The Worm (Marcos Remix) by Steve Knight and DJ Ryze

Although I'm especially belated in discovering the English hardtrance scene, there was actually a fair bit of activity there—although a shocking amount of the stuff early in the millennium seems to be centered around three guys; Steve Knight, Mark Dearden (Marcos) and especially John Stembridge (Jay Walker, JK Walker, MTW, Apogee, various other aliases.)  In addition to their solo stuff, they also seem to have collaborated with each other (and occasionally others) in various guises as well.

There was another pole around the Tidy Trax guys, and some of their output is hardtrance, although there's also a lot of hard house and other stuff that is similar in that crew, but not the same as hardtrance.  Guys like K90, Guyver, Lee Haslam, Paul Maddox, etc.  In fact, it may be fair to say that hard house is more the focus of the Tidy Trax guys and some good hard trance was an almost inadvertent output.

The more modern British hardtrance scene, centered around guys like Alex Kidd, the Organ Donors, etc. tends to be more subground than traditional hardtrance, but the three mentioned above are doing stuff as good as anything the north Italians, the Germans, the Dutch or the Swiss ever did.

Tiefenrausch (The Deep Blue) (A*S*Y*S Remix) by Kai Tracid

Kai Tracid was actually a member of A*S*Y*S during much of their classic output, but I think that this is clearly a remix by the other guy in A*S*Y*S, Frank Ellrich.  This is one of my favorite remixes of one of my favorite hard trance songs.

The NRG, or original mix is also very good.  The Oliver Lieb mix is, I think, kind of over-rated.  There's nothing wrong with it, it just... who cares?

This song is all about the NRG remix and the A*S*Y*S remix.

Heartbreak (DJ Arne L II Remix) by Cosmic Commando

Cosmic Commando, otherwise known as Gollum & Yanny (I'm not kidding about that, actually) were two DJs that did a lot of stuff on their own, and with other collaborations with other DJs.  But their release of "Heartbreak" was a good one, and not only because it had a picture of Chun-Li on the CD release (although that certainly didn't hurt.)  (By the way, another of their releases, "Slave to the Rave" had a picture of Gamera on it.  But the B-side is a better song, even if it has bad grammar in the title.)

I comment probably too much on the coincidences of the randomization, but getting a DJ Arne L II remix right after doing a DJ Arne L II song is kinda funny.  I don't actually have much of his work.

Lucutus by DJ Arne L II & Mirko Milano

This is a short version; I can't find a Youtube clip of the longer version, but it still sounds the same, just without the long intro and outro.  Most notably, it has the big "beast mode" drop at 2:01.

I later found that I wasn't a huge fan of much of the rest of the work of DJ Arne L II and Mirko Milano, although they do have a few other great tracks.  And they seem to do their best work when collaborating with each other too.

Acid Overdose (DJ Neo Mix) by DJ Neo

DJ Neo has been a long-time partner and collaborator with Blutonium Boy. Whereas Blutonium Boy is pretty much a hardstyle DJ, DJ Neo is the one more likely to bring in a lot of hardtrance and acid elements.  The track below is a beautiful confluence of all three: early hardstyle, acid, and hardtrance.

By funny coincidence, the Blutonium Boy remix came up just a week or two ago in my randomization, so it's out there too.  You should compare and contrast.  Often the remixes by the two aren't really all that different, but with some tracks, there's a significant difference (I'm especially thinking of "Hardstyle Nation" here, where the DJ Neo mix is, curiously, probably more hardtrance than hardstyle, in spite of the title).

99.9 (Scot Project's Under The Knife Remix) by the Organ Donors

Two of my hardtrance love/hate relationships combine into one track here.  The Organ Donors are a duo that end up wandering as much into subground territory as hardtrance most of the time, and they have a bit of that quintessential British house sound that I don't like (I do like the British acid sound, however.  And the Brits did some really good classic hardtrance here and there, although when they did, it was almost always compared to what the Germans were doing; i.e. "Jay Walker is the British Scot Project!"  However, some of their material is still pretty cool and qualifies as capable of being in my "best of" collection.

