- Dec 1, 2024
- 661 Posts
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Two years ago, Pure Trance China was launched, after the Launch Extravaganza in Guangzhou, we did an one hour interview with Solarstone. During this two years, the video making of this interview faced many difficulties and was delayed for a long time. However, it's finally out today, many thanks to @Sean Cong for the hard working on the final video making. The interview includes 20 questions (including one about TranceFix haha), I did the first 30 minutes and @Lawn Jarre did the rest 30 minutes.
I also simply reorganize the content into text as an article here. Hope you like it too.
www.bilibili.com
A: Absolutely. One of the shows I did previously, I was like filling in for somebody else. The last show I did was where I met the guys who are now part of PURE TRANCE CHINA, including you. And this show we've just done was the first PURE TRANCE CHINA event, which was amazing. So, yeah, they were all very different. And this one was definitely my favourite.
A: Sovereign was the first track that I did, and that kind of set the theme for the album. And I kind of thought, okay, I'm on the way here. You know, I've recorded two other tracks, and they all had a kind of similar sort of epic vibe, and I thought I've got the sound for the album. And then I had a lot of personal stuff happen to me. I had a lot of mental problems, and I got married and had a baby, and everything was kind of like thrown off.
A: And it took me a while to get back in the studio, but I've recorded a lot of stuff since that I'm really happy with. And I've got two pieces left to record. I mean, Hope was meant to be on the album, but that's already come out as a single now, so I'm not sure whether to include it. But I think I've got two more tracks to finish, and then I've got enough. And I've also now got the title as well, finally, because I didn't have a title for four years, but now I have, but I'm not telling you what it is.
Q: So could you tell me something about the theme of the album?
A: It's a very personal record. There's a lot of the music on there. It's kind of about my feelings for my children. A lot for my son, Oscar, who's now 18. Because when I started recording this album, he wasn't even... Darcy, my second boy, wasn't even thought about. It's a very personal record, and I made all of this music at a time when things were quite tough for me personally, so it's a very personal record. It's not really a club record. It's more of a listening album.
Q: Is it emotional?
A: It's quite a deep record, and the lyrics are quite personal as well. So I'm not saying that my music isn't always emotional, but it's a lot more... it's a lot deeper.
A: I love it. I love it. I love Borderline. I love Rob. He's a really great guy, and he mixed Pure Trance 8 with me. Yeah, he's a really nice guy, and I love what he's doing with his labels. And I love the Movement compilation with the old-school kind of artwork. It's like Designers Republic type artwork. I think it's great. I really think he's doing something cool. It's kind of like he's got a very strong brand and a strong idea of what he wants, and it's different to what I do. And I think both together, it's really good for the trance scene. So yeah, I think he's great.
Q: I'm also a very great fan of Activa. So when we listen to the Movement and Pure Trance series, we often compare these two. So what do you think of the same and the difference between these two things?
A: I think, look, for me, Pure Trance was always about capturing the spirit of trance music and focusing on it as, you know, kind of like stepping away from the influences of house music and EDM and techno and all the rest of it and just keeping it Pure Trance. Rob's aim with his label is more to kind of recreate the sound.
Q: Classic Trance sound?
A: Recreating that sound of early 90s and 2000s trance, and that's quite different to what I do. I love it, don't get me wrong. I do like it and I do release some of that stuff on Pure Trance and I work with some of the same producers. But for me, it's slightly different. And I love what he does. I do love what he does, but it's not the same as what I do.
A: I'm not interested. It's not my kind of thing. I've never liked it. To me, it's just got no emotion to it. It's just hard and it's not what I play. I think it's part of the scene. I like all kinds of stuff. I think all kinds of stuff are good for the scene, but it's not my kind of thing at all.
Q: So will Pure Trance accept the submission of Tech Trance?
A: There's no point. It's not my kind of music. I don't want to sound negative, but I only sign stuff and release music that I will play in a set. That is the golden rule for me. If I really like it and I would play it, then I can sign it. But if it's not something I would play, I wouldn't sign it. I don't really think the Tech Trance is... I mean, I think it's quite boring.
Q: That is part of your radio show. “It's not kind of things we usually play, but we like it any way”.
A: That part of the show isn't really for anything trance-related. It's more for alternative kinds of stuff. It's more the kind of thing that I might listen to in the car. It's not the kind of thing I would play. But I wouldn't really listen to Tech Trance in the car. Although, having said that, there are some really good producers. I mean, I'm probably contradicting myself now, because Simon Patterson, John Askew, Mark Sherry, Sneijder @Sneijder, Bryan Kearney under his Karney alias. They do make some good stuff that I play. So, I'm kind of like... just full of shit, basically.
A: I think it's amazing. I mean, it's really good for the scene. Before this genre was introduced, there was a lot of music in the progressive house and melodic techno, which didn't fit in there. And it didn't fit in the main trance genre either. And it was very, very hard for artists and labels to get their music heard because there was no platform for it. Whereas now, since the launch of this thing, it's fantastic because a lot of the music I release on my labels is what I consider raw, deep, hypnotic. And to me, it's my favourite kind. It's the real sort of stuff that really gets under your skin and takes you on a journey. And a lot of those tracks that were previously in the progressive house and melodic techno genres, which were kind of out of place, they have a home now. I love this chart. It's full of music on my labels and John 00 Fleming's label. It's just great. I think it's a good thing.
