With the highly-anticipated return of festival juggernaut A State Of Trance in Sydney and Melbourne’s massive Istoria event this weekend, the current state of Trance music has also rounded up some talk, thanks to headliner Armin van Buuren. In a new interview with Trance Project, the legend gave his thoughts on today’s scene and says “it is in a good place right now.”
Naming key players in the today’s scene such as Andrew Rayel, John Askew and the VII crew, the King of Trance also gave kudos to Aussie legend MaRLo, Trance hero Exis and FSOE hotshot Hazem Beltagui. Assuring that Trance is in a good place, Armin van Buuren also talked the importance of today’s sub-genre’s, and how each style has made Trance music more stronger than ever before. Check out his full response below and share your thoughts on Facebook and Twitter.
Is Trance music in a good place right now? Armin van Buuren on the current state of Trance music:
I think it is. Our list of numbers have doubled if you see the YouTube views that we have every week on a single episode of A State Of Trance, and you can see there’s still a massive following. Almost every week we have a new artist coming up. Next week, Hazem Beltagui will release an incredible album called ‘Vivid’ on Future Sound Of Egypt, and he is just one of the few really positive signs of Trance music right now.
Moving forward as well, I think Trance music is reinventing itself with guys like MaRLo who bring a different sound to things, and guys like Orjan Nilsen, Andrew Rayel and also Exis. There’s many examples to mention, and then there’s a couple of guys who still hold onto the older Trance sound which is absolutely fine, but that caters to that more classic, maybe older Trance crowd, but there’s also a really young crowd, which is what we saw in Utrecht.
Right now, when I do a radio show, I get to only play 30 tracks every week, and I always have 60 tracks I want to play, so there’s still so much music out there. I remember when starting A State Of Trance, I had a hard time just finding 18 tracks, which was the average number of tracks I use to play in the beginning of my radio show, and it was really hard to find 18 good new tracks each week. Now there’s just so much new music, and its really an uncomfortable position sometimes, because I know when I play a track on my radio show, it automatically generates attention to that specific artist, so I really don’t want to let anybody down, especially the younger generation because I feel like they need the support, so it’s a big responsibility.
I think Trance is in at a wonderful position, because there use to just be one sound, which was Trance, and right now, if you closely look at what’s happening within Trance, there’s all these little islands forming. Hate them or love them, it is fact of the matter. You have the FSOE crew, the Ferry Corsten and Markus Schulz sound, then there’s Dash Berlin who went a little more commercial and more EDM-ish, and Andrew Rayel’s sound and the whole lot. Then you have Simon Patterson and the whole VII crew by John Askew, and there’s many of those little islands, and so there’s a Trance sound for almost everybody. Even if you are just remotely interested into the genre, there is a Trance sound for you. With A State Of Trance, I want to be the home for all these sounds, and I think all artists should be part of the show. If you listen to A State Of Trance, I want to guarantee you that 70% – 80% of tracks that matter in Trance, you will hear! I mean, I’m not perfect, of course I miss out sometimes on a few tracks, but you’ll hear most of the music that matters.
Whether its EDM-ish kind of Trance, Uplifting Trance or Psy-Trance, I want to be the home for all those types of Trance, and I think that’s what makes Trance music so strong at the moment.
When we did the event in Utrecht we had sold 32,000 tickets with five rooms that played completely different music. I went to all the rooms, I saw the Psy room just packed, the Psy-Trance guys just rocked it. Then we had the Who’s Afraid Of 138?! room which was completely packed and there was a really uplifting atmosphere going on, with guys like Jorn van Deynhoven who were really rocking it with classic uplifting sounds, it was beautiful. We had the progressive room with guys like John OO Fleming and Airwave, and I was really surprised, because that was kind of a new thing that we did, and there were a lot of young people there who were really into the more Eric Prydz kind of sound, so that was really going off as well.
To make a long story short, Trance really is in a good place right now.