Scot Project is another one who, while his stamp and influence is unmistakable, I often think is over-rated.  He did some good work, but not everything he did was wonderful, and he's far from my favorite artist or remixer either one.  Maybe love/hate is too strong a word to describe either of them; more like, "yeah, that's pretty cool" contrasted with complete apathy.  I can't quite motive myself to hate anything that either of them have done, but I rarely really love it either as what I'd call an absolute paragon of the genre.

But this is a good remix of a good Organ Donors song, and a pretty good example of stuff that makes my best of list, but wouldn't make a much more exclusive VIP room within the best of folder, were I to create such a thing.

Back to Earth by Cosmic Gate

Defying the odds of probability, Cosmic Gate makes a third appearance in a row.  As an aside, although I'm probably not really looking for more Cosmic Gate songs, I have been getting just in the last little bit, a number of Cosmic Gate remixes of other people's songs.  And there's some really good material there too.

The Wave (New Clubmix) by Cosmic Gate

I've probably been due for some Cosmic Gate for a while now, but I'm a little surprised to get two of their tracks back to back.  Here's the New Clubmix version of "The Wave."

Exploration of Space (Green Court Remix) by Cosmic Gate

Cosmic Gate was a big name in hard trance in the early part of the 00s.  They were still around later, but infamously "sold out" and started doing some other kind of music, that was presumably more commercially successful.  At the very least, their fans weren't thrilled with the change in direction.  But they had two albums worth of material, plus many singles and remixes, etc. of really good, solid, millennial hardtrance before they started doing... whatever it was that they were doing (I admit, I'm not curious enough to investigate really, other than a quick glance at discogs.  Their first two albums are listed as trance and hard trance, but the next ones get labels like trance, progressive trance, progressive house, etc.  Hard trance is right out, but it was the hardtrance sound that really made them what they were in the minds of their audience, I think.

Anyway, "Exploration of Space" is one of their early hardtrance hits, and it comes in a variety of remixes and whatnot.  Here's the Green Court remix.

No Alternative (Brooklyn Bounce Remix) by RBA

Perhaps fittingly, this is one of the earlier hardtrance songs I discovered from a recording of an old Qlimax set.  I've now got half a dozen or so remixes of this song, which is a great one, but this is one of the best still.

I can't remember if any Tommy Pulse has come up yet or not, but he was a founding member of RBA, which didn't really have a lot of output anyway.  It was basically Tommy Pulse collaborating with a few friends before releasing tons more material under his own (stage) name.

Not only that, TRON Darth Vader—pretty cool image, right?

Derb (Derbus) by Derb

This came up on my randomization thing-a-ma-jiggy.  I've actually blogged this song before, although I used a different remix.  Here's the original mix.  In the re-release single, it was called derb (Original Mix) but on Derb's Works collection, it's called the same thing that it was originally called, which is "Derb (Derbus)".  There is, of course, more than one "original" mix if by original you mean that it was included on the original vinyl single release: "Derb (Dernimbus)" is just as "original."

Anyway, this has become over the years a bit of a hardtrance classic, so it's pretty well-known to people in the hard dance scene.  It's been remixed, remade, sampled, and otherwise brought into all kinds of hard dance songs and all kinds of styles over the years.

Cowgirl [Tim Davison Remix] by Underworld

When weird 80s British synthpop group Freur ended up becoming hugely influential early to mid-90s EDM band Underworld, they ended up becoming pretty famous because of the use of some of their songs in famous "alternative" movies; "Born Slippy NUXX" was in the soundtrack for Trainspotting and "Cowgirl" (arguably their most recognizable song) was on the soundtrack for Hackers.  It doesn't really fit the definition of hardtrance by any means.  Released in 2008—many years after the 1994 original release of "Cowgirl" on an unofficial release called Tim Davison Edits Vol. 1, the track wasn't even titled (although it's pretty darn obvious what it is, given that "Cowgirl" is a famous and well-known mid-90s minimalist techno anthem)—discogs calls it either electro house or progressive house.