Q: Also Forescape Digital?
A: Yes, Forescape Digital. That's another good one Soluna, I love it. When I'm looking for music for my radio show, I don't really look in the trance main floor charts because I hate most of it. I think a lot of it is just crap. I look in the raw, deep, hypnotic genre. I look in the progressive house genre. I look in the organic house genre. Even in the techno. And I always listen to those, but I find going through the trance main floor, top 100 is just depressing because so much of it is just boring and it's old and it's been done before.
A: Of course, man. It's been around for about 25 years.
Q: So your and activa’s label are highly regarded there. But it seems that they think that the current mainstream trance tracks are bad.
A: I don't like it either. I really respect the forums that are there, but I don't look at stuff on forums about myself or my labels because if you start as an artist, if you start looking at people's opinions of you and start basing what you do based upon people's opinions and what their reaction might be, you might as well give up. I release the music and make the music that I love and I hope that people love it too. But if you start going on forums, I mean, it's just the internet, isn't it? The internet is just full of people's opinions. Everyone's got their own opinion. What's the point in spending your time looking at other people's opinions? If you want to be yourself, you can't focus on other people. It's dangerous.
Q: However, there are many producers who grew up in the forums, like Julian Del Agranda @Julian Del Agranda, LostLegend @LostLegend and Avalon 62 @Jetflag. They are in Trancefix. I think it can be a good place to find good music.
A: I think that's great. Whatever suits you. I know, like Brendan, Factor B. I know that he always spends a lot of time on these forums because he's part of that scene, but I never was. When I started making music back in the early 90s, these things didn't exist. To me, it doesn't seem natural. Loads of people. I suppose to maybe the generation after me, it's kind of like sitting there with your friends and talking about stuff that you enjoy and comparing notes and stuff. But, I mean, would you want to read a page where they're talking about you and whether they like you and they don't and I think his latest release is shit and, well, I think it's good.
A: The thing about these forums is when you get to the end of the thread, they all just start blaming Tiësto anyway. They all just blame Tiësto for everything. They go, well, if Tiësto made Trance again, things would be okay. (well, something happens in 2026)
Q: Also blaming Armada.
A: I know, and it's not fair, everyone does their own thing. It's true about the Tiësto thing. I love Armin and I love Armada. I think that the Trance scene, anybody who is releasing music and making music and whose heart is in the right place, who is trying to do something good, I think it's great. There's no point in being negative about it and slagging people off. What's the point? You're wasting your energy. Life is hard enough anyway. If you can't say something nice, don't say anything. Spoken like a true father of two.
Q: Trance needs some commercial things to keep alive.
A: That's right. It can't all be underground and selling 10 copies. You need some artists and some shows like A State of Trance to push it to the mainstream. If one of my tracks gets played on A State of Trance, it makes such a difference to the recognition of the track. I played Revelation on my shows and I played it on the new single, I played it on A State of Trance. Everyone knows it now.
A: It's Eurodance. It never was Trance. All that stuff, like Castles in the Sky. It wasn't Trance music. It was Eurodance music. Very, very different things.
Q: However, Beatport signed them as Trance.
A: I know that, but that's up to them. What are they going to call it? Pop? Indie dance? It's not for me. I've got the key by Urban Cookie Collective. That's not Trance, is it? But that's what their music sounds like.
Q: How do you think of their relationship between them and the mainstream Trance? Because some Trance producers start making this, and even maybe Armin is trying to make that.
A: Well, that's up to them. That's fine if that's what they want to do. There is an appetite out there for this kind of thing because there's this 20, 25-year cycle that always happens with music. If you go back 10 years... Actually, is it a 30-year cycle? People were doing stuff that sounded like the 80s, and now people are doing stuff that sounds like the 90s. Because there's a new generation of people who weren't there first time round. The people who are listening to this kind of reinvented 90s music, they're not the same people who listened to it first time round.
A: I had an email from somebody today, an artist, who said to me that "I really love your new single, Revelation, and I would really like to make a 90s-style old-school Trance remix of it." This guy's great, but I was like, what's the point of that? To me, this is when I was making Trance in the 90s. I don't really want somebody to make a track that sounds like me 30 years ago.
A: I do, I love it. I did it myself back in 2000 era. I went through a period of making a lot of ambient music, like after-hours mixes, they were called. I love this kind of things. If you have a good Trance record and you remove all the drums and the bass lines and everything, and just make it all about the pads, I love that. There was a series of albums, the Chilled Out Euphoria albums. There was Red Jerry did the first Chilled Euphoria, and then he did Deep and Chilled Euphoria, both of which featured tracks from me, and then me and my old partner Andy did the third one, which was called Chilled Out Euphoria, and I loved all that. And there's producers doing it again now, and I think it's great. There's an audience for it.
Q: Some of your first album tracks were in that.
A: Yeah. I still make Chilled Out stuff, but I don't really like going backwards. I love other people's music. When I make music, I want to do something new, but I haven't necessarily. Although some people listening to this will probably be like all your music sounds the same, and that's fine.
