Church of Trance

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 ...

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...

Howdy, my first post here, for those who don't know me, I've addicted to trance since the late 90's and been lucky to have been able to attend more festivals around the world in the more recent years:  Marc's Festivals Page  I had been told about Unkonscious several times, but never really looked into it because it was in the middle of my snowboarding season. Things lined up this year though so that I could go snowboarding in Japan and then "hop" towards Bangok. Bangkok is honestly quite far from SFO (and even worse if you're not on the west coast), so having a stop in Japan definitely helped. For others, I do recommend going to Thailand 4 to 7 days early to go visit (you can spend 4 days in and around bangkok easily, see  thailand 2023 ).  This year, the Unkonscious team did a fantastic job making the long trip worth it (even if most attendees were from Asia and had shorter trips).  There were 2 days of pre-parties, 2 days of Unkonscious main festival (a...