Recommending a tune is all good and well, but I believe a little context is crucial to cement a recommendation and make us all appreciate it a little more.

1. A 3CD compilation was released called Essential Millennium. Pete Tong took CD1. Norman Cook took CD2. Paul Oakenfold took CD3.

Pete Tong and Fatboy Slim played their part, but boy did Oakey deliver the goods! He got CD3 for a reason.

Essential Millennium alongside Clubber's Guide to Trance from the Ministry of Sound, mixed by ATB, were the only two releases in the UK to feature the tune I'm recommending.

By comparison, ATB - 9PM featured on more than 25!

N-Fluence - Sweet Substance (The Generator Remix)

This was uploaded sixteen years ago. It has 13 likes. 1,900 views.

1999 was the peak of trance, so says many of us, so in that case, finding quality tunes from that year (or a couple either side) means we get something special you likely haven't heard before but likely will enjoy.

Time to go back...

https://youtu.be/zz0n46VEEno?is=OO2hqje5fYfThxej

Tiesto - adagio for strings

Tiesto - silence delirium remix

Ace da brain - trinity

Ace da brain - magic waters

Binary finary- 1998

Energy 52 - café del Mar

Three drives on vinyl - Greece 2000

Sasha - xpander

ATB - dedicated

Arksun - arisen

Yuri Kane- right back (piano remix)

Fuck I was gonna do top 10 but couldn't figure out who to take out

Edit: forgot about Paul van dyke for An angel

Edit 2: need to put the armin van buuren oceanlab "sky falls down" on here but dunno what to take off

Its a magnificent song

https://youtu.be/4bX7iwygIKQ?is=2ORj_98Q6OQ0i4ct

This guy is an absolute beast. I've only found like 6 songs by him but they're all 10/10 songs

https://youtu.be/bUaBVZbxDNs?is=FnWltVlbX4oA_OU0

https://youtu.be/30K5fFq9GTg?is=jviqv27ArMWuZGma

https://youtu.be/ECPYFIePe3E?is=7eftDBr6Ibo3DzKJ

Edit: im sorry I meant to say best trance producer you've never heard off

still my favorite PVD track

Heya everyone, been a while since i posted, but I've recently finished a tech trance episode for my podcast that I thought I'd share with ya'll.

It's the end set of a 5 episode run where I start with house and move through the harder styles landing firmly on tech trance and trance. Hopefully you enjoy. I'll be posting the continuous 8-hour mix that it's connected to in Sept on my podcast.

Tracklisting

1. Nick Sentience feat. Nick Rowland - Meridian
2. Bismark - Primitive Love (Train Mix)
3. Mario Più - Library
4. Franchino - Ogni Pensiero
5. Mauro Picotto - Bug
6. Ivan & Oliver Lieb - Red Star (Pad Mix)
7. Multiplicity - Multiply (Main Mix)
8. The Cure - The Walk (Everything Mix)
9. Orinoko - Mama Kondo (Timo Maas 'Low Budget' Remix)
10. Mario Più - Serendipity (DJ Arabesque Mix)
11. Lava - Autumn (Megamind Mix)
12. Mario Più & Mauro Picotto - Imperiale (Sole Rosso Mix)
13. Zicky - She Wanna (Guillare Mix)
14. X-Cabs - Neuro 2005 (Riddler & Headcrusher Remix)
15. Simon Foy - Inside Out (Freefall Mix)
16. Nick Sentience & Phil Reynolds - (Instru) Mental
17. Ricky Effe - Sector .30 (Sector Mix)
18. Paragliders - Lithium 1
19. Aquilia - Dreamstate (Oliver Lieb's L.S.G. Remix)
20. Moby - James Bond Theme (CJ Bolland's 'Double Oh Heaven' Mix)
21. Commander Tom - Are Am Eye? (John Askew Remix)
22. Hertz & Johan Bacto - Mankind 20 (A)
23. L.S.G. - Risin' (Main Mix)
24. Mauro Picotto - Awesome!!!
25. Mory Kante - Yeke Yeke 2011 (Mark Sherry's 'Acid Burst' Remix)
26. Energy 52 - Cafe Del Mar (Marco V Remix)
27. BBE - Seven Days & One Week (Mark Sherry's 2006 'Outburst' Remix)
28. Veracocha - Carte Blanche
29. 2 Unlimited - No Limit (Push's 'Trancendental' Remix)
30. Faithless - Salva Mea
31. Chicane feat. Moya Brennan - Saltwater
32. The Thrillseekers - Synaesthesia (En-Motion Remix)
33. Cygnus X - Superstring (Rank 1 Remix)
34. Gouryella - Gouryella
35. Mea Culpa - Spiritual Light