Q: So will Pure Trance labels, like Electronic Architecture, release an ambient album in the future?
A: Well, if you remember, I did Electronic Architecture 2 into an ambient edition. It was digital, and then I think we did like 200 in a specially printed cardboard sleeve, which I really enjoyed doing. I asked the artists to make me 100 BPM ambient versions of their tracks, and I loved doing that. I think it would be nice to do another ambient album.
A: People say to me, will there be an Electronic Architecture 5? Somebody asked me that yesterday. Well I need to do the new Solarstone album? I've got another thing that I'm working on, and these compilations take me months to do, and there will be an Electronic Architecture 5, but whether it's next year or the year after, I don't know. And an ambient album? I don't know. We'll see.
A: I think it would be really great when artists make a track, and they make an ambient version as well. I know John O'Callaghanhas been asking artists to make a chill-out version of their track, because he's got really into yoga and meditation. I think that's great. What I don't want to do is ask our artists to spend a lot of time producing something that isn't going to sell and isn't going to make them any money. You can't take the piss with artists. I'm not going to say you have to make an ambient mix. That would be unfair. But if they want to then it will be great. That Magdalena @Magdelayna guy, he does these really great chilled-out tracks in the style of chill-out euphoria, he did a remix of Feeling This Way which is really good. Funny, he also did one of my tracks, Seven Cities a few years ago, but I didn't like it. Funny, though, because he's such a great producer. (haha)
A: Outside of trance, I don't have a favourite genre at all. I like loads of stuff. I like pop music, classical music, my son plays a lot of dark metal in the car and I like some of that. My favourite album last year was an album called Alluvium by an artist called C Duncan, which was just beautiful. I got the new Pet Shop Boys album the other day. Have you heard of them?
Q: No, unfortunately.
A: You're so young! The Pet Shop Boys, they're one of the greatest synth pop bands ever. They've been around for 40 years. You must have heard West End Girls. I love all kinds of stuff. I still buy vinyl, but I don't buy dance music vinyl. I buy just albums I want to listen to. My wife and I started doing this thing recently where the first thing we do in the morning is we go into the lounge, choose a vinyl record, put it on with the baby, drink a coffee while listening to an album. That's our morning ritual.
Q: That's interesting to listen to the ambient music on the speakers rather the earphone. It becomes the part of the environment.
A: Yeah, well, you sound like Brian Eno now. Brian Eno said that as well.
A: I love all that stuff. When I was a kid, my mother's husband, Andrew, he was a big Jarre fan, so he would play a lot of Jean-Michel Jarre. He still loves him now, actually. He was very happy when I did a remix of Oxygen a few years ago. And I love Tangerine Dream, I love Kraftwerk. I play Kraftwerk in my set sometimes. I've sampled quite a lot of Tangerine Dream. Who else was there, early innovators?
Q: Klaus Schulze?
A: Yeah and Depeche Mode. But my biggest influences were, they weren't electronic music. It was like Trevor Horn, he's a legendary producer. He produced The Art Of Noise, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, lots of really great stuff in the 80s which he used. He was one of the first big producers to start using like sampling technology and sequences. And that stuff was very big with me in my teenage so he was quite influential with me. And also a producer called Jeff Lynne who was the guy behind Electric Light Orchestra. My mom played him a lot when I was a kid and his productions were very cleverly mixed and engineered. And he mixed together live instruments with electronic sounds. And his keyboard player is a guy called Richard Tandy. And I'm quite a big fan of him as well.
Q: So do you think that pioneer electronic music are better than electronic dance music?
A: No, I don't. I like all kinds of music. You know I've got a lot of respect for the people who did it first, but if I'd been around then, I would have done it first as well. So, It's about when you were born a lot of it, isn't it? It's kind of a bit like plucking the fruit from the lowest branches. When something hasn't been done before and people start doing it, they kind of tend to be more successful because it's a new thing and other people haven't done it. When you're trying to follow in the footsteps of something that was done 40 years ago, you can't. All the chords and melodies have already been used. It's a lot harder. So I think if I'd been born in the 60s and I'd been making music in the 80s, I would probably have beenone of the pioneers of that because I know what I would have done.
Q: And do you think it is harder to produce music in these times than before?
A: No, that's the thing. It's much easier to produce something very, very average. It's very easy these days to make electronic music because there are templates and sound banks and horrible MIDI apps that I hate. It's very easy to just drag and drop and think you've made a piece of music. That doesn't make you a musician. It's like painting by numbers. If I want a sound for one of my tracks, I'll usually create the sound. I know what I want it to do. When I use a synth or something, I'm not just going to "oh, I want a riser or a down lifter". I hate all of that stuff. I hate it when I sign a track and then I sign another track and I hear the same samples in it. It's so lazy and splice. Where's the creativity? Where's the originality? Where's the hunger to make something new? People are like, oh, I need some drums. I'm just taking off splice. Oh I need a effect going up, I'll just take one from the sample pack. Why not use the knobs on your synths and create it, spend an hour making a sound.
Q: I believe music comes from the heart.
