The South West.

As quite a few of you on this board will know, the South West is now a haven for hard trance. I've been seriously pushing this style for years in this area, but the last year has seen an unbelievable rise in its popularity. Apparently there's even a section in HMV saying 'Mark EG style Hard Trance'.. wow..

But recently, I'm seeing -ve ity within people that once oh-so supported our sound. It seems like the SW is totally into the 'new' sound of hard trance but it's looking also for something even newer. Fairpaly - hardstyle is something 'new' but we need the melody too and then we also need non-predictabilty. I spoke to a promoter (a very big promoter in the SW)recently who had a DJ comp and he said 'everyone was playing your sound - I want something different' He even mentioned the off-beat bass line - which is scary for hard trance..... Fairplay..

So what is the new sound? If you want to find hard trance, you just go on germantrance.com... is this really what DJ's should be doing to find records? a 1 stop shop? If you're serious about music, you need to find your own style. Germantrance is a wicked shop but it's time to find new sounds and a new style - even if you have make it yourself.....

perhaps our little small community will help us to find this...

but we really have to keep this to ourselves..... post your ideas here..

Mark no offence but you've changed your style quite abit on the Trance side of things. i liked it when u used to play Fog Area style trance and stuff like Junk Project.

Mark you are quite famous everyone i talk to knows about you !

one of the things that makes a dj is how much effort they put into finding tunes and i spose creating 'their' style. It shows in DJ sets if the DJ really makes an effort in hunting for the perfect trax and not just a constant flow of builds then big breaks, builds then big breaks for example.

Most people have got an enormous amount of resources 2 find 'those' tunes that will set them apart from the rest, they just dont know it.

Between me and my mates (who are all djs) Im the only one who's moved on to the Italian based style and i'm also playing techno tunes in my trance sets because it gives everyone a chance to dance without the imfamous 10 minute break coming in. They're still playing mainly german uplifting tunes which I love and still play occasionally but I like to be doing something different. For them my music is too hard and for me there music is too cheesy when you hear a whole set of it and ther's too many breaks. I try to combine the two with less of the uplifting and more of the proper stomping music, I think I might have wafffled hear and missed the point but I think the internet has been my main resource for tunes and i'm not just talking about germantrance.com Has anyone heard of the tune TWISTED... rare as **** until you search for it hard.

i do quite well with gigs in scotland as even when other djs are playing hard trance its normally not what we would call hard trance :wink:

Mark, the promoter you spoke about wasn't from the Dance Academy by any chance? Kinda spoils any hope I have about gettting through to the next round if it was :cry:
To be perfectly honest, it kinda winds me up when things like that happen - i've been playing solid hard trance for about 2 and a half years now, and I used to be one of the only ones I knew who did. Record shopping was difficult, as there used to be about 2 new hard trance records a week (I used to buy them all), everybody else was still into hard house.
It's steadily got more and more popular, and now lots of people play it, but a lot of them play it badly. Hard trance can get very boring, especially if you don't know how to vary a set, and if someone is on before you doing this, it fcuks up your set.
Doesn't that thing in HMV wind you up either? It's using your name to sell stuff that you'd probably never play. I used to do that job (vinyl seller in HMV), and I know they tried to get me to do things like that also.

yes it was the DA promoter (but keep that between us!!!)..

i think hard trance is dangerously popular in the south west right now. and i think the promoters are looking for something new. and you have to be prepared for it. i've always been very careful to have two styles in my life. all i'm saying is try to look harder for another style within your style. experiment with your sound - don't necessarily buy the italian stuff cause you know it's going to fit together - chances are 1000000 other people know that as well these days.

do your research like never before. you need to these days. and if that means spending 100 hours a week on the internet record shopping, then so be it.

Im From the south west, and I know exactly what your saying Mark, I've only been mixin for just over a year now and I love "trancy" hard trance. It just something about it that takes me into another place and I can just drift off. But it seems that the style that I love is now either becoming cheesy or just not hard enough for the true undergruond clubbers.

Now what do i do? Cause I obviously love DJing out, so do i change my style to what the people want??? OR just HOPE that theres a bit of a turn around in the situation? :roll:

yo.... Their are loads and loads of wicked record shops here in the south west....

I know your average joe buys all his tunes from GermanTrance, and they do have the cream of the crop, usually a little before some others. But loads of south west shops have accounts with musicmail, some even hitland....

and there loads 2nd hand shops (which i weekly pick bargains out off!)... also, i use loads different interent shops, some have hugh back catalogues etc etc......

I think the new style should be a mixture of styles....I love the melodic nrg and euphoria of trance, i love the perfectly produced tight as **** kick and bass of hardstyle, and i love the grittyness and partyness of techno.......
Im not sayin write a style with all of these elements in......Im sayin, cant the DJ take his set through these different areas?

Also, I think there are some real good fresh producers comin about at the mo....... Ive just been sent a copy of Klasic and Sanders (Devils Ear) new tune, and its really fresh original hard trance.... sort of hardstyle bline and a trancey edge to the melody...........really exciting stuff!

Ha Ha Ha... that's frustating to hear from Tom Costelloe. I mean he did say for DJ entrants to "bear in mind, it's an Eyecon night so your playing your music to this crowd" and from what I have heard so far the DJ Comp entrants have done just that! and people in DA love the hard trance/hardstyle sound.

It looks like I won't be going through to the second round of the Eyecon competition, and it does sort of disapoint me. The person who has got through from the week I entered played that techy trance style that is so in vogue at the moment. I wouldn't say he was as good technically as me, in fact I feel I was discriminated against for playing hard trance.
As Hakka so rightly says, and as Mark knows - in Dance Academy the crowd LOVE hard trance. But despite what Tom might be saying, and the impression you may get Mark, there is a distinct lack of dj's who play hard trance there. It is supreme irony that Tom says he is growing bored of hard trance & hard trance djs, because this is a club promoter who still books Hard house djs week in, week out nearly 3 years after hard house died the death! Out of 4 competitors on the week I was in there, 2 played 'Tidy' hard house.
I think it is sad that Tom feels this way about our sound, as whatever he thinks, the crowd still want hard trance. The stuff he plays (and this is not meant as an insult to him) is going rapidly downhill, because he plays what is fashionable, and so at the moment he plays this really dull fake techno stuff like Jules and Fergie, and I can tell you that the crowd do not like it. Occasionally he'll drop something like an Uberdruck track, the dancefloor fills, the crowd whoop in delight - it's not hard to see what the crowd want, but it seems like they're going to be told what they want.