Trance

Born in Frankfurt and Berlin in the early 1990s, trance builds everything around one mechanism: a long breakdown where the rhythm drops out, a build that stretches, then the kick returning under a sheet of melodic synth. It is the most openly emotional style in the electronic family, and the one that keeps coming back into fashion, the current hard-trance wave being the latest proof.

It is the most collective of electronic musics: its mechanism (breakdown, build, kick return) is designed so an entire room lives the same moment at the same second. That explains its giant formats, and the loyalty of a crowd that follows some DJs across twenty-year careers.

After a relative eclipse in the 2010s it came back through two doors: the historic brands, still active in the Netherlands and Germany, and hard trance played in clubs, faster, rawer, and bringing melody back where techno had pushed it out.