For an artist long notable for the strong melodic undercurrents that lie at the core of his productions, Somna’s ‘Pathways’ album represents something more ambitious than a simple progression. It is the sound of an artist very definitively redrawing his own creative map. Across a triplet of EPs, released over the last twelve months, he’s stepped far beyond the harmonic sonics that brought him to prominence. In doing so, he began to explore the outer (and inner!) reaches of melodic bass and the fierier kinetics of hard dance, as well as the more progressive house and trance ethers. These stylistic outreaches aren’t detours, in so much as they’re branching-out ‘pathways’, albeit ones which will ultimately converge back to form a new, broader-spectrum artistic identity. No longer walking the line, on May 22 , with ‘Pathways’ , Somna delivers his most expansive LP statement yet. The first of those three creative avenues manifests with Somna’s contemporary spin on the melodic bass aesth...
FEATURING TIMELESS WHITE ISLAND CLASSICS FROM CHICANE, SOLARSTONE, TIËSTO, THREE DRIVES, ENERGY 52, FERRY CORSTEN, ARMIN, RANK 1, SVENSON, GABRIEL & DRESDEN + MANY MORE Having docked at Trance ports near and far, in May 2026, ‘Hypnotised’ - the genre’s quintessential musical companion, embarks on its sister series. The brainchild of Arjan Rietveld , (also author of Hypnotised - A Journey Through Trance Music , the definitive written history on the subject), its focus shifts from a by-country standpoint to that of a sub-genre to sub-genre exploration. ‘Hypnotised – Balearic Trance’ joins the dots between the genre’s defining moments, linking together undisputed anthems like Three Drives’ immortal ‘Greece 2000’ , York’s ‘Reachers of Civilization’ , and Solarstone’s ‘The Calling’ . It counterweights them with deeper cut crate-diggers like the Transformer Too-riffing ‘La Paloma’ from Dove Beat , Goldenscan’s chiming ‘Sunrise’ , and the holiday yearn of ‘One More Day’ f...