Twisted by Svenson & Gielen was one of THE Trance anthems of the 2001. Yes, people were listening to Trance in 2001. Jorn van Deynhoven pushed out this tremendous remake that made its way onto ASOT 688 last week. The track is a piece of trance history, given a significant boost on the low end for the new era. If you want to know what big room sounded like before Martin Garrix was in kindergarten, this is it. There’s a good 4 minutes reminding everyone what the classic trance vibe felt like, but with the Armin-developed huge bass sound that anthem/festival trance heads have come to expect. If you don’t know who Jorn Van Deynhoven is, get this musc into your face. It’s some of the best trance out there, and his career is exploding. Get with this before you can’t afford tickets to his shows.
(Update: It has been confirmed that this bootleg has been produced by Scott Bond & Charlie Walker with Armin making an edit of the track. Scott Bond & Charlie Walker have some amazing work here in the REBOOTED remix. You’re going to see some more of Scott Bond’s tracks here in the coming weeks. If you don’t know who Scott Bond is, just read about the nightclub he used to rock called Gatecrasher!)
If you’re a regular ASOT listener, you know that it’s the best place to find new tracks first, especially in trance & progressive. ASOT 678 was no exception. This remix of Imagine is one of the most euphoric tracks I’ve heard in years. This is the kind of stuff that festival kids eat up, but it’s still got enough legit trance elements that even the old people will sit up and pay attention. Listen to it before it gets taken down it just might. Interestingly, there is a track off of Imagine by the name of “Imagine” as well, which has a crazy good progressive build, clocking in at almost 10min. This is what trance was meant to be, and because I’m such a nice guy, it’s linked below. That’s right, a trance twofer! Enjoy the long weekend! Show the DJ & label some love on Fbook!
While some of us had the good sense to not miss their debut performance at A State of Trance 600 (reported on here), the rest of the dance music world got their first taste of the New World Punx, the new mega-collab between Ferry Corsten & Markus Schulz, at either Roseland in NYC or Palladium in LA. The act is harder, more in your face and definitely way less ethereal and smooth than an act like Above & Beyond or something of the like. However, this is by design, as the two mega stars relayed to Billboard last week.
Romper is an intense, stompy track that infuses a serious amount of “you’re two steps from hardstyle” energy into the dance floor. They are acutely aware of the stagnation of mainstage dance music these days, and as Billboard reports, they’re down to drop the drop as it were. Keep the energy up throughout the set, and not wait for the same build/drop/blowout formula that caught trance, electro, house and is slowly entangling trap within its unimaginative tentacles.
A State of Trance 600 NYC was a triumph. While I can’t wait to share my expanded thoughts about the event, the music, the crowd and the entire evening, I wanted to make sure that this specific set was noted. I’ve been a fan of Ferry Corsten for years, while Markus Schulz has started exploding in my awareness only a year or two ago. The collaboration history of Ferry is impressive and the New World Punx lineup was amazing. The tracks were hard, fast and insanely well mixed. The closest ID’ing of the tracks is below, and any track that you see as a New World Punx remix/mashup or bootleg mix, just go ahead and assume it’s fantastic.
Of course, track 20 “The Digital Punks of Gotham” is my favorite unreleased track of the set. How could you tell?
01. New World Punx – Romper
02. Binary Finary – 1998 (New World Punx Bootleg Mix)
03. Markus Schulz & Ferry Corsten – Loops & Tings
04. ID – ID
05. Ferry Corsten & Bassjackers – Collision
06. Jacob van Hage – Crank
07. ID – ID
08. KhoMha – Hydra
09. Ferry Corsten – Rock Your Body Rock (Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike Mainstage Remix)
10. Dimitri Vegas, Moguai & Like Mike vs. Ferry Corsten & Aruna – Mammoth Forever (New World Punx Mashup)
11. Ferry Corsten – Kudawudashuda
12. Markus Schulz & Elevation – Finish Line
13. Digital X Music – Raptor
14. Ferry Corsten & Markus Schulz – Stella
15. Fisherman & Hawkins – Apache
16. Cosmic Gate – Storm Chaser ( KhoMha Remix)
17. Ferry Corsten – Black Light
18. Beat Service – Fortuna vs Markus Schulz ft. Ana Diaz – Nothing Without Me (New World Punx Mashup)
19. Grube & Hovsepian – Trickster
20. New World Punx – The Digital Punks Of Gotham
21. Ferry Corsten feat. Betsie Larkin – Not Coming Down (Edit)
22. Markus Schulz – The New World 2013
This is more of a public service announcement than anything else. This week, Armin’s ASOT podcast counted down the top 20 trance (progressive, epic & uplifting) tracks for the year. This 2 hour compilation is a round up of the favorites that were voted on. And because it’s Armin, the votes number in the 5-6 digits from people around the world. I still cannot imagine that this guy has been putting out 120 minutes of Trance weekly for the last…592 weeks. I’m a huge fan of Armin, here’s a track you probably haven’t heard by him:
10 years of trance. And people still assume that the genre is encapsulated by Sandstorm, Children and that one time they saw/heard Oakenfold back in the late 90’s. Armin’s track recommendations have become a staple of the trance community, influencing dozens of weekly/monthly podcasts by other EDM artists, from Ferry Corsten (Corsten’s Countdown) to Tiesto (Club Life) to Paul Oakenfold’s wonderful Fluoro series. The proliferation of regular music/mixes being put out by the best (and the newest) artists regularly is something that we would have killed for back in the days of sharing music over AIM, Napster, NewsGroups and trading beats/midis with floppy disks.
The track selection is definitely a great representation of trance in 2012, with huge favorites like “I’ll Listen” by AvB & Ana Criado, multiple tracks by Andrew Rayel, who almost seems genetically engineered to produce tracks for ASOT. W&W, Markus Schultz, Solarstone and Aly & Fila also made the list with some stunning tracks, plus a new favorite for me, Giuseppie Ottaviani, an Italian trance producer I’d just never heard of before. Definitely someone I’ll have to keep my eye on.
Great mix of tracks for traveling, cleaning up the house before relatives arrive or just celebrating the season.
This is Terry Gotham.
Peace on Earth & Good Will Towards Men.
Terry Gotham 