Trance

There is trance and there is trance!

The trance we talk about is mostly the laidback, hypnotic, not too overproduced Progressive Trance sound and not the Eurodance, pop-infused and commercialized trance sound from the late-90s and early-2000s trance wave coming from the Netherlands.

Today trance is such a big genre with many corners that it makes sense to dive deeper into the genres history.

While Goa Trance was coming out of the beach party scene, which traces back to hippie travelers arriving in India. Parties there started with rock and psychedelic music on reel-to-reel tapes. The goal: trance state of the body and mind through a shared and sonic experience on the dancefloor.

This idea and sound later morphed into a distinct, fast, psychedelic electronic sound — what would later be called Goa trance — years before Frankfurt's scene existed.

In Europe Frankfurt was an early centre, with labels like Eye Q and Harthouse pushing a driving, hypnotic sound through artists such as Rolf Ellmer, Sven Väth and Hardfloor.

As the decade moved forward, the Netherlands became increasingly important, with labels like Bonzai and later Tsunami spreading the sound across the continent. Paul van Dyk, coming out of Berlin, and artists on the Dutch side like Ferry Corsten and Tiësto pulled trance toward something more anthem-driven for big rooms. It became commercial on a big scale.

Its commercial peak has passed, but that distance is exactly what makes the records interesting now. Early pressings from Eye Q and Harthouse, mid-period progressive releases, and the odder, more experimental edges of the sound have all aged well. While others, the more commercial-leaning ones, did not but they had there momentum.

SEVEN stocks trance selectively, focusing on the stuff that still holds up as a purely electronic experience rather than nostalgia bait.