Sweet Lullaby [Bruno Power Remix] by Andromeda

I'm often a bit annoyed by how things are credited as "presented" by such and such an artist.  If that artist isn't the artist on the disk, I don't care that he's "presenting" another artist.  And if the artists are using a stage name, but presenting their stage name as if it's something other than themselves, that's pretty silly too.

Andromeda was originally a four-man team, and while Julian DJ and Davide Sonar were indeed two of the four, I don't see it as credited to Julia DJ and Davide Sonar, so in my own labeling and cataloging of tracks, I ignore that and call this a song by Andromeda.  As you'd expect, it straddles the line (depending on the specific remix you're listening to) between hard trance and early hardstyle, but honestly; that's some of my favorite hardtrance anyway; the pseudo-hardstyle hardtrance.

Angelius [Nish Remix] by Spaceshokkers

Claudio Pettanice has rather jealously held on to the S.H.O.K.K. name, even though he was only ever half of the classic line-up.  Arguably, Marco Guardia (also known as Reverb) was the more important half, or more influential behind it, at least.  Reverb was also a big part of the driving force behind Flutlicht, his other duo, with DJ Natron.  Pettanice remixed most of the Flutlicht songs (as either DJ Giotto or DJ Emergency), but they're never the best remixes, and both of those names seemed to lack traction, it seems.

After Guardia's retirement and disappearance from the scene, Pettanice revived the S.H.O.K.K. name and did quite a bit with it, and... well, he's got some great remixes out there, and even some great original tracks, but they tend to have more of a DJ Space Raven sound to them relative to older S.H.O.K.K. titles.  This isn't unusual, as DJ Space Raven partnered with Pettanice to become the second iteration of S.H.O.K.K., which tends to require a partner to really put out great stuff, it seems.  Despite this, both of them want to hold on to whatever value they believe their stage names have, so Pettanice sometimes refers to S.H.O.K.K. as he and Space Raven working together, and sometimes as himself, and Nicholas Perrottey usually wants to keep his DJ Space Raven brand out there too; neither wants to be seen as merely one member of a group, it appears.  The DJ Emergency and DJ Giotto stage names have been quietly forgotten.

In any case, in spite of the fact that they'd been working together as S.H.O.K.K. specifically for a number of years by the time they put this out, Spaceshokkers refers specifically to the concept of the two of them being separate artists but collaborating, rather than the more integrated type of collaboration they do when they both work together under the S.H.O.K.K. name.  And the naming convention was interesting; Pettanice did something similar when working with Marcel Scheffers (stage name Marcel Woods) and they called that collaboration Woodschokkers.

Here's Freddy [Uberdruck Mix] by Uberdruck

Just when you thought A*S*Y*S's "Acid Nightmare" was the iconic hard trance song based on the themesong from A Nightmare on Elm Street, well, you have to consider this as an alternative.

Uberdruck was famous for their extremely dark, almost "evil" sounding sound, and it's the perfect match, obviously, for this subject matter.

Life on Mars [Extended Mix] by Pulsedriver & Rocco

I really, really love this song.  More recent than you might think, it's a throwback to the heyday of hardtrance, Wave II style, by two Wave II artists.

Granted, the Rave Mix is slightly better, I think.  But both versions are just great tracks.  One of the reasons I love it, I think, is that it goes a bit against the grain.  I really love the menacing, dark sounds that most hardtrance songs have, because it fits the genre so well, and because it's just my nature to like dark, menacing music (that's why back in the 80s, I always preferred Depeche Mode to Erasure and the Pet Shop Boys.)  But because most of it fits that vein anyway, the ones that don't and still manage to be very well done tracks tend to be among my very favorites precisely because they're different.

Danger [Mass In Orbit Remix] by @dam

Of course, @dam is Mass In Orbit (and B-Tronixx and a few other aliases too) but eh.  I'm not going to quibble with the tendency of EDM artists to hide behind multiple stage names for various songs, although it sure seems like a marketing disaster to do so.

Regardless, this is a great song.  Now that my total is way up over 1,800 tracks in the hard dance mix together collection, if I were to really comb through them to come up with the top... 50 or so, this would make the cut.  It'd be more iffy for a top 25, but it might do it yet.

Play [Paul Maddox Remix] by Stimulator

Stimulator is a Dutch outfit, but they seem to be associated with the fundamentally British Tidy label.  This particular song is not their best one (Paul Maddox was too "housy" for my taste as a trance remixer, most of the time).  There is some absolutely excellent material by Stimulator though, which we'll be hitting eventually as I continue to survey my hard dance stuff.