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...

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...

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...

It’s been a minute since  Solarstone’s  last album. (Actually, it’s been several million of them, as  ‘island’  was released five years ago!). In that time life’s given us all plenty to ponder, and Rich Solarstone’s no exception to that. At a point in time where everything is supposed to streamline, Solarstone’s experience might better be described as ‘mainline’. He became a husband, a father again and watched his firstborn come of age. A lot of new perspectives are naturally going to follow that. No stranger to pouring his creative force, thoughts and feelings into his music, that reaches an apex this month with the release of his ninth album. Make no mistake … this one’s coming from deep within. “ Good music demands that you push yourself, and the best of it also forces you to take risks … ”  says Rich Mowatt,  “and I’m more than aware that ‘innermost’ inherently carries some of the latter. In its native form, this is not a club album, but then I d...

So here we are … and here it is. 25 years after the first took the mix comp scene by storm and set a new high bar in the process, we’ve arrived at  the twentieth ‘In Search Of Sunrise’ . For a landmark occasion this momentous, an exceptional edition was required, and with a six-mix/disc/DJ odyssey, that’s exactly what series guardians Black Hole Recordings have delivered. Before all that though, a little history! With the millennium on the then horizon, October the 10 th  1999 saw DJ  Tiësto’s  first ‘In Search Of Sunrise’ touch down into a glowing comp climate. Already trailing heat through his previous series ( ‘Magik’ ), anticipation was way high. However, its reception outmatched even Tiësto and Black Hole’s expectations, with the Dutchman mixing seven in total, before parting creative ways with the series. ISOS returned in 2010 under the stewardship of one-time Tiësto protegee  Richard Durand , who delivered six editions and introduced co-mixing to its...