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.