Tag: US

I present to you the first DJ mix I have released in awhile “Mood: Daze in a Trance.” For this mix I chose to use trance songs, a few house tracks and other dance songs. Although I have more of a penchant for trap music, grime, bass, deep house but I felt a need to get back to my roots in dance music (continued after the jump/tracklist) or at least do one throwback mix like this.

Tracklist:

[0:00] The Unknown – White Water
[2:50] I Found Peace (Matt Loopy RMX) – DJ Luka
[4:39] Dark Side of the Moon (Radio Cut) – Bastian & Ernesto
[6:37] Holding On to Nothing (Alex Gold 7″ Edit)[Alex Gold 7″ Edit] – Agnelli & Nelson
[10:05] Holding On (Above & Beyond Remix) – Ferry Corsten
[12:28] Must Be the Love (Dannic Remix) – Arty feat. Nadia Ali & BT
[17:20] Sleepyhead (Neo Tokyo Remix) – Passion Pit
[19:20] Turn It Gold (Ido Z Remix) – Hesta Prynn
[21:47] To U (feat. AlunaGeorge) – Jack U

(cont.) I wanted to do a mix that highlighted some of the electronic dance music (EDM) I grew up on or at least reflect some of its sound and spirit. Artists like BT, DJ Tiesto, ATB, Röyksopp, Above & Beyond, Ferry Corsten, iiO (Nadia Ali), Scooter, Vincent De Moor, Junkie XL, Paul Oakenfold and Eiffel 65 to name a few, or rather a lot were some of the artists that ushered me into the world of dance music. These artists paved the way for the musicians that you now find on iTunes Top 20 Dance/EDM or whatever the top charts for that are today.

I remember this era (the late 90s and early-mid 00s) as a time when EDM was still very much a “European” thing and dance, house and trance music (while popular in some outlets like Detroit, San Francisco, Chicago) were still more like fringe movements. Today, a much smaller portion of electronic fans still follow trance releases (and some of the other off-shoots of EDM like eurotrance, eurodance, techno, happy hardcore, drum N’ bass etc.) as the mainstream mainly knows and wants to hear trap, house, dubstep, rap/rock/pop remixes or whatever is the hot sh*t advertisers and marketers are telling their brands to jump on NOW because rave culture is HOT! *rolls eyes (you ever notice/count all the dubstep and electronic in commercials, movies and TV shows in the past two years or so?)

Some of these artists I grew up on do still stay true to their original sound, but many have changed it while some expanded upon it (take DJ Tiesto for example). He has broken away from making the trance and “techno” that he first got famous from (“Traffic,” “Love Comes Again,” Ayla) and has transitioned more into dubstep, bass or more electronic style. Do not get me wrong I love all these genres and love the scape of dance music today; we needed EDM’s history to go down like this for us to get to the point where we are now. Where the US is now a major producer of dance music and, while we didn’t create dubstep (that was our neighbors “across the pond”), we definitely had a big hand in its growth, as an abundance of American DJs began spinning and creating it around 2009-2013, resulting in rarely ever a shortage of “generic” clubs playing the most played out of these songs to attract people wanting to “rave” the night away.