The Best of 2024 - What are your thoughts on this year?

[Hensmon]

VOTING INFO & RULES

1. Voting is open from Dec 1st to Jan 2nd (Midnight)
2. Genres must be Trance, Progressive, Goa, Psy or other hypnotic styles of music that are influenced or incorporate one of those core genres.
3. Track votes are weighted by position. Track 1 receives 5 points, while lower votes receive less
4. Vote for as much or as little as you want - you can submit even just with one track.
5. You can edit or change your votes after submitting

 

[Hensmon]

TF BEST OF 2024

It's this time of year again boys and girls.

Voting is now OPEN! Like last year, we have a tracks suggestion shortlist found above this message (desktop only). Putting this together helped me remember all the great music that was shared on TF throughout the year, so hopefully will help you guys out too. It's not an extensive list, but is built from popular threads, submissions and shares in the forum. The genre tags are a very loose way to identify bandcamp-esque release vs conventional ones. Take it loosely. For those wanting a deeper dive into those tracks, you can find the google sheet here. I'll be adding 10-20 more tracks to this in the coming week. Thanks to @Archon for building this in record time.

I think we had 200+ votes last year and we'll try again to hit that number once again (so expect me pestering some of you).

As usual you can expect results and 2 EoY mixes early Jan! This year we have forum legend @Julian Del Agranda and underground wizard @rambalcochet providing for us! Thank you both!

And of course, love to hear your thoughts below on how you felt this year was and your top lists.

Vote for as little or as much as you want. HAPPY VOTING!

 

[Juna]

Let’s fucking go

 

[Motion]

I have a lot of homework to do with your shortlist. I only have two or three tracks in the mind so far. S-Bahn by Enigma State was one that stood out.

 

[Gijs]

3. Track votes are wieghted by position. Track 1 recieves 10 points, while lower votes receive less

The form itself seemingly doesn't reflect this, it says 5 points for track 1, 3 points for tracks 2/3, 2 points for tracks 4/5 and 1 point for tracks 5-10. Which one of these scales is used?

 

[Hensmon]

The form itself seemingly doesn't reflect this, it says 5 points for track 1, 3 points for tracks 2/3, 2 points for tracks 4/5 and 1 point for tracks 5-10. Which one of these scales is used?

Sorry meant to write 5 points for the top spot, instead of 10. The rest of the points are correct and as you read it.

 

[Julian Del Agranda]

Ah. There it is. I guess I should mention my own tunes, El Sueño, was released in January, and Time Warp, which is released this Friday.

Oh and @Jetflag and I had ‘Flawless’ of course on Pure Trance. Not been a bad year at all.

It will be fun compiling a top10 for this poll, there will be great tunes that won’t get points. Will be difficult. I’ll post my progress later on.

 

[Magdelayna]

One thing id take from this year is more producers going back to an old skool sound,something ive always championed. Ferry's recent ' Remember' being an example...and theres still huge demand there,after what i have seen as a few weak years in Trance.

 

[SleepyBuddah]

It's going to be a hard one. I've been catching up a lot and I very much agree with @Magdelayna there's a lot of old skool sounds and quite some high quality tracks.

 

[Archon]

I have to say it's the opposite for me. This year I was further away from trance than I've ever been. It's gonna be a struggle putting together a good list.

 

[Pokkryshkin]

This is the weakest year in recent memory. There are very few strong tracks that I would personally want to listen to again years from now. I’m not even sure if I’ll bother compiling a top 10 list or anything similar. Maybe if the mood strikes, but even now I can’t immediately name any tracks. That’s a very bad sign.

 

[Julian Del Agranda]

Some tracks that will be on my shortlist / contenders, might be inspiration for others:

Ferry Corsten - Fulfillment
Sinful Biz - Magnetic
AA Meeting - Supercell
Solarstone - Revelation
Solarstone - Touchstone (Aeon Shift Remix)
Aeon Shift - Celestial Awakening
Macker - Arrakis
Thrillseekers - Almost Nearly Always
Thrillseekers - Be With Me
Siskin - Connected (Standard Form Remix)
Conductor & The Cowboy - Feeling This Way (Enigma State Remix)
Mac & Monday - People Can Fly
Wavetraxx & Jaron Inc - Summerbreeze (pt1)
LostLegend - Running Man
Aeon Shift - Another World
Sean Tyas & Enigma State - Lately (Azure MIx)
Activa & Marcos - Elevate
Slipstream & Sonic Element - Forgiven
Activa - Dark Matter
Luke Terry - Deep Space
Adam Reece - Simulator

 

[Jetflag]

in no particular order yet:


SØNIN & JS - Brighton BOP (Anjunabeats is back baby)

Mario De Caine – Patagonia, (the haunting vox, the lead, it just works)

Quietman – Indian Eel (We Are the Future Precursor) I would pick up dj’ing sets purely so I could include this one.