A: I agree, and if you have an idea in your head, I really want it to do this, then create it. You have all of these tools, you know, there's so many soft synths available, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, there's so many tools there to make your own sounds. Why not just take a sound that somebody else has made? I think it's destroying our music scen, when I get sent these tracks by artists who've just dragged and dropped, I just think it's horrible. I wish they'd stop sending me them.
A: Because I love the sound of trance and breaks, always have loved that sound, even going back to like Banco de Gaia, Rabbit in the Moon, artists like Future Sound of London, I've always loved that sound of Orbital. I love those bands, and they use a lot of break beats and mix it with kind of like trance melodies. Like Sam Laxton, he made this really brilliant remix of a track on one of my labels, he just wanted to combine breaks with the melodies. So he just did this on spec and sent it to me. I love this sound and I want to try and do something to kind of bring this back a bit, so that's why I set up the label. Sam did the remix of The Last Defeat as well, and there's also that Alucard track, Midway. And I just kind of opened it up and said to people, you know, if you want to do this kind of thing, here is a platform for it, and the artwork is really cool as well, with like Pure Trance sprayed onto bricks, it's wicked, so it's a label I'm really kind of excited about.
A: I love it, yeah. I just think it works, man. As long as you know what you're doing, because breaks should make you want to dance, and if you don't understand the way breaks work in a club, then you don't want to do it. It should really make you want to move. If it's too jagged and stiff, it doesn't really work. If you just take a trance kick and trance snare, and instead of going "dun-t", you make it go "dun-t, dun-t, dun-t", it doesn't really work. It needs to have a shuffle. It needs to have funk, a little bit of funk.
Q: So that's how A Long Way From Home works, right?
A: Well, Darren understands what he's doing, and when we worked on that track, kind of like the Timeless Mix I did. So I sent him ideas for what we call the Timeless Mix, which was kind of like the original version that we had. And then he started making this breaks version, and then he came up with some new sounds. So I included some of his sounds into this version, and he included my sounds into that. So we ended up with two mixes where he was more, I would say he was like 80% responsible for the break beat version, and I was kind of 80% responsible for the Timeless Mix. And we used like 20% of each one in each one. I really liked the fact that it was like the first ever Solarstone single, The Calling, that had two mixes. One was breaks, and one was 4-4. And I really liked the idea of revisiting that kind of idea, that package, I might do it again.
A: It's just about the music. Me and Darren, we did a show in London a few years ago. I went back to his house. and he took me down to his studio and we said let's make a track. And then he sent me some chords. I came up with the idea for the vocal and some bits and we just did it. And Darren is very involved with Anjuna. It just made sense to release it there.
A: For the other one with Farius, I saw him at gigs like Dreamstate a few years ago. Every time I saw him, he would say, when are you going to do something for Enhanced? When he asked me this again, and I said, well, why don't we do a track together? Because I thought it would be unusual and interesting, our styles are so different. I sent him a little melody of just like a piano thing with some drums. Then he messed around with it and sent me back. On his demo, he had this really cool bit in the end. And I thought, that's really different and would be really interesting. So I carried on working on it on a bit and sent it back to him.When he sent me his next version, it didn't have the bit at the end. He'd taken it out. And I was like, where's that bit from the end? He said, oh, I didn't really think you liked it. I was like, that's my favourite part. So he put it back in.
A: And that's how we ended up with this really great track, which is kind of like Solarstone, Solarstone, Solarstone, and Farius, Farius. Farius. Farius, Solarstone. And then in terms of releasing it, it just made sense to do it on Enhanced Progressive, because they were doing this compilation album. I love playing that track out, it was massive at a state of trance. And I played it last night, too. And it just sounded great, they love it. Because it's like, it's kind of like what I do, but a little bit different.
I also simply reorganize the content into text as an article here. Hope you like it too.
Video
回望两年前，展望未来，久等了丨Pure Trance China采访Solarstone 1小时全片_哔哩哔哩_bilibili
各位，久等了！这是2024年5月的Pure Trance China成立庆功派对结束之后，两位团队成员对Solarstone的专访全片。此时正值Solarstone再次来华演出之际，借此机会专门发布大家已经期待了两年的采访。让我们一起展望过去，回望未来，愿各位观众观看愉快！, 视频播放量 382、弹幕量 0、点赞数 46、投硬币枚数 48、收藏人数 22、转发人数 10, 视频作者 PureTrance音乐厂牌, 作者简介 国际Trance音乐厂牌PURE TRANCE中国官方账号，相关视频：阳石采访...
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Question list
Interview:
Some contents are removed for a better reading, so I suggest to watch the video.My Part:
Q1: What were the differences between the three performances in China between 2023 to 2024?
Q: You have been to Guangdong for three times in the past year. Foshan, Guangzhou, and this time, Shenzhen. Are there any differences between these three?A: Absolutely. One of the shows I did previously, I was like filling in for somebody else. The last show I did was where I met the guys who are now part of PURE TRANCE CHINA, including you. And this show we've just done was the first PURE TRANCE CHINA event, which was amazing. So, yeah, they were all very different. And this one was definitely my favourite.
Q2: How is your new album progressing (outdated)?
