Luca Antolini DJ is one of my favorite artists in the hardtrance scene. One of things I really appreciate about him is that he was associated with the Saifam Grupo gang, but unlike most of the rest of that crew (Technoboy and Tuneboy, especially) he never abandoned hardtrance for hardstyle, really—if he did anything hardstyle, it was more dabbling, whereas hardtrance always seemed to be his real love. And he was really good at it. Some of his songs, and some of his remixes of Saifam songs, like those by Pacific Link or Atlantic Wave (kind of an oceanic theme going on there) are among my favorites in the genre.
This one that came up on the randomizer isn't one of my favorite of his songs, but it's certainly good enough. I like it quite a bit. But "Heat" and "Contatto" and "Planetary Collapse" are his best work. And the S.H.O.K.K. remix of "We Belong" is just incredible.
Luca Antolini seems to have done a bunch of work with Steve Hill too, which is kinda cool, because their styles complement each other in terms of making the music even more intense and harder, but without degenerating into self-parody like some of the hardcore subgenres have done, or even hardstyle often enough. That's one of the joys of hardtrance as opposed to some of the other hard dance styles; it's still almost always melodic and has some musical merit to it besides just percussion and stuff. Sure, trance can be formulaic and by the numbers, but even then, it's usually better than some of the alternatives that don't use a tried and true successful formula.
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