In a Trance by Mark Richardson

Part of the British scene, which I still need to investigate more, quite honestly, comes Mark Richardson.  He's actually done a lot of stuff, but this is the only track of his that I've heard.  He was on the Nukleuz label, which I had heard of vaguely as more of a funky hard house label, but apparently they did do some hard trance as well.

In fact, I think that's my problem in general with the British scene.  While I do find stuff that I quite like there, and I've even found quite a bit of it, it's rare that it's actually my favorite stuff (most of my absolute favorite tracks are either German or North Italian, or sometimes Swiss) and I tend to overlook a lot of the hardtrance because I think of the UK as being a hard house country.

Anyway, as always, there's plenty more to explore as I dig deeper and deeper into this stuff.  And some of the hard house stuff ain't bad, even if I'll never like it as much as I do the hardtrance or even much of the hardstyle.

The M3ssenger [DJ Chuck-E Remix] by DJ W

DJ W is a pretty major player in Wave III hardtrance.  Since about 2011, he's been releasing a ton of tracks, remixing a ton of tracks, and collaborating on a ton of tracks.  Biographical info on him, real name Robin Westerhof, is kind of scanty, but he seems to be associated with a lot of Dutch acts.

Anyway, here's the first of his output that I've featured here on this blog so far.

Realize [Original Vocal Mix] by Earth Inc

Earth Inc. is an alias of Ralph Wegner, who also produced under a number of other aliases, most prolifically under Ralph Novell.  Not everything he did was trance or hard trance; in the latter part of the 00s decade, he seems to have branched out into electro house, tech house, and other styles.

I've said before and I'll say it again, I think the divisions between styles are too esoteric and don't matter all that much.  I have plenty of early hardstyle and some hard house and some classic or progressive and tech trance mixed into my "hard trance" collection, which I should really just call harddance, with an emphasis especially on hardtrance because that tends to be my favorite kind.

For that matter, I wonder sometimes about putting some aggrotech in too.  I probably won't, because stylistically it's pretty far from the other stuff, but I do think about it sometimes.

Daydreamer by O.G.R.

I've had a lot of fun exploring the specifically British hard trance scene, which had an awful lot of overlap with the hard house scene (like the Dutch and North Italian hard trance scenes overlapped with hardstyle.)  You'd think I'd have discovered it first, but no—I got introduced to German and North Italian specifically hardtrance first, and most of what I got (for a long time) was Continental.  That's not to say that I didn't have a fair bit of British stuff, but there was actually a lot more going on with the British scene than I thought.

O.G.R. was an alias of Paul Maddox, who did mostly hard house stuff for Tidy.

Paradise by The Sixth Sense

The Sixth Sense is one of many newer hard trance artists.  Hailing from the Netherlands, he's one of the guys keeping the fire going long after its peak faded to be replaced, kinda, by hardstyle (at least if the itineraries of Qlimax type events are any guide.)

Curiously, hard trance is today a thriving genre, with a lot of new material (albeit more underground than it used to be) while hardstyle seems to be mostly moribund.

Silent Heart [Flutlicht Remix] by Green Court

Green Court, featuring the solo trance artist Marc Dawn, has done some good stuff (under both names), although much of it isn't necessarily hard trance as opposed to just trance.  However, much of the harder stuff is in the remix department, with great remixes of some of their tracks by guys like Cosmic Gate, S.H.O.K.K. and Flutlicht, etc. And of course, I have some great remixes by Green Court of some of those bands too.  The community of hard trance is kinda fun, because seeing the community and its networked nature, although there were really more than one community.  The north Italians, for example, seem to have comprised a community, and they worked a lot with each other (not exclusively, but certainly mostly), there's the Tidy Trax British community, the Swiss communities, the German community, etc.  Some guys, like Scot Project seem almost like capstones who remixed stuff for everybody in all communities, whereas guys like Jay Walker seem to have been more focused on his own British community.

For today, here's a Green Court song, remixed by Flutlicht.

The Ultimate [Y.O.M.C. Remix] by Y

"Y" is another project of Martin Roth and Uwe Wagenknecht (Y.O.M.C. and DJ Wag.)  One of my very favorite hardtrance songs ever is also by them, "Life on Mars" (credited originally to DJ Wag and M.R.) and one version of the vinyl came with a "DJ Wag Mix" and a "Y.O.M.C. Mix".  This was a pattern that they were to undertake on several of their future projects together, including, for instance, Pro-Tech.  Y is a smaller project, with not much in the way of output, and although it did come with a Y.O.M.C. Remix, it did not come with a DJ Wag Remix, the other mix being done by DJ Overdog instead.

Be that as it may, this nicely shows why I've always loved the Y.O.M.C. remixes.  Sadly, it's hard to find both versions of most of the Pro-Tech songs, so for most, you have either a DJ Wag or a Y.O.M.C. but not both ("Dominating Power" being one of the few exceptions.)  Now, he wasn't always a super hard trancer; much of his solo output, for instance, is "classic trance" rather than hardtrance, but with the right partner, he put out some of the best hardtrance I've ever heard.  Maybe it was specifically his "regular" trance roots; rather than getting carried away with complicated basslines and exaggerated kicks, he made sure that there was a good, solid melody and song construction first.

Wrong Love (Original Mix) by Ralph Novell

Ralph Novell is one of many aliases of Ralph Wegner, who made all kinds of harder trance (not always necessary hardtrance per se, but always on the harder side of trance) under all kinds of names.  Partnered frequently with Bas & Ram and Alphazone, he was a pretty prolific guy, and a lot of his material is really good; a bit more on the melodic and less on the chunky, thumpiness than some.  He's also got some great remixes.  Definitely worth checking out!  This is one of his better songs, and it's really great—although many think that the Alphazone remix is even better.

Hybrid by Digital Pressure

Digital Pressure (also known by the alias Naxos Project) is one of those quintessentially early British hard trance outfits.  Made up of John Stembridge (i.e. Jay Walker, JK Walker, Apogee, MTW, etc.) and Steve Knight, along with Marcos and the Tidy guys (Guyver, Paul Maddox, K90, Lee Haslam) and a number of other guys, many of whom dabbled in hard house as much as hard trance (or many of them are properly seen as hard house artists who dabbled in hard trance, actually) they're a great example of the UK scene, which had a lot of subtle differences to the scenes in the German and Low countries scenes, or the north Italian scenes, etc.

"Hybrid" was the b-side to "Hey Kids".  Half of Digital Pressure, John Stembridge, is sometimes called the British version of Scot Project, and while that might be overstating things a bit, he was quite prolific under a variety of aliases, and his work is really pretty awesome.  Sometimes, as with Scot Project, his remixes are even better remembered today than his original tracks, but he did lay down some real classics while he was at it during the heyday of his career.