A big divide between Trance DJs nowadays?

Magdelayna

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Jul 13, 2020
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I noticed a big divide recently at Trance festivals etc between DJs...youve got the 'old skool' brigade (Thrillseekers/Signum/Lange etc) who are just really playing classic sets now,and then the younger guys (Shugz,Gillies,Atkinson etc) who are almost playing hardstyle at times now,really quite banging stuff and dancing around the stage,trying to offer more entertainment than just playing music...it looks like this is what crowds want now.

Is this just a generational thing or is it just me getting old haha...
 

Hensmon

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Is this just a generational thing or is it just me getting old haha...

The banging/entertaining stuff will always be popular with the younger generation, but I don't think it's a new thing. I spent the majority of my youth going to Hard House nights which were pretty offensive (but great ;)). Mark EG, Yoji and Tidy Boys would def put on a show. Jump Up Drum & Bass also hugely popular from 2007 onwards, tear-out Dubstep too, similar time. There will always be those harder and more entertaining styles at the festivals. 90's was probably different but i'm sure the Trance events with the huge lasers, stadiums and suspended DJ's was considered 'too much' at the time by most as well.
 
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Magdelayna

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Jul 13, 2020
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West Yorkshire,England
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The banging/entertaining stuff will always be popular with the younger generation, but I don't think it's a new thing. I spent the majority of my youth going to Hard House nights which were pretty offensive (but great ;)). Mark EG, Yoji and Tidy Boys would def put on a show. Jump Up Drum & Bass also hugely popular from 2007 onwards, tear-out Dubstep too, similar time. There will always be those harder and more entertaining styles at the festivals. 90's was probably different but i'm sure the Trance events with the huge lasers, stadiums and suspended DJ's was considered 'too much' at the time by most as well.

Yeah,but my point is these guys arnt really playing Trance at a Trance festival lol. Theyre needing to branch into stuff like hardstyle to stay noticeable...i havnt seen this happen before. But its the age we live in Tiktok etc.
 
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dmgtz96

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Yeah,but my point is these guys arnt really playing Trance at a Trance festival lol. Theyre needing to branch into stuff like hardstyle to stay noticeable...i havnt seen this happen before. But its the age we live in Tiktok etc.
We're effectively at the stage where hardstyle is truer to trance than modern trance
 

Hensmon

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Yeah,but my point is these guys arnt really playing Trance at a Trance festival lol. Theyre needing to branch into stuff like hardstyle to stay noticeable

Have their even been 100% trance only festivals though, and Is it really hardstyle Atkinson and co are playing, or just a sub-genre of Trance? Its banging yeah but its not hardstyle, its steroids/craziness/megalifting. If you look at the hardstyle fesitvals of today they wouldn't play music that sounds like Atkinson, Suckley, Shugz I don't think. Either way, many of the Trance festivals I went to in the past (Trance on mainstage) would have hardhouse, hard-trance, hardcore or prog and the breakdown by genre would be fairly common amongst the tents/rooms. Always been that seperation of styles.

I do kind of get what you are saying though. All the old def representing the genre in a different way than the newer generation
 

Gijs

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Jul 2, 2020
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We're effectively at the stage where hardstyle is truer to trance than modern trance
Partially agree with this. Yes, modern hardstyle has more of the melodies of classic trance, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily trancier. Instrument-wise, modern trance it's still faithful to an extent of what trance used to be to me. But at the same time, I'm seeing more artists are labelling their songs less as trance and more as hard dance/techno/style on sites like BeatPort, so...

Speaking of the 'hard' genres, I haven't seen anyone mention actual Hard Trance. Really curious how that would fit in this discussion. 🤔
 
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Recharge

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Sep 26, 2020
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So lets bring a fairly known hard style dj like Darroo who in my opinion deserves a lot of respect this year and should be considered one of the best trance producers this year apart from some good old-school hard trance/dance I present exabits A to C

A


B
I can only find in tidal, but unfortunately I son't have registration there


C



In two words not a lot of releases, but if you check his 2022 releases there is so much quality there.

The encouraging thing is that he is the second producer this year I noticed switching to good old school trance from other styles. So the thing is it doesn't have to be banging hard something, music like this will do just fine.

 

Aquarium

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Jul 18, 2021
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Toronto
I wish we had the legacy DJs playing classics in Canada. All the events on the east coast are uplifting or the artist doing a tour and playing more of their catalogue/label. Not really a divide, but strictly talking club nights as we don’t have Trance festivals