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Healing - The best track of the decade ?


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Turner – The Slave Ship

 

 

England. A new movement is arising. It is called « New Underground Trance ». It is led by John 00 Fleming, and counts many talentuous artists, such as Christopher Lawrence, The Digital Blonde, Lisa Lashes and Casey Rasch.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEMqdaFixGA

 

It is an attempt to bring back the original spirit of Trance music, and to synthetize the old with the newshcool spirit, and trance with psytrance. It is characterized by a pulsing progressive beat, dark melancholic tones, and heavy atmospheric layers. It contains dreamy moods, and a Gothic spirit.

 

Personnally, my understanding of Trance music is that it is the tribal music of the modern, Western world. In Goa, it has embraced the Indian Classical Music. In Israel, it has absorbed the vividness of Middle Eastern traditionnal instruments. In Croatia, it has merged with the pagan spirit of the Slavic era. In Sweden, it pulses with the vibration of the Scandinavian forests.

 

Now, the time have come when the pagan soul of England – Gothic spirit – is being expressed through Trance music.

 

Gothic spirit. It echoed throughout the artistic history of Albion. It resonates through many obras that has become major texts in worldwide litterature : Shakespeare – The Tempest ; Marlowe – Doctor Faustus ; Milton – Paradise Lost ; Lewis – The Monk ; Tolkien – Lord of the Rings.

 

Within Gothic spirit spread the skies of the Northern Atlantic, filled with heavy rains of cloud carried by cold wings. Within Gothic spirit abides a mystical connection to an old Earth, expressed by cathedrals and ruins of abbeys. Within Gothic spirit there is a tragic sense of destiny inherited from the never-forgotten lore of the Norse mythology, surving within the people of Albion.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSWryyjAyYM

 

These past few months, the English produced have produced many tracks translating this spirit in sounds. The New Underground Trance is filled with solemn melodies, cloudy layers, and psychedelic moments of hope and anguish. Henceforth, these tracks belong either to the realm of Dark Fantasy or Dark Science-Fiction.

 

Now, if you're reading this, it's because of the catchy title of my topic.

 

 

The first time I've come accrosse Healing, by John 00 Fleming, it was through this video :

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RuXYY_-TGM

 

The first time I've come accross this video, I have been shaken as I rarely have been by a trance track. It was so deep, so mysterious. I think that in my whole trancer life, only Vibrasphere delivered me a comparable feeling.

 

Beyond the fact that the track combines some of the best aspects of progressive, upliting and psychedelic trance, and that it added Goa hints to the formula, I was amazed by how perfectly the video fitted the sounds.

 

Within the torments of a stormy cloud , floats around a flying cathedral, describing chaotic movements in the sky. Rain is pouring hard over its walls, adorned with Gothic motives. But as a Turner-like sunlight pierces through darkness, petrified gargoils start to awaken. As they start to move back to life, they seek revenge over the master of the place, affected by an acient curse.

 

The unreality of the melodies, the perfect harmony of every sound, the deep story-telling of it quickly led it to become one of my favourite track.

 

But a few days ago, I came accross of a remix of it.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIdlmbcXmF0

 

And oh, God. The feeling... The feeling of it was even more intense. My heart bet faster. My arms were covered with goosebumps. And as I couldn't stop listening to it, my breath became more intense, and my mind drifted away.

 

And in my imgaination, I realized the true nature of the track.

 

Healing.

 

It is not about the healing of a person or a creature.

 

It describes a large, desolate wasteland. A cursed desert, plunged into darkness, and covered with dust, looking like the remnants of an acient battlefield. A scar at the surface of the Earth, bearing the witness of a titanomachia.

 

Long ago, this place was filled with life and nature. It was a palace for glorious stones and overworldly forests. It gathered mighty creatures, and everyday of it was a legend.

 

But one day, demons from the Earth engaged a war. The magical cairns and the guardian trees couldn't resists the everlasting assault. And after long battles, when the mighty warriors were poisoned to death, and when the monoliths started to collapse, a decision was made.

 

The remaining inhabitants decided to destroy the land, rather than to surrender. In a final blow, they destroyed all life in this land, and took their ennemies away with them.

 

The intro of the track begins many millenaries after those events. It describes the stillness of a land plunged in darkness, and cursed for eternity, afflicted with a post-apocalyptic silence.

 

But suddenly, the chiming of a bell is heard. An angel from Heaven, wrapped in Light, is to be seen in this place (02:54). Slowly enough, he proceeds to the ruins of a sanctuary, lying over black stones.

 

As his paces tread over the dusty soil, he engages the process of healing (03:43). He chants, and a faint light start to glow over the rocks. The painful rocks, like ghosts of the past, seem to remember an unreal past. Earth is to be healed. Powerful telluric forces are in motion. And as light keeps growing, the darkness of the skies dissipate (05:20).

 

An extasy of joy enwraps the sanctuary, as heavenly light descends upon it. Ghostly smiles seem to appear over the ruins.

