Is hard trance dead?

[Bacchus]

Well, here's my $0.02 on the matter.

I got SO bored of the hardstyle and hard trance that was coming out post 2005 - that I pretty much gave up on buying new tunes.

The way I looked at it, and as mentioned earlier in the thread - nothing was a sound i've heard before. Things were getting old and stale. I figured, I've got enough of a collection already that I really don't need to keep "on top" of what's coming out. My current collection was big enough that I could play a 3 year old tracks, and most people around here wouldn't have heard the tune before. This got boring though - and I began looking outside 4 to the floor. I thought to myself - there's tonnes of crossover between jungle and hardcore...or even breaks and house @ 125 bpm. Why no do it @ 135-145? Quite a lot of hard trance tunes have deadly breakbeat breakdowns - so this gave me a chance to extend my listening and buying habbits.

Until this spring, I hadn't bought hard trance and hardstyle in 1.5 years. Thankfully, i've fallen back in love with finding new hard trance - even if it's just as hard to come by as it was 1.5 years ago ...maybe even harder. My recent project with the guys formally known as aponaut, under the name AcidXs (http://www.acid-xs.com) has given me more of an interest into what's coming out - and what people are liking.

However, things are still limited here....because over hear in Toronto - Hard Dance/Hard Trance/Hard Techno IS dead.

Events are few and far between. The ones that do book 80-90% Hardcore (UK/Happy/Freeform). Trance DJs don't have an outlet to play their music. It's limited to the all ages rave scene. 19+ scene is dominated by electro, and the recent hipster/mashup scene. Clubs don't play this music - period. If ever there is a 19+ event of this type, it's in a small lounge-like bar that has a capacity of 1-150.

As for now, i'm just holding on to this thread of hope that eventually things will pick up again. Maybe I can turn these hardcore kids on to trance...(i'm playing an event tonight with mostly hardcore in the main room)...but if I can't, i'm going to have to hope productions take me out of this town.


is it dead? Over here - **** yes.

elsewhere? I'm not there, but it looks like it's getting there.


That being said, i'm surprised to see that Hardstyle is still going strong worldwide. When i stopped buying hardstyle during the summer of 2006 - I thought it wouldn't be long till it's death. Things were boring and un-inovative then - i'm surprised things have been kept alive. I've just recently put in an order for Hardstyle to play @ WEMF. Listenign through the tunes i notice that not much have changed. I figured with my collection of classics, ordering 10 of the floor fillers and anthems from 2007/2008 would be enough to keep the hardstyle heads happy.