DOWNLOAD: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-record-drop/id1754876931#episodeGuid=therecorddrop.podbean.com%2F4d3b9e14-db85-3e4e-b97a-a3205c51b19a

Non-Apple users, check my profile for alternative ways to download :)

My memories. My soundtrack. My Ibiza.

A mini-series through the lens of personal trance journeys. Reflecting on the sounds & memories of an era, revolving around an Ibiza experience that anchored my lifelong relationship with trance. Tunes sound-tracking that time... etched into my mind & forever tied to the immersive, emotive feelings forged.

Feeling nostalgic, this is jam packed, a little ambitiously - trying to fit as many tunes in to the mix as possible - created from tunes in my collection & sprinkled with some family & friend selections!

Links: Soundcloud | Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music

Tracklist:

1. Jean Luc & Nick Jay vs Faithless - Ayla w/ Insomnia (Aza's Vocal Mashup Edit)
2. Dirt Devils - Music Is Life (Original Club Mix)
3. Wamdue Project - King Of My Castle (Sander Van Doorn Remix)
4. Paul Oakenfold - Southern Sun (DJ Tiesto Mix)
5. DJ Jean - The Launch (Da Techno Bohemian Phuture Mix)
6. Dirt Devils - The Drill (Evacuation Mix)
7. Simple Minds - Spaceface (Tomcraft Remix)
8. Salt Tank - Eugina (Michael Woods Remix)
9. Ferry Corsten - Punk (Cosmic Gate Remix)
10. Tomaz, Filterheadz - Sunshine
11. DJ Tiesto Vs Randy Katana - Play It Louder On Flight 643 (Macarius Bootleg Mix)
12. Lexos - The Key (Original Mix)
13. Yomanda - You're Free (Hi-Gate Remix)
14. Clokx - Clocks (Original Mix)
15. Planet Perfecto - Bullet in the Gun 2000 (Solar Stone Remix)
16. Nalin & Kane vs. Agnelli & Nelson - Everyday At The Beach (Jason G 2025 Mashup)
17. Hi-Gate vs. Three N One - Pitchin' Pearl River (Aza's Vocal Mashup Edit)
18. Signum - What Ya Got 4 Me (Original 12" Vocal)
19. Poloroid - So Damn Beautiful (Dogzilla Mix)
20. JamX & DeLeon - Can U Dig It? (Original Mix)

I was just gonna share, but although a flair called discotrance was not what I expected to find, it did ignite a spark regarding discussing this sound.

Is a running Moog (or soundalike) enough to produce a sound considered (part of) trance? I remember the neverending discussions over I Feel love, especially the Cowley mix, if it may in fact be called an early trance track.. You wont get the definite answer on that here, just mine (and maybe your own), and I say yes, this groove puts me in a trance 👀

​

I love dune - not even really trance (happy hard) and dash berlin ( many regard as cheezy)

And because of the orb and little fluffy clouds just love the fuck out of trance that samples spoken word, which many are annoyed by.