Tom Bro – Balearic islands (bass/pluck/pad combo after the break is so simple, yet works so well.)

Martinou – Expanding (that percussion and atmosphere)

Solarfields feat. Krister Linder – Sol (reinvented) (expect a remix in the near future of this beauty, love the man’s voice, g)

Elentania – Papillon (Avalon 62 remix) (would have picked the original if it where released, as I don’t like tooting my own horn)

Bobby Summa – Flower (still not bored of this track after working on it and listening to it so many times.)

Julian Del Agranda – Time Warp (club/hard trancer of the year)

Macker - Arrakis (Scott Cameron Remix) (going for the remix this time as it fits my mood better me thinks. )

LostLegend - Running Man (uplifter of the year)

 

[ChurRuy]

Wavetraxx & Jaron Inc - Summerbreeze

This one really hit for me too.

 

[Propeller]

I look at the tracks I've purchased to figure out a top 10. I've purchased about 15-20 tracks released this year out of 197 total purchases so far. That means 90% of the stuff I buy is old school stuff.
It's all about the return of Quietman for me. My top 10 has 5 of his releases. The rest are mainly Borderline releases, mainly those featured on the Movement compilation from last year.

So, judging on the things I buy it's not been a great year for me. However, it's doesn't feel like it's been such a poor year either. Buying 1-2 releases per month is probably the normal thing to do and art is not meant to be consumed in large quantities. Quality rather than quantity and all that.
I feel differently about the old school stuff though. I enjoy discovering music from the golden era that I've never heard. And if I find something I like, I don't think twice about buying. You never know when it might no longer be available to buy from online shops. I hate that feeling of wanting to buy a track and then finding that it's no longer available for sale.

 

[SaltAcidFatHeatAcid]

I look at the tracks I've purchased to figure out a top 10. I've purchased about 15-20 tracks released this year out of 197 total purchases so far. That means 90% of the stuff I buy is old school stuff.

I hear you on the old-school vs new school. It's really hard to compare the OG to the new flavor, which is often derivative, and not to the standard we saw way back when real $$ was atrracting the best producers.

The thing that keeps me focusing on new content, is the desire to see the scene grow (outside of Dreamstate/Lumi) and to promote the stuff we are all missing in the noise of mediocre open-genre releases. So so much good stuff is missed/overlooked. While I still dig in the old crates as well, I worry about the scene when the focus for so many is the past (like on /r/classictrance). It seems like the trance scene is not poised for growth with an aging fanbase not going to shows. I'm guilty of it myself, damn those were good times.

I buy a lot of tracks mainly b/c I like a wide variety of colors to paint with when making sets. I'll share a top 100 this weekend which expands a lot on what @Hensmon posted, mainly on the underground side. I was a bit down on 2024 even recently. Though in hindsight, there was loads of amazing stuff. It's just buried under Bandcamp mountain, and requires a lot of sifting to unearth the gems.

 

[HTY]

I've give a rough early vote, which will undoubtably change as I go through your suggested track list.

Mikkel Rev - Whorl is a candidate for top pick. The whole EP was excellent.

Enigma State & Sean Tyas - Latetly will be my uplifter of the year, but lets see if other underground tracks push it down.

For new names I have a lot of time for Advanced Civilizations - Regener8 and Martinou - Expanding.

 

[Dmoore]

The Enigma State and Tyas collab is likely my number one pick, although I am secretly more excited for some of the other early demos and previews he shared in this forum throughout the year.

I also loved Coredata - Strangelove, Activas Palindrome remix and Julian Del Agranda’s Trancefixed. So many options this early in the month and heaps of tracks to catch up on. Will be taking a long hard look over these next weeks. Oh, Narels track on TF records was dope too.

Borderline still the undisputed label in the scene. This might be their best year since the return, helped by the bringing in Aerium, Julian Agranda and Enigma state, no less.

 

[erickUO]

Currently sorting my list. I have mixed feelings about this year,
but seems pretty similar to last year: starts good - meh in the middle - ends good.

There are more enjoyable mainstream tracks this year, I think I will have some of them for top 10 nomination.
No clue for the best artist and label, though. I might leave them blank.

 

[Manofearth]

but seems pretty similar to last year: starts good - meh in the middle - ends good.

That seems right to me also, although only 4-5 underground tracks really come to mind as high favorites, whereas last year I believe I had about 15-20. I agree that the commercial and mainstream side improved too.

I can't tell you how useful you track suggestion list is at the top of this thread. I will be spending the next week going through to find what I missed. Quietman's album had three tracks that may all feature in my top 10. I also really liked Rambal Cochet - Body-buzz.