Is Trance Dead (excerpt from Mark Reeder's myspace)?

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Is trance dead? After reading this, maybe Mark is right - trance's age is over, and we should move on.
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In November 1990, the ex-AMIGA (now renamed "ZONG") suggested that as I knew more about clubbing, I should start my own record label and offered me the use of all their facilities. My label was officially founded in December 1990 and I called it, "MFS (Masterminded For Success)" using the initials of the hated Stasi - East German secret police - to install a new kind of fear and intrigue.
As for the musical style of my label, I wanted to make a more hypnotic, melodious and trance-inducing form of techno music, as a counter balance to the cold, discordant sound of techno (or as it was known here in Germany as tekno, tekkno and tekkkno, the amount of k's determining the hardness of the sound) and so I first experimented with "Alien Nation" and a selection of early MFS artists, such as Gabi Delgado's & Saba Komossa's "Two German Latinos" or Paul browse and Johnny Klimek's project "Effective Force".
My idea of creating "hypno-trance" manifested itself further with the addition of "Neutron 9000" and Mijk van Dijk's "Microglobe" and "Mindgear" projects to the label and their more melodic hypnotic techno sound was begining to be simply known as "trance".
Frontpage magazine editor Juergen Laarman also informed me that our mutual friend, Cosmic Baby had told him that he was also looking for a new label too and after a brief meeting with Cosmic and a pleasant discussion about musical direction, he also joined MFS in 1991 and I released these first MFS singles under the banner "MFS Trance Dance".

Although Cosmic was a very proficient musician, he needed a helping hand to make truly dj compatible tracks. After performing at a Dubmission party, he was impressed by a young unknown dj who played before him. He told me that he thought he had found someone who might be right. So I invited and met this young dj the following Monday. That young dj was Paul van Dyk.

Paul seemed pleasant enough and I told Cosmic to simply give it a shot. The result was the first "The Visions of Shiva" single - Perfect Day.
As the label started to gain its own "trance" profile, more and more artists such as Humate were added to the label. Once I had enough trance releases, I asked Cosmic Baby and Mijk van Dijk if they would like to remix each track to make a trance compilation album that would be the first and set a standard for all others to follow. This album became the now legendary "Tranceformed from Beyond", it was the first real trance compilation album.

After the release of their second and final "The Visions of Shiva single" Paul and Cosmic decided to go their own separate ways. Cosmic released his brilliant debut album "Stellar Supreme" and a series of superb singles for MFS and Paul concentrated on remix work and his first mix compilation for MFS "X-Mix 1 - The MFS Trip".The MFS Trip".

Paul wanted this mix album to be his best work to date. He borrowed a 4 track reel-to-reel tape deck and spent the whole day recording the mix and making over-dubs, effects etc. The Master-Tape was due to be delivered at 10pm that night for use on the x-mix 1 video soundtrack. I arrived at Paul's flat, just as he was mixing in the last track. He was very excited and really happy with his work. Once the outro was completed, Paul hit the rewind button so that I could hear the entire piece and we sat down to relax. The tape deck smoothly started to gain speed and rewind the tape, building up to a whirlwind speed. Then after about a minute, there was a malfunction and the tape deck suddenly started spinning out of control, it spewed the tape out, stretching it and mashing it all up, as the tape wound itself around the reels, eventually snapping it, all before Paul managed to leap up and stop the machine in a panic! He was devastated. I was stunned. For a moment that seemed like an age, we stood in silence not knowing what to do next. The tape was ruined and obviously beyond repair. Paul only had about an hour to go before the courier arrived to collect the master.

So without a moment to lose, I encouraged him to start again on the mix. I salvaged what I could of the reel and he set to work basically trying to reconstruct his mix from memory. He had to start from the beginning. I helped him with some of the effects and track selection and the results can be heard on the album "X-Mix 1 - The MFS Trip". This mix is therefore absolutely live, with no overdubs or edits, as he finished it only moments before the courier arrived to collect it.
After almost 8 dedicated years of loyal hard work, belief, love and investment in getting Paul to a point whereby he was ready to finally be able to fulfil his dream and break it big-time, and after all the hard work, the sleepless nights, the many gigs and tours together with Paul, he suddenly left MFS. No thanks, nothing. He has meanwhile gone on to become the superstar dj I had always believed he could and would become.

Most people are totally unaware that on MFS I also released many incredible (and meanwhile equally legendary) singles and albums, such as Denki Groove's "Niji", Humate's "Love Stimulation", Secret Knowledge "Sugar Daddy" or the excellent albums by Mijk van Dijk "Afeuropamericiasiaustralica" or Dr Motte's timeless 030 "Ki" album, Marco Zaffarano's Minimalism album, as well as the "European" compilation and "Assorted" series.

