Chimps & Pimps by Bas & Ram

The Dutch have long been a haven for loads of hard dance styles: gabber/hardcore, hardstyle, and hardtrance.  Bas & Ram are two Dutch artists who have made quite a splash on the hard trance scene, putting out some real classic belters.  Sadly, I wish they'd been a bit more prolific, because there's hardly anything that they've done that I don't think isn't phenomenal.  While I like a lot of these Third Wave hardtrancers, like Nostic or The Sixth Sense, or Noizy Boy, or Lee Walls, or... I dunno, several dozens more, it does seem like the focus on "energy" over melody has made their output, while really good, kind of all samey too.  But back in Wave Two, during Bas & Ram's heyday, the songs really stood out from each other more.

Revelation [Phalanx Remix] by Alphazone

Alphazone, under a few names were a very unique German hardtrance outfit, well known for their complicated, technical basslines.  This is nice in hardtrance, because a lot of guys think that just having a super heavy kick is sufficient.  And sometimes it is.  But the basslines that do more are almost always more interesting.

Alphazone also did some really great remixes, including of Dave Joy and others.

Der Klang [Junk Project Mix] by Phuture Punk

I really love this song.  Made by a duo that is not the same as but which overlaps with the Russenmafia guys, it kinda has a similar sound, although a bit more stark and cold and acid, whereas the Russenmafia is dark without being cold, most of the time.

This is the Junk Project Mix, but that implies that there's another version of it somewhere, which, as near as I can tell, is not true.  Besides, Junk Project was just another alias of the same duo anyway.

Out of Control by Pro-Tech

Another belter from Pro-Tech, the duo of DJ Wag and Martin Roth (Y.O.M.C.)  The latter was more of a regular trance artist, but when collaborating with hard trancer artists, his touch was absolutely brilliant.

Pro-Tech did a lot of releases with two versions of the song; a DJ Wag remix and a Y.O.M.C. remix.  This one had the original version and the DJ Wag remix.  Not sure why, except that it was an earlier release (the very first under this name, in fact) and maybe they simply hadn't established the pattern yet.

Watching You (Vocal Club Mix) by DJ Darkzone

German DJ Darkzone made som, as you'd expect, stomping good, very dark hard trance songs.  As one of the first hardtrance artists I stumbled across ("The Human Form" was in one of the first Qlimax setlists I listened to) I've been following him for a while, but sadly, his output wasn't as prolific as some, because what he did do was quite good.

Although I still consider "The Human Form (Vocal Club Mix)" and "Infinity In Your Hands (Second Club Mix)" his best tracks.

Acid Pulse by Nostic

Nostic is part of a new, Wave III of hardtrance, and they (he, really) does a lot of stuff in other similar styles as well, as do many of the Wave III hardtrance artists.  Even on his own site, he talks about doing hard trance, psy-trance, classic trance and acid, although to some degree these can overlap.  Acid in particular is a template that can be applied over any type of electronic music, because it just refers to that 303 bassline.  In fact, it's kind of hard to overstate the influence acid has on hardtrance in particular, which grew out of the acid movement.  Tons of hardtrance songs still retain a wild, face-melting 303 acid line going through them.  And frankly, I wouldn't want it any other way.  Some of the earlier British acid techno of the 90s is great stuff, but acid was made of the hardtrance exaggerated kicks and dramatic song structure, where the acid contributes significantly to the intensity of the sound.

Anyway, here's one of Nostic's tracks that particularly emphasizes the acid, as the title would suggest.

The Big Light [Hard Trance Mix] by Spiritual Project

Spiritual Project was one of the many SAIFAM groups; a bunch of north Italian DJs who worked together and who seem to have jointly produced most of what they did, if the credits are any guide.  There are six writers credited to this record, which is not unusual with SAIFAM projects, including big shots Luca Antolini, Technoboy and Tuneboy; the latter two of which were well into their hardstyle phase by 2003 when this came out.

It's hard to know exactly who should deserve the lion's share of the credit for SAIFAM projects, but if I had to guess, I'd say that this has more of a Luca Antolini sound to it than Technoboy and Tuneboy (or the other three guys; I have no idea what their sound is like) but that doesn't necessarily mean anything; keep in mind that Technoboy kept up a hard trance alias, DJ Gius, for quite a while, and all three (all six) are credited with all kinds of hardtrance stuff from the SAIFAM group.  However you want to call it, this team was very prolific, but they liked to use a lot of various names and aliases which sometimes makes it hard to tell exactly how prolific they were, because it looks like separate groups when it actually isn't.

That isn't to say that they were the nucleus of north Italian hardtrance and hardstyle, though.  Gigi Lav and the Trance Generators guys were a similar (albeit smaller) nucleus, as was DJ Vortex, Arpa's Dream and the 4 Navigators team as was Julian DJ and Davide Sonar.  All of them dabbled in both hardtrance and hardstyle, and while some outfits were more likely to do one than the other, they all kind of slipped easily in and out of the two, and many tracks have that kind of straddling the line feel where you're not 100% sure which of the two you should classify it as.