But part of that is what I've been saying all along; the stylistic differences that separate "genres" of EDM are too esoteric and nitpicky to really matter to most people.  I had long ago thrown this in my list of songs that I'd mix in with what was actually hardtrance and acid.  It came up to be included when I made my randomized list for my first megamix, and coincidentally, it came up again pretty quickly in my blog "song of the day" highlights.

 

Strange World by Jay Walker

Jay Walker (also JK Walker, Jay K Walker, JKW and more—real name John Stembridge) got a bunch of attention as "the British answer to Scot Project" and that's probably fair.  He put out some insane originals, but some even more monster remixes.  He's not quite as prolific or well known as Scot Project, and even in my own collection, I've probably only got about half as much that belongs to him as I do Scot Project.  But what I have is just as good; in fact, I think much of it is better.  I like some Scot Project work as much as the next guy, but he didn't literally turn everything he touched to gold, and I sometimes think that his quality is over-rated (if not his influence.  That's probably fair.)

Anyway, "Strange World" is curious; it's a bootleg that got a physical release (not just put up on Soundcloud or YouTube or whatever, because it predates those) and it's kind of a mashup and remix of two existing trancers: "Strange World" by Push and "The Promiseland" by Hypetraxx.

Acid Overdose (Blutonium Boy Mix) by DJ Neo

This is a fascinating choice for today, because this is a song that straddles a few lines.  Is it an acid song?  A hardtrance song? A hardstyle song?

Discogs calls it hardstyle and hardtrance, but of course, that's just a user-submitted set of labels and doesn't necessarily have to be definitive.  Curiously, it doesn't call it acid, which it obviously is as well.

Honestly, I think the DJ Neo Mix tends to be more hardtrance and this Blutonium Boy mix tends to be more overtly hardstyle.  That's sometimes true for other songs too—"Hardstyle Nation" in spite of the title, is clearly a hardtrance song when mixed by DJ Neo (although the Blutonium Boy mix is a classic of early hardstyle rather than hardtrance.)

But again; it's always curious that the lines between these genres are not hard, fast and easy to spot.  Plenty of tracks cross over them freely and ignore them to a great degree.

When I do "Contatto" one of these days, I'll have to do the one credited to Pacific Link and with a Luca Antolini mix, but I'll also put the one credited to Luca Antolini vs Steve Hill called RVRS Bass Mix.  That, more than most other songs I have, shows that telling hardstyle from hardtrance can be very difficult, because they're the same song with the same structure, and there's not a lot to separate them other than the addition of a bassline that sounds a bit more reversed in the one version vs the other.

Although, to be fair, that's a hardstyle song that sounds a lot like trance on the RVRS BASS version, and a hardtrance that shades towards hardstyle on the Pacific Link version.

Third Pleasure [Extended Mix] by Dave Joy

Dave Joy is a Swiss hardtrance artist who's output isn't very big, but who really milked the few songs that he made.  There's a kind of numerical vibe to his titles: "First Impression", "Second Chase", "Third Pleasure" and "Fourth Joyride (Buckle Up)".  Then, he's got a few collaborations under his belt too, and some remixes.

This isn't really a remix so much as it is Dave Joy's mix.  It's also not super hard for a hard trance song; it tends to shade a bit more into progressive territory.  Or maybe I just think that because it's not very dark, although dark and hard are not necessarily positively correlated.

This 10th Anniversary Edition comes with six versions.  There are no less than about 15 or so for "First Impression"—but it was a real, genuine hit (especially the S.H.O.K.K. remix) and is considered a real classic of the peak hardtrance era. 

