is how we want electronic dance music to be perceived?

In a trance: I want to respond to some of the comments stating that I'm anti-trance. I am. But ... in the late-'90s I helped convince now-defunct Mixer Magazine to cover the burgeoning state of trance in America. One of the things the magazine did was give a shout to a trance-flavored night I was hosting in West L.A. called Pacifica. Of course trance at the time wasn't the symphony-on-ecstasy it is today. I guess I was taken by the simple but tuneful melodies of Robert Miles and early System F (Ferry Corsten), not to mention anything by the more-driving, streamlined sounds of the Fragrant label, Deepsky, Sandra Collins and Christopher Lawrence. I was, in fact, one of the earliest people to write about Deepsky, and I stand by the ink I have given to Collins and CL.

But as the genre got more-and-more arpeggiated, and as it attracted cheesier and cheesier people, I started to turn, as a lot of people did, to the tougher, darker elements of progressive and tribal. By the early '00s I found little to like about trance artistically, even as I acknowledged its significance in the big-room scene. Some of the DJs I wrote about at the time, including current DJ Magazine Top 100 DJs number 1 Armin Van Buuren, last year's topper Paul Van Dyk, and perennial fave Tiesto, are forces of nature whose ability to whip up thousands of fans is a story that cannot be ignored.

However, if electronic dance music culture is to evolve artistically and gain new adherents, the leaders in the scene have to seriously consider whether having spiky-haired DJs playing 10-year-old styles for drugged-up crowds is really the way forward. I would say it isn't. For one, any genre of music that requires a drug to enjoy automatically limits its audience. The new kids coming into dance music are entering from the indie door, and they like Daft Punk, LCD Soundsystem, Justice and more-punkish sounds. To them, this paradigm of late-night E-dropping and fist-in-the-air trance clubs is way old news. It's become a self-parody, "Deep House Dish"-style. What's more, the sounds haven't much evolved. It's stayed the same, almost for 10 years. That's not what EDM is about. It's about cutting-edge, technologically forward music. While I like some of the more muted directions that some of the top DJs are taking in their artist albums, and I find it fascinating how deep housers (Kaskade) and hip-hoppers (Baby Bash) are incorporating trance-like melodies, we need to move on.

Trance started as a more melodic off-shoot of Detroit-birthed techno and, at first, the Frankfurt practitioners retained a sense of soul and toughness that came with techno. But as trance has gotten more and more popular -- to echo Sasha Frere-Jones recent and much-talked-about sentiments about indie rock -- it's gotten more and more white and less and less soulful. It's symphonic distortion for people with no ass. Even the top DJs are getting tired of it -- as heard in their much-more tech- and prog-flavored artist albums -- but they stick to it during gigs, I'm guessing, for the money. Electronic dance music is about soul and diversity and communal joy. It's not about young white men in Dolce & Gabbana shades pumped up on ecstasy and knowing that they're the next superstar DJ 'cause their mommies just bought them a new Allen & Heath mixer. The whole spiky haired, bare-chested, ultra-white trance scene has become a joke. I'm telling you, people are laughing at us behind our backs. It's gotten so bad that Avalon, L.A.'s premier super-club, has no trance booked for its notable "Fall-Winter Series."

Is it popular? Absolutely. But to answer one critic who asked why trance artists keep selling-out arenas and big clubs: That's not always the case. Sure, big names are consistently good draws. But, for example, Tiesto's "Live In Concert" show here in L.A. was not, in fact, a sellout, and much of the Los Angeles Sports Arena went unused, as was evident in pictures of the event. It's a near 17,000-capacity structure, and Tiesto claims to have done 10,000, if we're to believe someone who's tooting their own horn. And, I've addressed the issue of accuracy when it comes to DJ Magazine's annual Top 100 DJs poll. It is absolutely and without a doubt an inaccurate and unscientific accounting of who's popular in DJ land. Sure, it gives us some indication -- it has some use. But it's a tally of who's motivated enough to vote for their favorite DJs, guys (and girls) who often pull out all the marketing stops to get votes. Obviously, trance people are more rah-rah about their favorite spinners. Does it mean those spinners are actually more popular than, say, Daft Punk (which sold out a string of shows recently but which did not end up in the DJ Magazine top 10), or Paul Oakenfold (not in the top 10) or LCD Soundsystem (not in the top 10). I don't know. It's not a tally of everyday club-goers, journalists, producers, music-buyers and bookers about who they think is tops. That would be more scientific. If you need more information on what I'm talking about here, google "statistical analysis."

It's a little ironic, then, that hip-hop artists (Baby Bash's "Cyclone") are starting to use trance elements in their music. It's almost like the days when rap producers were sampling Kraftwerk. It's like, the stuff is so white, they have to take a bite, just to own it and flip it. (Also sort of like when hip-hop had an infatuation with Polo and preppy, country club fashions). So trance isn't about to die but, if you're like me, you kinda wish it would.