fave Trance track: Sasha’s “Xpander”) repute for his take, as his Trance impressions have been fairly muted, and he accurately nailed the duality:
My introduction came via the Bay Area rave scene during the late '90s, which was dominated by trance-loving crews like Frequency 8 and Skills. In retrospect, these parties were by and large not playing the "good" trance—some of this scene's biggest hits were bootleg trance reworks of John Lennon's "Imagine" and Pachelbel's "Canon in D Major." But I can't pretend that I didn't have fun running around and partying all night in repurposed Oakland warehouses.
Trance never really left, but it was pretty damn radioactive—at least among the tasemaker set—until the pandemic basically put it back on the table for everyone. In truth, there aren't a whole lot of "cool" DJs (whatever that means in 2025) banging Tiesto-style tunes these days, but progressive house—a label which for decades has essentially just been code for more tasteful variants of trance—is everywhere, with labels like Kalahari Oyster Cult and naff leading the way.
Evian Christ is pushing Trance to its oblivion for his Mixmag cover story with Deputy Editor Megan Townsend and his attached cover mix, a live one where he deployed his whole light and sound stack and kept in the crowd noise; it rules. His description, almost American Psycho-like:
“This is a live recording of my set at the London edition of TranceParty10: El Gallinero, which took place at 3:30AM in Corsica Studios on Friday 26th May 2023. During the performance I used 3x Martin Atomic 3000 strobe lights (the old Xenon ones not the fake LED ones) with Scrollers and 2x LookSolutions Viper NT with Quick Fog Fluid (325088). The Atomic 3000s were set to high power mode, so as to draw the full 3KW advertised, and I ran the blinder effect pretty much constantly, using colours to express dynamics. I also ran the smoke pretty much constantly (this is the nice thing about quick fog fluid) and occasionally fired some 80cm handheld confetti cannons into the crowd. Usually I would use more strobe lights and smoke machines (and I would prefer to use a more powerful smoke machine) but this was probably the optimal use of the power available at this particular venue which is quite small. The set was recorded on 3x CDJ 2000NXS (I hate the 3000s) and one of those horrible DJM mixers (I would prefer to use a Xone:96 but it's off-brand for me, maybe now I'm on the cover of Mixmag I can use one).
Fellow Warp Records recording artist Lorenzo Senni (tune: Unreal - “After Hours”) has also been one of the most on-the-money practitioners of mutant Trance for over a decade, a dada bizarro version (“I was an HC straight-edge teenager forced into clubs by raver friends. 15 years later I call myself Rave-Voyeur”). I asked him if Trance was “back,” and he replied, “I made it cool again with my 2012 album Quantum Jelly on Editions Mego. RIP Pita.” I can’t say he’s wrong, no one in polite circles was waving the flag for Trance in 2012, it was verboten.
Canada always seemed to get clubbing more than us down south, as trips to Toronto told me. Two of my favorite producers who dabble happen to both hail from Montreal, Patrick Holland (I was honored to release his Trance-y Inside Unsolved EP on our Spectral label in 2019), and Priori (one day we will work together, I really hope), and they collaborate as Jump Source (a label and a project), which makes powder-coated steel beams of beautiful melodic, proggy dance music.
The aforementioned Patrick Holland (fave Trance track: Icon - “Desire”), who isn’t afraid to follow his muse, including indie guitar pop, is slightly more Trancepilled: “I was peripherally loving it as a kid in the early aughts, but didn’t start digging for it until 2015. Playing a trance record at 33 when it’s pressed at 45 made me listen/look for it differently than I had before. Wading through all the awful stuff made it very satisfying when a gem was found too.” Holland doesn’t think Trance “ever left, but need more of the deep stuff in this current climate.”
Priori (fave tune: Schizophrenia’s “Schizophrenia”, a project of Herb 74, Thomas Fehlmann and Moritz Von Oswald ) is less enthused: “I’m tired of the formulaic festival bangers people call trance. The feeling you get from hearing loud hypnotic music will never leave tho" and while he has never connected to the genre, he “can relate to it as a human reaction to hypnotic music. I felt it the first time I really listened to GAS or The Field on headphones. The first time I took a pill at a techno party and heard Phylyps trak. Defo entranced.”
Nathan Micay (fave trance record: Phantasia - “Inner Life”) is another trance sympathizer I admire. He is pals with Avalon Emerson (Herb 78) (who is not afraid to throw some prog ice where needed), records on the amazing LUCKYME label, and is also known for scoring HBO’s Industry. Micay shared with me the duality of studying the immortal blade:
“My foray into trance began in earnest in 2014. I was coming off the high of the post-dubstep era and was itching for something that equally satisfied my itch for melody and brazenness…I came across Sasha's Global Underground San Francisco Mix and James Holden's Balance 005, which I still regard as the best mix of all time. You could argue that falls more into prog-house but James Holden laid down some seminal trance just prior and I'd say lead trance into much needed new directions.
My favorite trance related memory is the first time I ever played at Panorama Bar. I put on Sasha - Xpander to a full CSD crowd and Natalie, the woman who did the lights at the time, ran over to me and asked "what the fuck is this type of music????" and I said "trance". And she said "This is so loud!!" Later, the top comment on an RA feature about me (back when they had comments) had a poor soul saying "I came to the legendary Panorama Bar all the way from Australia and this fuck played Xpander and ruined the entire experience! Fuck trance!!". I wish I'd taken a screenshot.”
For my playlist, I started this week with a “slow trance” concept. The mix is an exploration into trance-like elements, which can include slow-moving synths, god molecule floatation tank stuff, or just mottled dance. WARNING: My mix does not follow clear lines, inside you’ll find Ambient, “Bleep” techno, Progressive, Italian House, NRG, Techno, Dub Techno, and more, with occasional stops for canonical cuts. Most artists here prob wouldn’t appreciate this T-designation, let alone define themselves as Trance.
Read more in Part Two:
Herb Sundays 142: Trance Part Two (Disc Two: Mitsubishi Xpanded)
Herb Sundays 142: Trance Part Two (Disc Two: Mitsubishi Xpanded) (Apple, Spotify)
Bonus Beats:
Not enough space could be committed to send care to the family of Horst Weidenmüller, who passed away last week. The founder of !K7 Music, itself is a label/distribution institution, Horst’s pioneering of the mix format with the X-Mix and Dj-Kicks series, as well as his involvement in the independent music sector with IMPALA and Merlin, made him not only a creative visionary but a protector of the independent music flame. I’m humbled to have been a mentee.
If you like the tunes above, check this Ambient Trance playlist from Todd L. Burns includes a Bandcamp link as well.
Slow Trance //\\ Slow Clubbing. We are slowly slipping into a beautiful abyss of arps.
Followed Sasha from his first residency in Bugsy’s to Shelly’s to Shaboom with the occasional Blackburn warehouse. He went through everything from house, rave, techno, prog house, trance. Have some marvellous mixtapes of his from those nights. Scorchio is my favourite track of his, made with Darren Emerson I think, I have the cd single somewhere.