Inspirations by Danny V & Mac Storm

Listed on the Therabyte Allstars 4-piece collaboration (by Therabyte Records) this is an interested song.  I don't know what else Mac Storm has done, as his discogs page is blank (except for this one song).

Danny V seemed to be an up-and-coming DJ in the hard dance scene, though—although he's from Poland, he has an ethnic German last name.  Sadly, he passed away just a few weeks ago in a car accident, so his ability to continue to up-and-come is obviously over.  He's got a decent body of work, though.  You should check it out.

Go! (West Mix) by Russenmafia

In spite of their name, Russenmafia are two German guys, who also work under a variety of names (Thomas Rubin, S.O.D., Solid Sleep, and the more prosaic Andreas Krämer & Thomas Pogadl.)  They did some pretty hard hardtrance—really cold and machine-like most of the time, too, quite often.

This is their first big hit (under the Russenmafia name, anyway.)  They also did a lot of remixes under that name, so their tag pops up a lot all over the place.

Requiem (Electronic Wizard Remix) by Kan Cold

Randomization brings up some more Kai Winter, although not as Hennes & Cold this time; merely as "Cold."  Although he's mostly better known for his collaborative efforts (Hennes & Cold, Derb, etc.) he's got a decent body of work on his own, too.

I don't know much about Electronic Wizard.  He's got two remix credits on Discogs, and that's it.  No real name, no nothing.

This is an unusual song for a hardtrance outfit—extremely melodic, with soaring synths and atmospheric riffs, a relatively slow tempo, etc.  But it's beautiful nonetheless; in fact, it shows how much depth and variety the genre was capable of when it wasn't just being exploited for big kicks and hard bass lines.

Journey by Hennes & Cold

Hennes & Cold is up again today, thanks to randomization.  I don't think I have anything interesting to say about them again so soon after just discussing them, so without further ado, I'll just leave you with the song.

Out of Control [DJ Wag Club Mix] by Pro-Tech

I've got a bunch of Pro-Tech songs with the big DJ Wag 65 track mp3 album I bought on Amazon for $12.  Pro-Tech is simply DJ Wag and Y.O.M.C. (Uwe Wagenknecht and Martin Roth are their real names) who collaborated before as well; in fact, DJ Wag's biggest song, "Life on Mars" which was credited to DJ Wag in later releases, was first released back in '98 credited to DJ Wag & M.R.  Even with it's re-release, the UK version is the best one, because it features a DJ Wag remix and a Y.O.M.C. remix, and those are probably the two best remixes of the track ever done (unfortunately, they only ever had a rather poorly mastered vinyl release.  The Y.O.M.C. version was recut as the Y.O.M.C. Global mix, but it's not as good of an arrangement.)

Pro-Tech releases often had the same format; they were songs that were credited to a group that included the two of them, but each vinyl release had two mixes, one by DJ Wag and one by Y.O.M.C.  If not, they sometimes had an original mix and then a DJ Wag remix.

The big problem here, both with the Pro-Tech releases, but with others as well, is that many of these mixes are not readily available anymore.  The only way to get them is to track down rare and out of print vinyl and hope that it's in good enough shape that you can rip it to a digital format where you can actually use it.  So, the DJ Wag Club Mix, shown here, is readily enough available (I got it on the big album I mentioned that I bought above, and you can hear it on YouTube and Spotify both as well)—the original mix, on the other hand, I can't find anywhere.  Even just to listen to a crappy copy uploaded on YouTube to see what the song sounds like.  Can't even do that.

The problem is that sometimes you can do that, at least, and it's clear the the track is a great one.  But then you can't find a high quality copy of it for download or for sale anywhere, and again, you're left to go chase old, out-of-print vinyl and hope for the best.  I wish DJ Wag and M.R. would really put out a Works style compilation, the way Hennes & Cold or Derb has done.  But I guess it seems like we're stuck with what we do have, and we'll just have to miss some stuff here and there.