Q: It has been two years since your first release of your new album, how is your new album going?A: Sovereign was the first track that I did, and that kind of set the theme for the album. And I kind of thought, okay, I'm on the way here. You know, I've recorded two other tracks, and they all had a kind of similar sort of epic vibe, and I thought I've got the sound for the album. And then I had a lot of personal stuff happen to me. I had a lot of mental problems, and I got married and had a baby, and everything was kind of like thrown off.
A: And it took me a while to get back in the studio, but I've recorded a lot of stuff since that I'm really happy with. And I've got two pieces left to record. I mean, Hope was meant to be on the album, but that's already come out as a single now, so I'm not sure whether to include it. But I think I've got two more tracks to finish, and then I've got enough. And I've also now got the title as well, finally, because I didn't have a title for four years, but now I have, but I'm not telling you what it is.
Q: So could you tell me something about the theme of the album?
A: It's a very personal record. There's a lot of the music on there. It's kind of about my feelings for my children. A lot for my son, Oscar, who's now 18. Because when I started recording this album, he wasn't even... Darcy, my second boy, wasn't even thought about. It's a very personal record, and I made all of this music at a time when things were quite tough for me personally, so it's a very personal record. It's not really a club record. It's more of a listening album.
Q: Is it emotional?
A: It's quite a deep record, and the lyrics are quite personal as well. So I'm not saying that my music isn't always emotional, but it's a lot more... it's a lot deeper.
Q3: What are your thoughts on Movement: One and Borderline, and what are the similarities and differences with the Pure Trance complications?
Q: Last year, Activa released Movement: One. It enjoys a great reputation among trance listeners. So how do you think of this compilation and his label Borderline?A: I love it. I love it. I love Borderline. I love Rob. He's a really great guy, and he mixed Pure Trance 8 with me. Yeah, he's a really nice guy, and I love what he's doing with his labels. And I love the Movement compilation with the old-school kind of artwork. It's like Designers Republic type artwork. I think it's great. I really think he's doing something cool. It's kind of like he's got a very strong brand and a strong idea of what he wants, and it's different to what I do. And I think both together, it's really good for the trance scene. So yeah, I think he's great.
Q: I'm also a very great fan of Activa. So when we listen to the Movement and Pure Trance series, we often compare these two. So what do you think of the same and the difference between these two things?
A: I think, look, for me, Pure Trance was always about capturing the spirit of trance music and focusing on it as, you know, kind of like stepping away from the influences of house music and EDM and techno and all the rest of it and just keeping it Pure Trance. Rob's aim with his label is more to kind of recreate the sound.
Q: Classic Trance sound?
A: Recreating that sound of early 90s and 2000s trance, and that's quite different to what I do. I love it, don't get me wrong. I do like it and I do release some of that stuff on Pure Trance and I work with some of the same producers. But for me, it's slightly different. And I love what he does. I do love what he does, but it's not the same as what I do.
Q4: What are your thoughts on Uplifting producers transitioning to Tech Trance?
Q: Nowadays, it seems that some uplifting trance producers start to take tech trance. What do you think of this trend?A: I'm not interested. It's not my kind of thing. I've never liked it. To me, it's just got no emotion to it. It's just hard and it's not what I play. I think it's part of the scene. I like all kinds of stuff. I think all kinds of stuff are good for the scene, but it's not my kind of thing at all.
Q: So will Pure Trance accept the submission of Tech Trance?
A: There's no point. It's not my kind of music. I don't want to sound negative, but I only sign stuff and release music that I will play in a set. That is the golden rule for me. If I really like it and I would play it, then I can sign it. But if it's not something I would play, I wouldn't sign it. I don't really think the Tech Trance is... I mean, I think it's quite boring.
Q: That is part of your radio show. “It's not kind of things we usually play, but we like it any way”.
A: That part of the show isn't really for anything trance-related. It's more for alternative kinds of stuff. It's more the kind of thing that I might listen to in the car. It's not the kind of thing I would play. But I wouldn't really listen to Tech Trance in the car. Although, having said that, there are some really good producers. I mean, I'm probably contradicting myself now, because Simon Patterson, John Askew, Mark Sherry, Sneijder @Sneijder, Bryan Kearney under his Karney alias. They do make some good stuff that I play. So, I'm kind of like... just full of shit, basically.
Q5: How do you think Trance (Raw / Deep / Hypnotic) is developing?
Q: Last year, we have talked about the Trance (Raw, Deep, Hypnotic). So, how do you think of their development?A: I think it's amazing. I mean, it's really good for the scene. Before this genre was introduced, there was a lot of music in the progressive house and melodic techno, which didn't fit in there. And it didn't fit in the main trance genre either. And it was very, very hard for artists and labels to get their music heard because there was no platform for it. Whereas now, since the launch of this thing, it's fantastic because a lot of the music I release on my labels is what I consider raw, deep, hypnotic. And to me, it's my favourite kind. It's the real sort of stuff that really gets under your skin and takes you on a journey. And a lot of those tracks that were previously in the progressive house and melodic techno genres, which were kind of out of place, they have a home now. I love this chart. It's full of music on my labels and John 00 Fleming's label. It's just great. I think it's a good thing.
Q: Also Forescape Digital?