In 1999, I decided to form a new record label, "FLESH" together with my friend, Hungarian dj/producer, Corvin Dalek.
After ten years of Trance, I felt I needed a change of sound. We wanted to create a new identity especially for our own distinct techno derivative of saucy sounding club music, that we had decided to call "Wet&Hard". This amusing and controversial name describes the sound of music perfectly. The idea was to create a musical style that could be developed in any way we chose, one with no-holes-barred and one that would hopefully take us beyond the remnants of tedious TV Trance and traditional Techno. We also wanted to bring back some fun and sexuality into dance music too, as we found the music of the late 90s, was starting to be too much of the same, bland and boring. Personally, I also wanted to get some distance from what I had been releasing before on MFS and try out some new ideas and give others the chance to be creative again.
Corvin being Hungarian, was already very open-minded sexually and embraced the chance to finally express himself in his own way, without the constraints of an already established and flogged to death dance genre.
He included lots of overt sexual sounds into his music. We felt that the sexual and open-your-mind elements had somehow gone missing from late 90s techno and trance, it had become too repetitive and uninteresting and after all, isn't the sexual element what the dance ritual is all about?

So we added tons of sexuality into the music, with an emphasis on throbbing grooovy bassline riffs, driving latino-style percussion and trippy sound effects and for it we created a graphic art imagery to accompany the sound too, which we called "HotKunst" (Hot Art).).

Some examples of HotKunst can be seen on the HotKunst myspace pages - some I've made together with Corvin, some I've made with the incredibly talented Jan Kessler and music can be heard on Corvins debut artist album, "I Am A Dalek" as well as on the numerous FLESH compilation albums, by Corvin Dalek or Eiven Major.
For a listen, please go to http://www.myspace.com/fleshrecords
Meanwhile, "Wet&Hard" has taken me and Corvin and the other W&H DJ's around the Globe.
We have travelled to some great clubs in the UK, USA and Canada and also to such exotic places as Mexico for the brilliant Loveparade and Technogeist festivals, to witness some of the craziest crowds ever there (eg girls throwing their underwear at us!) or to experience eating payote, or adventures such as me getting thrown off a horse in the hostile mexian desert and breaking my rib, only to give a lecture at the G. Martell music academy the next day and suffer through the Loveparade with it, or to play in a former Atomic bunker set deep in the mountains of Slovakia, or see Clubs like NS Time, a wonderful club that has a MIG21 jet fighter inside it (where the go-go girls dance on the wings!), as well as to see huge festivals in Eastern Europe such as Creamfields CZ & PL, or the popular "Summer of Love" festival in Pardubice.
"Wet&Hard" has taken us to some of the most incredible locations, deep in the wild jungles of Colombia, to play for thousands of people on a mountainside plateaux, or even to the metropolis of Shanghai, the spicy city of Chengdu or dusty Beijiing during our month long tour of China, together with feline Fidelity Kastrow and Neebing. We have met some really wonderful people along the way. We have also gained additional "Wet&Hard" DJ's too, such as leading mexican dj Klang, czech dj/producer Jakub Mildner, San Francisco's badlad Pat Ibbetson, florida based dj Ed Whitty, Irish djs John Gibbons or Gary Collins, all who have made the decision to leave the mainstream tech-trance arena and come on board for the ride and to inspire and excite the young people and lovers of the World with their own style of Wet&Hard music.
Undoubtably, the musical landscape is changing. Clubbing is changing.
There is a definite desire from new clubbers to experience something as good as the "good old days" that everyone seems to talk about. That feeling of freedom and fun.
In the early 90s the young techno kids pleaded with their peers to open their minds and be tolerant towards techno and "feel" it for themsleves.
Of course, looking back over 15 years later, there were numerous factors that combined to create that overall feeling, such as the political climate and the euphoria felt by the fall of the Berlin wall, or the substances people were taking back then, they were also part of this feeling too. The political climate has changed and the drugs are different (E is not being consumed by todays clubbers in anything like the quantities it was in the early 90s) and so whatever the retro-synth-software manufacturers produce for the studio, no amount of retro-sound will recreate the real feeling of the early 90s either.
Sadly, in their search for that "feeling" there is one important thing which is always overlooked and that is the underlying desire to experience physical contact. All previous dance styles of the past had something to do with actual body contact. Even if it was only holding a hand, doing the bump, or shovin' n shoulderin' a fellow pogo dancer as in punk, it was all sexual and very physical. The techno kids were denied that physical touch aspect, as it was substituted through ecstasy. The revolutionary energy of the music combined with general "feeling" and experience of everyone loving each other and being on the same mental E-plane, substitued the need for physical contact. The clubbers of today can't really expect to experience that feeling of the early 90s, simply because they are taking different drugs in the clubs today.
However, their physical needs are there. From my travels, I've spoken to many clubbers. They see sexy hiphop videos where the people are all having a great time "freaking" together and even though they are maybe not into the music, they still want a piece of the hands on action. So, in the U.S.A and Canada "freaking" has started to filter through onto the techno-club dancefloors in places like Florida and San Francisco or Montreal, where the Wet&Hard dj's sound is sexual.

Indeed, the clubbers of today have to discover their own style and sound which represents their generation.
With "Wet&Hard", we have only provided a stepping stone for those who are interested, as an alternative foundation upon which to build upon. It is up to the active participants to make something out of it.
Whatever we have created, it remains open minded. The sound is not confined to any particular sound parameters, you can mix techno with electro with minimal with rock. The only thing the music really has to be, is in some way sexual, as dance music should be sexy to be part of the ritual of dance, but that is left to the individual to determine what they understand by that.
Wet&Hard has its own philosophy and its own artistic and design style, and with "freaking", it also has its own dance style too. Hopefully, you will want to cum and get freaky with us too.