i was recently asked by the founder of Ghostly and Spectral Sound: Sam Valenti IV to answer a few quick questions about my relation to trance music. parts of the interview were published in his well written two-part piece on the subject at his Substack herb sundays. he explores the genre through historical facts, his own and other different artists personal perspectives. he share lot’s of references. it’s a good read! but i wanna continue telling a little more about my love for trance just for fun in this second blog post. and excuse me on behalf of my broken english.

okay, so Sam contacted me because trance is mainstream now (that’s my words) and he wanted to dig into the reasons why, maybe? i feel honored he contacted me. himself is a big influential person within the electronic music scene. it’s fascinating how trends come and go so fast these days… i mean trance-adjacent music came and left already a few times the last ten years, right? so i have to say i was kind of surprised this sort of interview only came up to me just now. i was asked if trance is back, and this is not included in his text, but my answers was: ”The trance scene has been huge since the early 90’s. It’s a lifestyle to many and it never left. However the popularity of exploring trance parallel in alternative scenes is more vibrant I guess. I’ve seen it come and go the last decade and now it’s back again but more mainstream.”

Barbara was also interviewed and answered this very beautifully in a bit more personal way: “The essence, the soul of it, cannot be replicated ; it is a product of its own time. it can be honoured though, it can be given justice. and it can totally be played forever.” 

but can we really say it’s back or not? the question is a bit misleading in my opinion. of course the whole gatecrasher era, sensation era, the trance energy era and the Love Parade is all gone. it surely ended a long time ago. and we can all be nostalgic and try to bring back the ibiza vibes now etc.

for example look at A State Of Trance, the legendary radio show (& parties) by Armin van Buuren. he’s been airing his episodes with huge success every week since 2001. I feel like even asking the question if trance is back, in a way is a bit offending! at least a bit negligent to the whole trance family who’s been a heartfelt crowd ever since What Time Is Love.

talking about Armin van Buuren i have to tell you about one KLM-flight from Amsterdam to Montreal in september 2013, and they had the his latest album (it was Intense) to choose from the in-flight entertainment. i remember so bad how i alternated between my own Itunes library, whereas i had just downloaded the freshly released True by Avicii and the IFE the whole travel overseas. it was a perfect soundtrack to the trip and felt kind of luxurious, because meanwhile in Sweden only house music was big.

I said to Sam that it was a pretty niche move to bring trance into the alternative-pop-hiphop-rnb-edm-club-scene a decade ago, but maybe that’s not entirely true actually. I am absolutely not a connoisseur at all. I was among many, maybe within a smaller clique of friends and other likeminded producers, who started to do this early on. but this ”post-trance” was absolutely already happening during mid 2010’s for sure. we have the obvious ones like Araabmuzik & the whole dipset trance party but just going to namedrop a few other absolute favorites of mine who did it so good: Sun Angels, Ana Caprix, John The Baptist, eccojams, aamourocean …

I’d say from around 2013-2020 kind of, I’m not a journalist so forgive me, the current modern scene was more filled with deconstructed club and dancehall. however the word ’trance’ was popular and overused during these years, I wouldn’t say the music itself was trance or trance-adjacent. it was like an aesthetic choice. I just think the whole idea of trance as a concept was trending. because in reality people or even journalists had a real hard time with my (& my band team rockit) actual trance references. maybe it was a sort of naked tweenieness in the songs, or it just felt to close to home. nostalgia can be overwhelming. it was absolutely seen as a lowbrow move anyway.

but there was one interview in an article in complex 11 years ago and the journalist was very intrigued by our trance influenced style …and now I just remembered when I met a local producer who rolled their eyes when I said I was exploring euphoric hardstyle for some tracks for my debut record and a couple of years after described their own music as… well, hardstyle. haha, not to assert myself, because I don’t want to be an elitist but it’s a bit funny.

but this whole post is about sharing some deep cuts. and yes I know hardstyle is as much trance as techno is, so it’s maybe out of context. but again I’m not a journalist so give me a big pass please <3 also in the end my music is such a big blend of these different euphoric styles. why ever compromise? I think genre blending generally was not as forgiving when I started releasing music as it is today, thank god. and I won’t argue this further (read the complex interview) because it doesn’t really matter… instead I wanna write down some experiences in life that led to my mad love for trance.