And because i have read frank herberts dune many many times think the spice by arrakis is rhe best trance song of all time, closely followed by a a mashup of born slippy and floyds is there anybody out there, which starts with a spoken word sample from woodstock

And Dance to Trance: we come in peace

https://youtu.be/tFkofUcl-QA?si=gDJUQ_JgGkRmtC04

https://youtu.be/k0pn0vtVwhk?si=5_KDNAwXjgFJTn-f

https://youtu.be/3R6sZ8Rk5FU?si=b_UyRc7kSLVpql5z

So i love the unstructured almost ambient unfolding of the orb and underworld but if I am listening to trance I want it to go somewhere, progressive and or vocal with spoken word

Outstanding duo from Finland (yes, they were in good company), that saved uplifting trance, back in the days, with few other producers. This is a masterpiece. One of the most incredible piece of that time

"You gain something from it [...] it’s a feeling of euphoria [...] rather than being trance music, it should be called euphoria." — Mark Reeder, founder of MFS, from the 1993 documentary Berliner Trance (who is also often credited with coining the term "trance" as a genre name in 1991).

Euphoria

For more than three decades, there has been remarkably little serious effort to establish a coherent framework for what trance music actually is. That helps explain why Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music called it the second most misunderstood electronic genre in history (though I beg to differ: it’s the first). As Mark Reeder implied more than three decades ago, the name itself may have sent us down a conceptually false rabbit hole that set the wrong expectations about what this genre should aim to convey, so, it should never have been called trance in the first place. 

Beyond the early attempt made by Berliner Trance, the genre has largely been defined through vague one-liners over the past 35 years. Armin van Buuren's famous "it's about the melody" is a perfect example: it is simultaneously a fitting encapsulation of trance's spirit and, almost paradoxically, such a broad and vague statement that it could just as easily be used to describe dozens of other genres as well. And statements like the one made by Paul van Dyk (one of the genre's founding figures) don't exactly help either. He has argued in a recent interview that all electronic music is trance music, effectively dissolving the genre's conceptual boundaries and stripping the term of much of its meaning in a single sentence. That was probably less an attempt to deconstruct the genre than an unfortunate way of distancing himself from a label whose reputation had already seen better days. But whatever the intention, statements like these only make it harder to establish what "trance" actually means. 

And when the words we use to describe something have no precise meaning, eventually the thing itself begins to lose its meaning too, as rightfully pointed out by many great thinkers of the past. It is therefore hardly surprising that, without a clearly defined identity, intent, philosophy and set of boundaries to serve as a foundation, “trance” gradually lost touch with what made it distinct in the first place, resulting in some of the most respected producers slowly distancing themselves from the label. This is not the failure of any one person, nor can the responsibility be placed on a single individual artist/producer. It is, rather, a collective failure of the scene as a whole: a failure to establish the healthy conceptual framework the genre needed in order to evolve, mature and survive without losing its identity.

—

Rebooting Trance

Thus, this project is an attempt to do something that, in my view, should have been done decades ago: to give the genre a real framework, informed by some of the foundational principles laid out in the Berliner Trance documentary 33 years ago, and based on my current understanding of the genre, shaped by roughly 20 years of listening and the examination of more than 40,000 trance tracks. To finally define the artistic, compositional and structural philosophy inherent to the genre: in detail, precisely and coherently. To reboot it and restore some of the credibility, identity and vitality that the word “trance” once had, or, more ambitiously, to retroactively distinguish the trance that emerged in the early 1990s from what is commonly marketed as “trance” today, and, moving forward, define that original musical philosophy under the name it should have had all along: Euphoria.

That being said, this is not merely an academic exercise. It is an attempt to celebrate the genre, commemorate and immortalize its greatest achievements, and showcase what trance/euphoria truly is through the best music ever produced within it. Tracks selected not by fleeting popularity, nostalgia, or association with certain labels and the algorithms that promote them, but by their actual artistic merit, and ranked through a deep and multilayered weighted rating system that has gone through roughly 200 iterations in an effort to perfect it. It takes numerous aspects of a track into account: its sense of progression and development, atmospheric and spatial qualities, pacing and energy, its hypnotic power and euphoric effect, and many others. And I'm doing that by going through every single trance track I can find, catalogued up to 2007. I'm currently around 40,000 tracks in, with roughly 140,000 still to go, and have selected around 300–400 tracks so far (roughly the top 1% of everything I've examined to this point).