A: Yes, Forescape Digital. That's another good one Soluna, I love it. When I'm looking for music for my radio show, I don't really look in the trance main floor charts because I hate most of it. I think a lot of it is just crap. I look in the raw, deep, hypnotic genre. I look in the progressive house genre. I look in the organic house genre. Even in the techno. And I always listen to those, but I find going through the trance main floor, top 100 is just depressing because so much of it is just boring and it's old and it's been done before.
Q6: Have you heard of music forums like TranceFix, what do you think about them?
Q: Have you heard about the TranceFix forum? @HensmonA: Of course, man. It's been around for about 25 years.
Q: So your and activa’s label are highly regarded there. But it seems that they think that the current mainstream trance tracks are bad.
A: I don't like it either. I really respect the forums that are there, but I don't look at stuff on forums about myself or my labels because if you start as an artist, if you start looking at people's opinions of you and start basing what you do based upon people's opinions and what their reaction might be, you might as well give up. I release the music and make the music that I love and I hope that people love it too. But if you start going on forums, I mean, it's just the internet, isn't it? The internet is just full of people's opinions. Everyone's got their own opinion. What's the point in spending your time looking at other people's opinions? If you want to be yourself, you can't focus on other people. It's dangerous.
Q: However, there are many producers who grew up in the forums, like Julian Del Agranda @Julian Del Agranda, LostLegend @LostLegend and Avalon 62 @Jetflag. They are in Trancefix. I think it can be a good place to find good music.
A: I think that's great. Whatever suits you. I know, like Brendan, Factor B. I know that he always spends a lot of time on these forums because he's part of that scene, but I never was. When I started making music back in the early 90s, these things didn't exist. To me, it doesn't seem natural. Loads of people. I suppose to maybe the generation after me, it's kind of like sitting there with your friends and talking about stuff that you enjoy and comparing notes and stuff. But, I mean, would you want to read a page where they're talking about you and whether they like you and they don't and I think his latest release is shit and, well, I think it's good.
A: The thing about these forums is when you get to the end of the thread, they all just start blaming Tiësto anyway. They all just blame Tiësto for everything. They go, well, if Tiësto made Trance again, things would be okay. (well, something happens in 2026)
Q: Also blaming Armada.
A: I know, and it's not fair, everyone does their own thing. It's true about the Tiësto thing. I love Armin and I love Armada. I think that the Trance scene, anybody who is releasing music and making music and whose heart is in the right place, who is trying to do something good, I think it's great. There's no point in being negative about it and slagging people off. What's the point? You're wasting your energy. Life is hard enough anyway. If you can't say something nice, don't say anything. Spoken like a true father of two.
Q: Trance needs some commercial things to keep alive.
A: That's right. It can't all be underground and selling 10 copies. You need some artists and some shows like A State of Trance to push it to the mainstream. If one of my tracks gets played on A State of Trance, it makes such a difference to the recognition of the track. I played Revelation on my shows and I played it on the new single, I played it on A State of Trance. Everyone knows it now.
Q7: What are your thoughts on new Trance sounds like Will Atkinson and Ben Hemsley?
Q: It seems that there is another type of Trance that is rising, such as the tracks like Will Atkinson, Ben Hemsley, also Calvin Harris' Miracle, and Romy & Fred Again..’s Strong which got Grammy nominations. Do you think that they are Trance?A: It's Eurodance. It never was Trance. All that stuff, like Castles in the Sky. It wasn't Trance music. It was Eurodance music. Very, very different things.
Q: However, Beatport signed them as Trance.
A: I know that, but that's up to them. What are they going to call it? Pop? Indie dance? It's not for me. I've got the key by Urban Cookie Collective. That's not Trance, is it? But that's what their music sounds like.
Q: How do you think of their relationship between them and the mainstream Trance? Because some Trance producers start making this, and even maybe Armin is trying to make that.
A: Well, that's up to them. That's fine if that's what they want to do. There is an appetite out there for this kind of thing because there's this 20, 25-year cycle that always happens with music. If you go back 10 years... Actually, is it a 30-year cycle? People were doing stuff that sounded like the 80s, and now people are doing stuff that sounds like the 90s. Because there's a new generation of people who weren't there first time round. The people who are listening to this kind of reinvented 90s music, they're not the same people who listened to it first time round.
A: I had an email from somebody today, an artist, who said to me that "I really love your new single, Revelation, and I would really like to make a 90s-style old-school Trance remix of it." This guy's great, but I was like, what's the point of that? To me, this is when I was making Trance in the 90s. I don't really want somebody to make a track that sounds like me 30 years ago.
Q8: Do Trance producers have an advantage in producing ambient music?
Q: Some Trance producers like Ferry Corsten under his alias Ferr and Above & Beyond, have tried ambient making. Do you think the Trance producers have an advantage in creating ambient?A: I do, I love it. I did it myself back in 2000 era. I went through a period of making a lot of ambient music, like after-hours mixes, they were called. I love this kind of things. If you have a good Trance record and you remove all the drums and the bass lines and everything, and just make it all about the pads, I love that. There was a series of albums, the Chilled Out Euphoria albums. There was Red Jerry did the first Chilled Euphoria, and then he did Deep and Chilled Euphoria, both of which featured tracks from me, and then me and my old partner Andy did the third one, which was called Chilled Out Euphoria, and I loved all that. And there's producers doing it again now, and I think it's great. There's an audience for it.
