Classic Trance Music: A Proper Guide to the 90s and Early 2000s

The funny thing about classic trance is how differently people remember it. One person hears a Gatecrasher anthem from 1999 and thinks that was the whole genre. Somebody else remembers Paul Oakenfold getting strange on Radio 1 in 1994, or Paul van Dyk building a set for two hours before giving you the tune you came for. Both remember trance. Neither has the complete picture.

This guide is for the people who still have the CDs, the people who once tried to identify a record from a cassette with half a tracklist, and anyone who's heard the phrase 90s trance and wants something more useful than fifty YouTube hits thrown into a playlist. We're going from the early German and psychedelic records through British club culture, the Dutch breakthrough and the harder early-2000s sound. More importantly, we're going to work out what to listen to, and why.

One ground rule: this isn't a ranking of the 'best trance songs ever'. TMA already has a classic trance tracks guide. This is about the bigger picture. The records are only half the story. The other half is the DJ, the room, the label and whatever happened between one track and the next.