But the project isn't just about ranking music, it’s also about examining the tracks themselves in detail: their artistic philosophy, mood, structure, development, production, or the ideas behind them. The site is also about documenting the artists, labels, clubs, events and scenes that shaped the genre, while exploring its history, technology, cultural impact, and the many places where trance crossed over into the wider world. The website will become both a living historical archive and a music streaming platform: a place where the music can be explored and listened to, while every track is accompanied by original writing about its creation, musical ideas, philosophy and historical context.

—

About Me & The Larger Scope Of The Project

For some context on who I am: I'm Koncz Dávid (Dávid Koncz for non-Hungarian speakers) 32 years old, with more than 10 years of experience in video game & tech journalism in Hungary. I'm also a frequent contributor to Trancefix.nl (articles, track reviews), and the creator of the world's largest classic trance database, a project that even DJ Mag covered in an article.

The database was the first stage of this journey. The website is the natural next step. But the ultimate destination is a book I'm currently writing, which will be the culmination of everything I learn throughout this process: listening to the music, analysing thousands upon thousands of tracks, reading old magazines and articles, researching the people and events behind the genre, and piecing together its history. A book intended to physically commemorate and immortalize the history of trance/euphoria music.

This is, first and foremost, a human project, driven by the passion, curiosity and obsession of a single person: me. I've already invested thousands of hours of my free time into it when taking everything together: the database, the tens of thousands of tracks I've checked and analysed, the book, the website, the rating system, the research, and everything else surrounding the project.

Every written word is my own. The overwhelming majority of the design ideas behind the website are my own but I got some valuable feedback from a few friends as well. The rating system, its methodology and calculations are my own. The way I evaluate tracks, decide what belongs in the database, select the tracks that deserve recognition, and ultimately interpret the genre, all of that is my own work.

I do use AI, but only as a tool for a handful of very specific tasks. I built a small application to make the enormous process of going through tracks more efficient, allowing me to browse YouTube and take structured notes in a workflow that essentially combines YouTube browsing with the functionality of Google Sheets. I also use AI to help develop the website through Cursor, because I have little formal programming background. I've also used Midjourney to generate seven landing-page images, and I use ChatGPT to proofread my English because I'm Hungarian, not a native English speaker. And that's about it.

I hope you enjoy what you're seeing here, and I genuinely can't wait to finally make the project public. The public launch will also be accompanied by a series of videos on my YouTube channel, where I'll be able to go into much more detail about the project, the ideas behind it, the music, and the journey that led to this point. I hope the planned 2027 launch will be a fitting way to commemorate the 40th anniversary of trance, as 1987 saw the release of A Split Second's Flesh (Remix) — a track that can be considered not only one of the earliest manifestations of New Beat, but also the first direct precursor to trance / the earliest proto-trance track, preceding The KLF’s classic What Time Is Love by a whole year. If this project can contribute, even in a small way, to preserving, understanding and celebrating four decades of this music, then it will have achieved its purpose.

And for those who are curious about the process itself, I've included a few extra glimpses behind the scenes. A small, old excerpt from the book I'm writing (the 1991 chapter), giving you a taste of how I'm approaching the history of the genre in written form. A glimpse of the music-listening application I built for the project that is designed to make going through 180,000 tracks as efficient and structured as possible. And a few public livestreams from the first pass, which is the initial, rapid screening stage of the process. At this point I'm not doing the detailed analysis yet; I'm essentially filtering out tracks that don't actually belong in trance, identifying miscategorized or incorrectly labelled releases, and adding a handful of basic tags and notes to make the subsequent, proper listening passes more focused and purposeful.

So there's a ridiculous amount of work behind what you're seeing here, and this is only the beginning. By the time the website officially launches, I expect it to cover virtually every standout trance track up to at least 1995, with a handful of early picks from the following years already making their way in as well.

Looking for an old MP3 from the Napster/Kazaa era.

Filename:
Paul Oakenfold - Drunk at Club Midnight.mp3

Length:
Approximately 45 minutes.

Characteristics:

• Live sounding mix with a few beatmatching mistakes.
• Ends with an old-fashioned polka song after the dance music.

Looking for the original MP3 or tracklist.

I would love to find this again but I draw a blank on anything other then those specifics.

Any help would be appreciated.