Q: Some of your first album tracks were in that.
A: Yeah. I still make Chilled Out stuff, but I don't really like going backwards. I love other people's music. When I make music, I want to do something new, but I haven't necessarily. Although some people listening to this will probably be like all your music sounds the same, and that's fine.
Q: So will Pure Trance labels, like Electronic Architecture, release an ambient album in the future?
A: Well, if you remember, I did Electronic Architecture 2 into an ambient edition. It was digital, and then I think we did like 200 in a specially printed cardboard sleeve, which I really enjoyed doing. I asked the artists to make me 100 BPM ambient versions of their tracks, and I loved doing that. I think it would be nice to do another ambient album.
A: People say to me, will there be an Electronic Architecture 5? Somebody asked me that yesterday. Well I need to do the new Solarstone album? I've got another thing that I'm working on, and these compilations take me months to do, and there will be an Electronic Architecture 5, but whether it's next year or the year after, I don't know. And an ambient album? I don't know. We'll see.
A: I think it would be really great when artists make a track, and they make an ambient version as well. I know John O'Callaghanhas been asking artists to make a chill-out version of their track, because he's got really into yoga and meditation. I think that's great. What I don't want to do is ask our artists to spend a lot of time producing something that isn't going to sell and isn't going to make them any money. You can't take the piss with artists. I'm not going to say you have to make an ambient mix. That would be unfair. But if they want to then it will be great. That Magdalena @Magdelayna guy, he does these really great chilled-out tracks in the style of chill-out euphoria, he did a remix of Feeling This Way which is really good. Funny, he also did one of my tracks, Seven Cities a few years ago, but I didn't like it. Funny, though, because he's such a great producer. (haha)
Q9: What's your favorite genre besides Trance?
Q: Besides trance, what is your favourite music genre? And how does it influence you?A: Outside of trance, I don't have a favourite genre at all. I like loads of stuff. I like pop music, classical music, my son plays a lot of dark metal in the car and I like some of that. My favourite album last year was an album called Alluvium by an artist called C Duncan, which was just beautiful. I got the new Pet Shop Boys album the other day. Have you heard of them?
Q: No, unfortunately.
A: You're so young! The Pet Shop Boys, they're one of the greatest synth pop bands ever. They've been around for 40 years. You must have heard West End Girls. I love all kinds of stuff. I still buy vinyl, but I don't buy dance music vinyl. I buy just albums I want to listen to. My wife and I started doing this thing recently where the first thing we do in the morning is we go into the lounge, choose a vinyl record, put it on with the baby, drink a coffee while listening to an album. That's our morning ritual.
Q: That's interesting to listen to the ambient music on the speakers rather the earphone. It becomes the part of the environment.
A: Yeah, well, you sound like Brian Eno now. Brian Eno said that as well.
Lawn's Part
Q10: What are your thoughts on the electronic music pioneers?
Q: Speaking of Brian Eno, I’ll really want to know your opinions about pioneers of electronic music like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream or Jean-Michel Jarre.A: I love all that stuff. When I was a kid, my mother's husband, Andrew, he was a big Jarre fan, so he would play a lot of Jean-Michel Jarre. He still loves him now, actually. He was very happy when I did a remix of Oxygen a few years ago. And I love Tangerine Dream, I love Kraftwerk. I play Kraftwerk in my set sometimes. I've sampled quite a lot of Tangerine Dream. Who else was there, early innovators?
Q: Klaus Schulze?
A: Yeah and Depeche Mode. But my biggest influences were, they weren't electronic music. It was like Trevor Horn, he's a legendary producer. He produced The Art Of Noise, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, lots of really great stuff in the 80s which he used. He was one of the first big producers to start using like sampling technology and sequences. And that stuff was very big with me in my teenage so he was quite influential with me. And also a producer called Jeff Lynne who was the guy behind Electric Light Orchestra. My mom played him a lot when I was a kid and his productions were very cleverly mixed and engineered. And he mixed together live instruments with electronic sounds. And his keyboard player is a guy called Richard Tandy. And I'm quite a big fan of him as well.
Q: So do you think that pioneer electronic music are better than electronic dance music?
A: No, I don't. I like all kinds of music. You know I've got a lot of respect for the people who did it first, but if I'd been around then, I would have done it first as well. So, It's about when you were born a lot of it, isn't it? It's kind of a bit like plucking the fruit from the lowest branches. When something hasn't been done before and people start doing it, they kind of tend to be more successful because it's a new thing and other people haven't done it. When you're trying to follow in the footsteps of something that was done 40 years ago, you can't. All the chords and melodies have already been used. It's a lot harder. So I think if I'd been born in the 60s and I'd been making music in the 80s, I would probably have beenone of the pioneers of that because I know what I would have done.
Q: And do you think it is harder to produce music in these times than before?
