Tranceamerica: The Untold Story of U.S. Trance’s First Decade

A blend ... It’s how all electronic dance music genres kick up. (Yes, even house.) Trance’s ‘loco parentis’ were techno and the (then only-just-minted-itself) unit of progressive house, both of whom looked down on it somewhat accusingly.


From Berlin and Frankfurt, trance quickly developed hotspots across every western European country — each becoming more incestuously influenced by the last. By contrast though, the American scene was largely its own beast, taking only stem inspirations from Germany and the UK’s prog-house scene. For its first half decade, it didn’t make much of an impression internationally, but with fifty states worth of potential domestic market to tap, nor did it need to. Thus, it was left to perhaps a dozen or so foreground actors to shape its sound, and, rather conveniently, was left to form near enough inside its own bubble.

Nonetheless it faced the same headwinds that all electronic music subdivisions did in the States. Everything from house onwards was either ‘gay’ or ‘drug music’, or even more conveniently for the narrative, both. As such, during daytime play, it was kept away from mainstream airwaves, which in turn implied ideas of it being ‘underground’ (it was), ‘subversive’ (debatable) and ‘cool’ (always in the eye of the beholder). This also left DJs, producers and acts in the rather enviable position of being able to mine their own creativity and chart their own course — as opposed, that was, to having to rapidly change the shape of their output, catering to the ever changing whims and winds of the dance floor, (as was their European contemporaries’ yoke).

Early doors, for electronic music, categorisation wasn’t the artistic headache it later proved to be. Case in point: you had Miami’s George Acosta who was an early recipient of a Harthouse (Vath or Lieb) remix on the desert rave nodding ‘Moon Dance Tribe’. That was before he flirted with house on Strictly Rhythm’s (ahem) ‘Turn It Up Mr. DJ’, only to then emphatically turn trance from 2005 on. Shifting in the opposite direction, there was Defected’s Dennis Ferrer who began electronic music life as Aurasphere with ‘The Greenhouse Effect’ on NY’s proto-trance EXperimental label.

As with so many things ‘America’ (cultural and otherwise), trance found its epicentres in New York, California and Florida. The perfect geographical triangulation to allow it to propagate. Or to put it another way – within striking distance of anyone with enough inclination to follow the sound. That was assisted to quite some degree by the desert rave scene. These bloomed out of the latter two areas to further take hold in the adjacent states of Nevada and Arizona. Through the cop-dodging work of party-starters Moontribe, Dune and others, they brought a confluence of trance, psytrance, progressive trance and deep house to rave-goers’ ears.

Up in NYC meanwhile, Paul van Dyk was already playing trance at the Limelight by mid-1993. Oakenfold preferred sunnier-still climes and headed for the West Coast, where he discovered the work of Sandra Collins, Christopher Lawrence and Brian Transeau. He signed the latter’s ‘Embracing The Sunshine’ as his second Perfecto FC single, turning BT into an instant sensation and a poster boy for US electronic music. Like PvD, initially, Sasha (who’d remixed ‘Embracing’) was also more East Coast focussed, likewise playing the deconsecrated ground of Limelight in the early 90s. By ‘95 though, having put the ‘trancier-trance’ sound of Renaissance to bed, Mr. Coe (and very promptly thereafter John Digweed) introduced American ears to the housier side of progressive trance. One year further, the N.A. Northern Exposure tour cemented its vibe into the heart of US producers and laid (no pun intended) the bedrock for pretty much everything that followed. Limelight took Sasha & Digweed on to their 1997 monthly residency at Twilo, which might have been the single most formative international impact on the US prog-trance sound. After its nascent experimental years (1992 - 94), it’s certainly why it tends to cut leaner, more linear and 303-driven, as opposed to melodic and harmonic.

It surely left a major impression on the man who went on to become the US scene’s most enduring export too. Markus Schulz’s first overtly trance release was 1998’s ‘You Won’t See Me Cry’. With its sweetly sung vocals and flowing, floor-engaging breakbeat-to-4/4 time signature, it was a near faultless debut. Perhaps though it was also ahead of the US’s ‘time’ and should have made a larger impression than it did. It likely played a part in Schulz’s decision to depart the States for four years, moving closer to its spiritual centre in London and working on his fabled prog-trance ‘Coldharbour’ sound.

On his return to Florida, Schulz would have found a different landscape — one that’d been scored by the DJ-likes of Kimball Collins and Richard Dekkard, and producer/DJs like Steve Porter, Neil Kolo and Chris Fortier. The latter two’s Fade act and long running and successful label of the same name made a decent international impression from the mid-90s on. Indeed, as a label, Fade continues to this day (albeit with an amended sound). Fade found their greatest international recognition as the original remixers of Delerium’s ‘Silence’. It was off the back of the hype generated by their original Sanctuary mix that the track became a championable ‘cause celebre’ for DJs. One can only imagine how galling it must have been to have Tiesto steal that thunder with his version eighteen months later.

Aside from all its other accomplishments, ‘Northern Exposure’s tracklist brilliantly pinpointed (and internationally introduced) two pioneering US acts back-to-back. Ethereal in the truest sense of the word, ‘Raincry’ from God Within gave the world its first proper taste of San Francisco’s gone-too-soon maverick, Scott Hardkiss. Both creatively and aesthetically a Phil Spector-ish figure, within a year of N.E.'s release, (and largely off the back of Sasha’s patronage), Hardkiss had reached the heights of a Radio 1 Essential Mix. One ‘Northern Exposure’ track later came ‘O.B.E. (Out Of Body Experience)’ from Rabbit In The Moon. Likewise, hugely experimental, they also hailed from S.F. (there must have been something in the water). It was the work of the brilliantly christened David Christophere and Bunny (presumably the Rabbit of the title), and took notes from psychedelia, ambient and electronica to create seven kaleidoscopic minutes of tribal breakbeat eminence.

Across its sub-styles, there’s always more than first appears to America’s trance story. Spundae, LA, 1015, SF, Taylor, Austin Leeds, DJ Icey, Micro, DJ Three, Doc Martin, Kristina Sky, Mark Farina — its list of contributors could reach the sky.

From embryo to apex, 1992 to 2002, the first decade of the US trance scene is musically detailed on a new, three-disc album:

🎧 ‘Hypnotised: A Journey Through American Trance Music’
The fifth album in the series, it’s compiled by Arjan Rietveld, author of its encyclopaedic companion book, Hypnotised: A Journey Through Trance Music 1990 – 2005.

Featuring music from Delerium, Rabbit In The Moon, BT, Markus Schulz, Neil Kolo and Chris Fortier’s Fade, Aurasphere, Sandra Collins, Steve Porter and many others,

📅 It releases May 16.

Words by Tim Stark, former DJ Mag UK Trance Editor and author of Jam & Spoon's Tripomatic Fairytales.