The Return of Trance Music
FKA Twigs and The Weeknd take us back to Y2K
Picture this: It's 4am in a Los Angeles warehouse. Just when the pulsing beats start to feel overwhelming, a familiar sound cuts through the darkness - the ethereal synths of Ian Van Dahl's "Castles in the Sky" (1999). Like a breath of fresh air, those lush melodies part the clouds of heavier dance music, creating what producer Reanna Cruz (DJ Costanza by night) calls a moment of pure euphoria.
But what exactly makes a track "trance"? The genre earned its apt name by inducing hypnotic, altered states through specific musical elements - rolling synthesizers, the signature "trance gate" effect (imagine a fence rapidly opening and closing to chop up sustained sounds), and dramatic builds and releases. While house music makes you move and techno puts you in a groove, trance aims to transport you somewhere else entirely.
The sound emerged in 1988 when KLF dropped "What Time is Love? (Pure Trance Mix)" but really took off when German DJ Sven Väth started fusing techno's hard-hitting beats with euphoric melodies. By the late 90s, trance had exploded globally, fragmenting into subgenres like acid trance, hard trance, and uplifting trance (because apparently regular trance wasn't uplifting enough).
Now in 2025, those distinctive trance sounds are seeping back into pop music in fascinating ways. Take FKA twigs' new album EUSEXUA - the title track deploys every trance technique in the book, from gated synths to piano motifs that could've been lifted straight from Robert Miles' "Children." When twigs told British Vogue that EUSEXUA represents transcending physical form through euphoria, she might as well have been describing trance's core mission.
Even The Weeknd's latest epic Hurry Up Tomorrow incorporates trance-adjacent textures, using arpeggiated synthesizers and ethereal pads to create its liminal atmosphere. Though we're still debating whether these qualify as capital-T Trance (Nate remains skeptical), they demonstrate how the genre's sonic palette continues to captivate.
But here's where it gets interesting: dance music scenes are as much about context as sound. The very elements that feel transcendent in a warehouse at dawn can lose their magic when polished for pop radio. As genres move from underground to mainstream, they often leave their subcultural power behind.
Still, trance's reemergence feels meaningful in 2025. In an age of constant anxiety, maybe we're all craving music that can lift us out of ourselves - whether we're in a sweaty club or just commuting to work (though please don't try to reach transcendence while operating heavy machinery).
Will trance complete its journey from dark warehouses to the Hot 100? We'll be watching the charts. But one thing's certain - in the right place, at the right time, with the right crowd, trance still has the power to make us feel like we're building castles in the sky.
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Essential Trance Tracks
KLF - "What Time is Love? (Pure Trance Mix)" (1988) - The track that started it all
Robert Miles - "Children" (1995) - So good it failed at its original purpose of getting people to leave the club
Paul van Dyk - "For an Angel" (1998) - Those rolling synths though
Ian Van Dahl - "Castles in the Sky" (1999) - Pure euphoria
Tiësto - "Adagio for Strings" (2004) - That trance gate hit different