A: No, that's the thing. It's much easier to produce something very, very average. It's very easy these days to make electronic music because there are templates and sound banks and horrible MIDI apps that I hate. It's very easy to just drag and drop and think you've made a piece of music. That doesn't make you a musician. It's like painting by numbers. If I want a sound for one of my tracks, I'll usually create the sound. I know what I want it to do. When I use a synth or something, I'm not just going to "oh, I want a riser or a down lifter". I hate all of that stuff. I hate it when I sign a track and then I sign another track and I hear the same samples in it. It's so lazy and splice. Where's the creativity? Where's the originality? Where's the hunger to make something new? People are like, oh, I need some drums. I'm just taking off splice. Oh I need a effect going up, I'll just take one from the sample pack. Why not use the knobs on your synths and create it, spend an hour making a sound.
Q: I believe music comes from the heart.
A: I agree, and if you have an idea in your head, I really want it to do this, then create it. You have all of these tools, you know, there's so many soft synths available, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, there's so many tools there to make your own sounds. Why not just take a sound that somebody else has made? I think it's destroying our music scen, when I get sent these tracks by artists who've just dragged and dropped, I just think it's horrible. I wish they'd stop sending me them.
Q11: What was the reason for the formation of Pure Breaks?
Q: Pure Trance has a sub-label called Pure Breaks, that has many releases, why do you start this sub-label?A: Because I love the sound of trance and breaks, always have loved that sound, even going back to like Banco de Gaia, Rabbit in the Moon, artists like Future Sound of London, I've always loved that sound of Orbital. I love those bands, and they use a lot of break beats and mix it with kind of like trance melodies. Like Sam Laxton, he made this really brilliant remix of a track on one of my labels, he just wanted to combine breaks with the melodies. So he just did this on spec and sent it to me. I love this sound and I want to try and do something to kind of bring this back a bit, so that's why I set up the label. Sam did the remix of The Last Defeat as well, and there's also that Alucard track, Midway. And I just kind of opened it up and said to people, you know, if you want to do this kind of thing, here is a platform for it, and the artwork is really cool as well, with like Pure Trance sprayed onto bricks, it's wicked, so it's a label I'm really kind of excited about.
Q12: What do you think of the relationship between Trance and Breaks?
Q: You recently collaborated with Darren Tate and that's a breaks version of your classic The Last Defeat Part 2. So what's your opinion on the relationship between trance, and especially classic trance and breaks?A: I love it, yeah. I just think it works, man. As long as you know what you're doing, because breaks should make you want to dance, and if you don't understand the way breaks work in a club, then you don't want to do it. It should really make you want to move. If it's too jagged and stiff, it doesn't really work. If you just take a trance kick and trance snare, and instead of going "dun-t", you make it go "dun-t, dun-t, dun-t", it doesn't really work. It needs to have a shuffle. It needs to have funk, a little bit of funk.
Q: So that's how A Long Way From Home works, right?
A: Well, Darren understands what he's doing, and when we worked on that track, kind of like the Timeless Mix I did. So I sent him ideas for what we call the Timeless Mix, which was kind of like the original version that we had. And then he started making this breaks version, and then he came up with some new sounds. So I included some of his sounds into this version, and he included my sounds into that. So we ended up with two mixes where he was more, I would say he was like 80% responsible for the break beat version, and I was kind of 80% responsible for the Timeless Mix. And we used like 20% of each one in each one. I really liked the fact that it was like the first ever Solarstone single, The Calling, that had two mixes. One was breaks, and one was 4-4. And I really liked the idea of revisiting that kind of idea, that package, I might do it again.
Q13: Why did you go to labels like Anjunabeats and Enhanced Progressive which we haven't been before?
Q: Speaking of A Long Way From Home, this was your first release in Anjunabeats. And this year, you also have your first release on Enhanced Progressive with Farius. Can you share something about how these collaborations came out? Why you decided to release on these labels you haven't been before?A: It's just about the music. Me and Darren, we did a show in London a few years ago. I went back to his house. and he took me down to his studio and we said let's make a track. And then he sent me some chords. I came up with the idea for the vocal and some bits and we just did it. And Darren is very involved with Anjuna. It just made sense to release it there.
A: For the other one with Farius, I saw him at gigs like Dreamstate a few years ago. Every time I saw him, he would say, when are you going to do something for Enhanced? When he asked me this again, and I said, well, why don't we do a track together? Because I thought it would be unusual and interesting, our styles are so different. I sent him a little melody of just like a piano thing with some drums. Then he messed around with it and sent me back. On his demo, he had this really cool bit in the end. And I thought, that's really different and would be really interesting. So I carried on working on it on a bit and sent it back to him.When he sent me his next version, it didn't have the bit at the end. He'd taken it out. And I was like, where's that bit from the end? He said, oh, I didn't really think you liked it. I was like, that's my favourite part. So he put it back in.
A: And that's how we ended up with this really great track, which is kind of like Solarstone, Solarstone, Solarstone, and Farius, Farius. Farius. Farius, Solarstone. And then in terms of releasing it, it just made sense to do it on Enhanced Progressive, because they were doing this compilation album. I love playing that track out, it was massive at a state of trance. And I played it last night, too. And it just sounded great, they love it. Because it's like, it's kind of like what I do, but a little bit different.
To be continue..
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