Hilight Tribe - Free Tibet (Vini Vici remix) [2016]

Artist(s)
Hilight Tribe, Vini Vici
Release title
Free Tibet
Label name
Iboga Records
Release year
2016

dmgtz96

Elite Member
Jul 13, 2020
2,640 Posts
1,499 Thanked
At nearly 110 million views, this is one of the most famous trance tracks in existence.
Free Tibet, along with the rest of the Vini Vici-styled psytrance, took the trance world by the storm starting the second half of the 2010s. This sound was characterized by an ultra-commercial take on psytrance that combined cinematic percussions and catchy, chopped, tribal-like vocal samples. It's pretty much the psytrance brother of early 2010s tech-trance, which had already matured by the time "psytech" took over.
In retrospect, it isn't a bad track. It combines lots of things from different sub-genres and is fairly palatable even if you're not into regular psy or tech-trance. I have the feeling the animosity toward this track rose from Armin and co. playing it everywhere in festivals. In any case, tracks like Free Tibet changed the direction of mainstream trance and blurred the distinction between tech-trance and psytrance, which tended to appeal to different types of fans.


The original version is a 2004 tribal and more organic-like track. However, the Vini Vici version is the one that greater impacted trance.

 
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dmgtz96

Elite Member
Jul 13, 2020
2,640 Posts
1,499 Thanked
I've never heard of it. I would be very surprised if those views are all legitimate and not 'bought' in some way.
That's a good point. To be fair, Vini Vici had a lot of momentum in 2015-2016. That's when even the big commercial DJs supported them, and their tracks were played at trance festivals.
I would say their breakthrough happened with The Tribe (2015), and from there their popularity exploded. The old forum actually had a few threads for them, but they weren't particularly well-received.
In any case, the impact they had on the scene can't be understated.