 

07:17 : The camera moves away, and reveals the immensity of the wastelands.

 

This track is like the kiss of an angel. The storytelling, the originality, and the musical techniques of it make it appear, without the shadow of the doubt, as the best trance track of the decade 2010.

 

Long live Gothic Trance.

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john 00 fleming has been at the forefront of good trance for a while now and the psy influences is clear with quite a few joof or pharmacy releases (not only with the collabs or the straight goa releases such as eleusyn), but i haven't realized that good trance has become a "thing" (complete with a new name) again. i approve :)

 

 

thanks for metioning healing, i didn't know the track before and it's indeed a good one :)

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@Padmapani

 

Actually, the English Underground Trance has two aspects :

 

_production. Mentionned hereabove.

_mixing. There are extremely talentuous DJ's in Englans, who mix several genres together (there are mixes containes pieces of oldschool Goa from the 90's, and pieces of vocal trance from this year). Broadscats such as Earthquake Sound Systems can make me like Neelix, full-on or commercial proglifting trance songs. Because these guys add a lot of values to these tracks when they mix it.

 

You can also try Alien Language, Rush Hour or Global Trance Groove (there are more of them I think). Excellent mixes.

 

EDIT : I also shall precise that Goa/Psytrance is getting popular in the Trance scene.

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Man dude, as always you have a way with words. Healing is definitely a great track. I haven't been listening much to recent J00F releases so I have a good amount of catching up to go through. Always nice to read your thoughts.

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_production. Mentionned hereabove.

_mixing. There are extremely talentuous DJ's in Englans, who mix several genres together (there are mixes containes pieces of oldschool Goa from the 90's, and pieces of vocal trance from this year). Broadscats such as Earthquake Sound Systems can make me like Neelix, full-on or commercial proglifting trance songs. Because these guys add a lot of values to these tracks when they mix it.

 

You can also try Alien Language, Rush Hour or Global Trance Groove (there are more of them I think). Excellent mixes.

 

thanks for those links. there's definitely some good stuff in there. listening and downloading right now :)

 

but i've decided to skip one of the alien language mixes. if there's only ra being played i have no new music to discover ;). it's really nice to see this kind of goa getting more recognition (even if it makes me a bit disappointed about the "mainstream"-psy scene).

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It is an attempt to bring back the original spirit of Trance music

I like the notion, but I don't think the examples posted achieved this. They weren't bad, although I didn't really care for the first one. I think I like the second song the best, except for the bassline.

 

I hardly know all things trance, but I kind of think that the idea of melding the original spirit of trance with psytrance is a contradiction. To me psytrance is a distinct evolution away from original trance, so I'm not sure how one could blend the two.

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To me psytrance is a distinct evolution away from original trance, so I'm not sure how one could blend the two.

i've always seen psytrance as a subset (the less accessable or easy-listening kind) of trance. if you look at mid 90s releases (for instance bpc, mwnn, eat static or cygnus-x) this becomes very clear. often it's more dependant on the artist than the track itself if it's classified as psy or as trance. take bpc - crystal and cygnus-x - synchronism: the first one is goa the second one trance, but really it could be the other way round. synchronism sounds more like goa than half of bpc's output.

 

it is only with the time around 2000 that trance became exceedingly commercial/cheesy/formulaic that there was a huge gap between the two, but around 6 years later fullon did the same and closed that gap. of course regular trance and fullon had their own signature sounds (supersaws with a characteristic pattern, pianos, extremely long breakdowns vs. rolling bassline, psyfarts and extremely long/repetitive buildups), but if anything, psy has followed trance rather than moving away from it. now there's also much more variance between different genres of psy (and trance for that matter) than between psy and trance. the increasingly blurring lines between trance and goa as well as trance and progressive are a good indication.

 

and if you ask me it's a good thing. trance has preserved (and refined) different qualities of what initially was good about trance/goa than psy has. there are many things we can learn from each other.

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Trance Music and Psy-Trance are one genre. They appeared at the the same time, and immediatly merged, before splitting into two separate universes.

 

Just listen at Union Jack, Cosmic Baby or Astralasia. I can't say if they belong to trance or psy-trance. These genres, before 1994/1995, were more than close. Early Platypus is a good example of that.

 

Trance in itself was an acidic and psychedelic genre, just as Goa today.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSqjIic4j-8

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPpuF73FA8c

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJjD6BVGeGQ

 

And actually, modern Goa and Psy-Trance are much closer, both in sound and spirit, to original Trance music than the modern Trance scene has ever been. If there is a genre that branched out, that's Trance.

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I'm a massive John Fleming fan. For me he's the best DJ in the world, completely without peer. The various 3-5hr journeys he's taken me on during the years have been almost life-changing.

His productions can be hit and miss though. The singles tend to be great, the albums were a bit bland in parts.

His production really shines when paired with the Digital Blonde. Both 00db albums are amazing. So many gems between them.

This is a beautiful, twisted, atmospheric masterpiece:

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