Church of Trance

FEATURING THE MUSIC OF TIËSTO, SOLARSTONE, NALIN & KANE, LAURENT VERRONEZ, CASS & SLIDE, STARECASE, DJ REMY, MAX GRAHAM, MARK OTTEN, PERRY O’NEIL, KING UNIQUE, LUSTRAL, DJ TON T.B. & MORE First there was Techno. Then came Trance. Then - as an almost immediate phasedown of the latter … progressive house.  So, what in the world’s Progressive Trance then!? Well, for the main, it’s trance in its purest, dawn-of-the-genre form. Effectively a handy tag that anchored the music to everything that came - stylistically at least - before 1997. It was trance music for those that were not yet ready to surrender to the sugary rush of the gated synth, the furious snare and the advanced tempos that, tsunami-like, rolled in, as the Nineties reached their peak. No one however expected Progressive Trance to last more than a baton passing year or few. Nor that a myriad of labels and imprints would spring up in support of it, or that already supremely well-established ones would whole...

This summer, Push returns to the album format with ‘Known Universe’ – the eighth longplayer in his eminent career. That 'known universe' specifically is the hardware-driven studio world that shaped his earliest work. The one that Mike Dierickx painstakingly reassembled in order to reconnect with the tools, challenges and workflows of his original environment. In doing so he’s nailed an album that’s “ the truest reflection of Push to date. ” ‘Known Universe’ has landed! ‘Keeping it real’ ... It was a thing back then and something that lies at the very bedrock of what - production-wise - Mike Dierickx did … and still does to this day. Over his studio lifetime, he hasn’t mutated, changed-to-order or had his sound knocked off course by fleeting trend. Not even the once. Being true to the craft has quite literally been his be-all and end-all. At points that might’ve cost him ground, but Mike had an oracle-like idea of what the long game looked like. Impactful music, made wi...

Having stopped to smell the roses for a few cycles, Roger Shah’s hallmark music compilation series returns to streams, stores and shelves in 2026. Onboard, naturally, is its usual, impeccable prog/trance/house blend of melodic-tropics, harmonic sonics, castaway chords, beachfront character and seaside atmosphere. Ready to do it to the summer, before the summer does it to us, here comes ‘Magic Island – Music For Balearic People 13’ !! As is his way, Roger Shah’s again pursued a one-hundred-percent exclusive material mandate for his latest ‘M.I. ’ excursion. To that end, he’s reunited his singing, songwriting and composing family of ‘Balearic People’ for lucky no.13. Those returning from the last edition alone include Pierre Pienaar, Rafael Osmo, Yelow, Ditoma, Clarks, Aytaro, Spy and, naturally enough, Roger’s Sunlounger alias - all contributing to its compound hybrid makeup. Adding to that family are actual blood-tied Shahs . Three years further on, Roger’s son Noah Shah has ...

AS IT NAVIGATES ITS SECOND ALBUM DECADE, SOLARSTONE BRINGS MAJOR CHANGES TO HIS MIXCOMP MARQUE. (MUSICAL PURITY HOWEVER REMAINS STRICTLY INTACT !!).   Having solo-helmed the milestone tenth ‘Pure Trance’ outing, Solarstone reflected at the time that it was: “a transitional moment’ for the series. A natural temporal point, where one ‘chapter’ would close and another open. ” And that new “ chapter ” is where we find ourselves today.  At their core, ‘Pure Trance’ albums has always had an ethos – something seeded in them from the very start. However, that culture Rich felt was: “achievable, but not yet fully achieved”. Specifically, it’s that of creating the albums the ‘Global Underground’ way or by following the ‘Northern Exposure’ trail. A commitment to compiling and mixing so detailed, so thought through and so experience-led, that it enshrines the 20/20 club experience as close to 1:1 as is humanly possible.  So, to finally make that flesh, he returned the...

Fusing two generations of artistry along a single conceptual thread,  Fisherman  ( Isaac Vissers ) lands his debut album with a project as deeply rooted in family as it is in music. ‘Metamorphosis’  takes inspiration from a series of twelve graphic works created in the early 90s by Isaac’s father, painter Jack Vissers, with the meaning of each canvas now reinterpreted as a corresponding piece of music. Across its twelve tracks, the album charts the human journey – one that moves from states of innocence and possibility, through the rebellious and aspirational stages, before finally reaching understanding, transcendence, and continuity. Whichever way you cut it, there’s never been an album quite like ‘Metamorphosis’ . Across its twelve tracks, the album charts the human journey – one that moves from states of innocence and possibility, through the rebellious and aspirational stages, before finally reaching understanding, transcendence, and continuity. Talking about ‘...

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...

Ironically perhaps,  ‘Finding Me’ owes its existence to a period of profound creative doubt on Ciaran McAuley’s behalf. After years of forward momentum, the Irish artist found himself questioning not only his own direction, but his relationship with music itself. At that crossroads, rather than forcing (what now only had the appearance of) progress, he chose to pause and fully acknowledge the rift. Then he turned into its headwind and harnessed that turbulence as the start-point for his recalibration. And that became the core of  ‘Finding Me’ . That type of reset often requires a little help from your friends and Ciaran found a wealth of that through a truly standout cast of collaborators. Amongst that cadre are studio mainstays like  Paul van Dyk ,  Roger Shah ,  Ferry Tayle , and  Sean Tyas , and singer-songwriters like  Audrey Gallagher, Christian Burns ,  Sue McLaren ,  Zara Taylor, Sarah Howells ,  Clara Yates, Deirdre Mc...

What happens when two producers — bound by a shared history, yet also significantly parted for fragments of it — rediscover the musical language that first brought them together? And then further, seal it with a 20-track first album as a two-piece? For Driftmoon’s Juraj Klička , and Miikka Leinonen , who in 2023, rejoined, seven years after his departure, the answer’s  ‘Moonstruck’ —a record born through (not to put too fine a point on it!), reunion. Featuring a constellation of talented co-producers ( Ruben de Ronde, Richard Durand, Robert Nickson, Hel:Sløwed  to mention a few )  and vocalists like  Sue McLaren Sarah Howells  and  Susie Ledge,   ‘Moonstruck’  is Driftmoon’s most ambitious studio work to date. “ Opus ” may not be too big a word. Divided into four lunar events, each echoing a stage in the duo’s timeline, they, alongside their creative allies, have delivered the most vivid, and indeed,  complete   Driftmoon LP to date....

“ Always, I have believed that artist albums need a purpose ” says Johan Gielen , “ and that purpose can’t simply be feeding the industry machine or the bi-annual expectations of a fanbase ”. Nonetheless, it’s been nigh on twenty years since ‘Revelations’ appeared, making ‘ Etherflow ’ less of a ‘return’ to the Johan Gielen longplayer, and more a musical reckoning for it. Fair to say then that expectations have been raised, and its taken the Belgium-born/Dutch-based legend three earth cycles of production to meet them. An album forged in grief, resilience, and a raw creative truth, ‘ Etherflow ’ isn’t just a long-awaited ‘next chapter’ . It’s part an epic celebration of life, and part an existential excavation of it - one that’s been written from the inside out and charged by the weight of lived experience. As Johan himself puts it: “ there’s the Beauty of Silence, but also ‘the beauty of absence” . ‘ Etherflow ’ though, is where that absence ends. What’s in a title then? Joh...