It’s a Trance Celebration

A Sate of Trance 450

In case no one has noticed from all my excited tweetings, it’s a special weekend for my favorite radio show – A State of Trance. This is a yet another milestone for the show runner, Armin van Buuren – 450 consecutive shows. 450 weeks, week to week, of doing a 2 hour trance mix on the radio. That, to me, shows incredible dedication and hard work. Many people fail to realize just how much time all the big DJs put into their careers every week. Not only do they travel around the world putting down mixes at clubs and festivals from Asia to North America, but they also find time to do 2 hour radio shows or podcasts every week, as well as interviews, guest mixes, and possibly family time?

Crazy stuff. I don’t think I could do it.

Anyway, this weekend is the A State of Trance 450 celebration and this means a busy schedule for trance fans. There are guest mixes scattered through the day as well as live shows in 4 different cities across the world at night. Last night there was a broadcast from The Guvernment in Toronto (really eager to visit this club; everyone seems to love it). Tonight (Friday) and tomorrow the broadcast will come from the Roseland Ballroom in New York and then Armin will travel across the pond to Slovakia and Poland to round out the show on April 9th and 10th.

I think the choice of these cities tells us something. Last year the A State of Trance celebration took place in Holland, Germany, and England. This year the global phenomenon is coming to Canada, the United States, and Eastern Europe. Clearly these are the emerging markets that Armin and the other DJs chose to acknowledge as the epicenter of trance fans. I am a little bit disappointed that there is no show in Los Angeles but honestly we have Armin here every few months so it’s not a big deal (Monster Massive, Together as One, and from the looks of it EDC but more on that later). I’m sure it will happen during episode 500 or 550 >:)

Another important aspect of this event is its ability to unite trance fans across the world. If you go to www.astateoftrance.com, you can see the twitter feed from people who mark #asot450 or #asot in their tweets. A lot of times when I listen to trance, I find no one to share it with. The majority of my friends are not trance fans and those that are do not come over and listen to the show with me. In this case, it is incredible to listen to a mix and have people from all over the world sharing their experiences and reflections on each mix, each track, and each breakdown that is dropped throughout the night. It is a global phenomenon that is very interesting, and I think very heartwarming. It makes me happy that there are indeed people out there that are as into trance as I am because sometimes I start to wonder if that is the case, especially when I am at clubs or festivals where everyone is so inebriated that they have no idea who is on stage in the first place; at that point knowing the tracks is out of the question of course unless it’s a David Guetta or Deadmau5 track.

So this goes out to all the trance fans across the world – let’s celebrate this weekend with THE biggest trance show in the world and appreciate the fact that there are some REAL trance fans out there listening every week and enjoying this music!!! Party on #trancefamily and screw everyone who says trance is dead.

For tracklists and set downloads, I found this website that is very good and I’m sure the ASOT forums are a good place to look as well.

© 2010, M Silin. All rights reserved.