It all started when I was a young teen (around 2000-2003), Sam included this in his article. I told him: ”When I was a young teenager in the early 2000’s I was so intrigued by how moved I became by the euro dance hits like Heaven by DJ Sammy, the Above & Beyond remix of Madonnas What It Feels Like For A Girl and Désenchantée by Kate Ryan. When other kids just seemed to enjoy the music for the party I was just like sobbing in a state of beautiful melancholia.” but the first time I actually heard Désenchantée I was hanging out with a bunch of older kids and one of them had this sports car, which totally freaks me out today since I was like 13 and they were what 18? but anyway. we went together in this yellow sports car (waaait what… a coincidence?) and I remember, driving to the local burger place in my small northern Swedish hometown and it was only two tracks on repeat in the car. In Da Club and this Belgian banger Désenchantée.

this was so eminent to me. coming of age, with all these crazy hormones rushing through the body, maybe being a bit drunk, probably in a relapse of another episode love-sickness (I had the same crush for 10 years but it’s another blog post I promise), there’s this perfect mix of shame and excitement… yeah you know these moments. I have so many to thank for my later musical expression. so, this specific moment then led to my first P2P of an mp3. I searched for days and days, I had to have this amazing song on my computer. I did not know the title, but could guess. unfortunately I had absolute zero knowledge how to spell it. I had memorized the melody very clear, so I just kept singing this damn song in a sort of fantasy language. and then all of a sudden my francophile mother was like ”oh that’s Désenchantée” and referred to the original. finally I could find the euro dance cover by Kate Ryan on Kazaa. i really felt it was the most beautiful song I had ever heard.

another influential trance experience of mine. and it goes back to 2013 and Montreal again. my trance-folk-rap-whatever band team rockit had a show there at the a festival, actually supporting the-dream which is crazy enough for a story, but okay so, we also had a second show at the festival at some random bar a few days later and our promoter paid us in Molly, classy. no one came to the show (except from our sweet supporting friend Evan and some random guys from Calgary) so we thought we might as well pop. after that crazy no-audience-show, and it was probably the best show we’ve ever done, we went for a rave in a garage somewhere. by the time we came there I was kinda done hanging around, so I went alone outside to the backyard and jumped up on a big container instead. it was an amazing spot to watch the starry sky high, to be fair. I put my headphones on and scrolled through my iPod Nano which I’d brought with me to Canada. decided for Segrada Familia. the sound of my heart, echoing back to the moon across me. mmmm. I was in a perfect state of trance for sure. it wasn’t until I saw the blue sirens I understood the cops had showed up and my friends were losing it over my disappearance. all good though, I found them before the cops found me and team rockit could leave the party (and country) safely without notice.

the thing is I have never gone to any Trance Festival or big trance concert really (only Ferry Corsten a few weeks ago). And honestly I don’t know that much about the history of the genre, can’t name-drop all the classic labels etc. but I do know that I early on, privately and in my own artistic career took the music to my soul and let it fill me with inspiration. i love lot’s of new stuff coming out, both from the traditional scene and the post-trance scene. and now when it’s commercially successful to appropriate trance in pop I guess my catalogue is up for grabs lol. but it’s a bit heartbreaking at the same time. maybe it’s a great time to end an era?

ok. I think this is it for now. I really kicked of this blog with a quite long post. you’re welcome. i’m very excited to share more personal things with my fans without a pic of myself as a header every time. and in a more decentralized context.

I just wanna end this post and say how grateful I am for all the amazing female vocalists within the trance genre, they inspired me so much, and still do. they have unfortunately always been in the shadow of the male producers. but to me they’ve been in the front, my heroes, during soreness and boreness.

one love
xx merely