14.08.2003 - 9:43 a.m.

( If there is a horsley reading this, go to the last bit with the asterisks )

I listen to dance music. I also listen and have listened to virtually every other kind of music out there from hip hop to classical to indie ( not much indie though ) to heavy metal, and still enjoy to hear it every now and again, but certainly in a long time I've only bought dance music and since I learned how to mix it's a rare occasion I shell out for cd's ( although the need for laser derived ear noise is slowly building within ) Now I'm building up a new collection of vinyl in order to hold a room of space cadets in a rapturous dream of beats and synths. This is done with a mix of house, hard house, trance, and my personal fave, hard trance. The distinctions may not mean alot to a non-anorak, but it makes a big difference to a dance floor at 2am, I'll have a go and explain what I mean while simultaneously avoiding work.

Back when both trance and I were a lot younger, way back at the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s, trance wasn't trance, trance was too young to be trance and was house music or techno instead, it held power in the european underground clubs ( culturally underground not specifically actually underground ) and broke through in the UK through the embryonic underground scene and the big raves that were going off at the time. At about this time and probably a bit earlier there were parties going off in Goa playing sequencer driven electronica with an eastern influence which became known as Goa trance, this noise was picked up by DJ's passing through and was to heavily influence the Israeli club scene going forward, championed by outfits such as Astral Projection and Infected Mushroom, this was trance as we know it now.

The club scene in europe picked up on this new sound and german labels like Subterranea, EyeQ and Legoan were pushing out trance to the masses, the distinction between house and techno was blurred as trance came in and filled the space in between the simple bouncy house and the stripped down repetitive techno with a repeating beat overlayed with lots of wooshy synths, vocals and effects; and people liked it, the people danced, trance did exactly what it said on the tin, and under the influence it gave your brain somewhere interesting to play.

All through the 90s trance was there and further subdivided into ambient, hard, psychedelic ( etc ) trance. Despite what pop-y crap you were listening to in 1993, trance was just behind the curtains, laughing to itself, and drawing mandlebrots on the wallpaper.

Trance was upstaged towards the end of the 90s by a popular resurgence in hard house, but it was already so well established and diversified by then it was a part of the scenery. I managed to collect, from about 1989 onwards a large collection of european techno and psychedelic trance, as well as a large and enviable collection of ambient music, this was curtailed by a break-in at my house and the fuckers stole exactly half of all the music I had, which had most of the above in it. ( I will carry that grudge to the grave with me, and do go through music fairs looking against the odds for my old titles, most of which have been deleted since 1995, if I ever meet those perps it'll be rusty hook & hungry rat time for them )

Now I'm squarely in vinyl land and having to please others, trance can't keep up with my expectations of a storming night out, I would love to be able to play a long trance set from cd's in a chillout room, where you don't need to be bouncing around ( I also think that large clubs should have a crash-out room with comfyness of sitting and live ambient music, because sometimes you just want to shut your eyes and relax, and it gives the casualties somewhere to sleep ) but on the dancefloor of truth, I feel that music should be not less than 144bpm and upwards to 150bpm and over to give satisfaction, this usually leads to higher consumption to keep up but it's worth it for that post-club ( post-coital like ) feeling of a job well done, so I'm filling my box up with hard trance which is like trance but harder ( strangely enough )

What follows now has relevance to only three people on this planet and meaning to just two of us, you are under no obligation to read any further.

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To : The Captain a.k.a Herr Doktor a.k.a DJ Aftermath a.k.a Andy, without you it wouldn't be, but it is, I said I would, and here it is :

Henry William Trance opens his eyes and listens to the morning trance radiating from the clock radio; he presses the snooze button, kisses his sleeping wife and gets out of bed. In the kitchen he pours himself a bowl of breakfast trance and turns on the television, the news presenter brings news of overnight trance from across the world, Henry finishes his breakfast and goes into the bathroom for a shower in cooling trance, he cleans his teeth with trance paste and gets dressed in his trance suit. Back in the kitchen his wife and two children are at the table eating their breakfast, they smile at him and say �good morning�, their faces beaming with happy trance, he kisses their heads and leaves for work.

Out in the cool trance of the early morning the trance sun is rising slowly over the mountains of trance in the distance, rays of orange coloured trance fill the sky and break over the houses; he sets off walking down the hill towards Trancetown.

As he nears the edge of town he sees more people trancing their way to their jobs of trance, he waits at the bus stop for a trance bus. The trance bus arrives and he takes a seat, the bus follows its usual journey through Trancetown, tranceshops are opening their shutters, trance cafes are setting up their chairs and tables and the devotees of trance are spilling out of the nightclubs onto the streets to trance their way home with the sounds of fresh trance swirling in their minds.

As the trance bus wends its way, he sees trance bakers loading their vans with trance buns for the days deliveries of trance, and a trance policeman at the street corner is watching for crimes against trance. The bus trances on in its journey, past the hospital where casualties of trance have trancefusions to regain their healthy balance of trance, and onwards past the entrance to the docks where trance captains commanding their trance ships of all sizes load and unload their cargo of containered and bulk trance which they carry all across the world as they sail the seven seas of trance.

The bus enters the centre of Trancetown, near the royal Palace of Trance and the Town Square, where the trance market is setting up for another day of selling freshly produced trance to the townsfolk.

Henry sees his stop coming up and presses the button to stop the bus, sweet trance signals to the driver and he slows to a stop, Henry bids him farewell and waits on the pavement for the bus to leave, at the street crossing the lights turn red, halting the traffic and he crosses towards the train station.

In the station, a trance train sits at the platform, humming with potential trance energy, the carriages are filling up with morning commuters, some reading their trance papers and others with personal stereos trancing them to work. Henry walks to an office in the station and collects his things and then boards the last carriage to assume his role as the conductor of trance on this trance train, at the allotted hour he checks his watch and blows a whistle, the trance driver looks back out his window and nods, the trance train slowly pulls out of the station of trance and gathers speed.

The trance train speeds through the countryside, past trance farms where the animals feed on fields of trance and tall crops of trance plants soak up the morning sun, turning ripe with trance. Henry checks the tickets of the commuters and the fields gradually turn into the suburbs of the capital of trance, where the roads are filled with the morning trance hour traffic, and millions of people go about their trance like every other day. The trance train pulls into the station and releases the commuters from its carriages of trance to work in the offices and industrial units, administering and producing trance for the whole country and export to places which have no trance of their own.

Henry signals the driver of the trance train, the carriages have new passengers and it�s time to leave, there's a whole day of trance to trance.