We’ll let you in on a secret… Andy ‘Pulser’ Perring & Trance International’s chief scribbler go back a bit. In August 2000, in the thick of the Summer of Trance, and alongside a few other UK DJs, producers and their managers, they spent 10 ‘lost’ days on, in (and very nearly under) Ibiza. That any of them made it back in one piece – some even to record again – was nothing short of a miracle.

Over the course of this year we've noticed Pulser's pulse start to quicken again. In fact it’s been beating rather furiously. So we dropped him a line to see what was up with that. The reason behind this resurgence it seems lies curiously somewhere between Manchester and Riga.

 

Garuda Records – the Manc-based label brainchild of Gareth Emery - seems to have energized Pulser into upping his output. And with some stellar results… After April’s pretty darn spectacular ‘Broken Universe’ he now has ‘In My World’ warming up on the touchline and waiting to get into the game. There’s talk of a new pseudonym outing on a very prominent Dutch label too. Mojos are clearly being worked. Then there’s the Riga end of this galvanizing connection... Andy relocated there a year or so back and after finding his feet, he last month launched a new club night called Elements there. Based at the ever increasingly prominent Club Essential in the Latvian capital, he’s bringing in a different international DJ every month for the night, and has also been made the club’s new resident decktition. So with the cogs and wheels again turning at pace Pulser-side…
We say: long may they continue!

Intriguingly, as an artist, David Forbes has actually got more productive as the years have gone on. This – just in case you’re in any doubt – is far from the regular form! In 2000 his ‘Questions’ track was picked up from Eve by then heavy-hitters Serious Records. The very first tune he put out under his own name, it went on to score a mass club smash and secured his place in the EDM hall of fame. When artists reach such heights so quickly, general production slowdown and burnout are often not far away.

Forbes though is clearly made of more focused stuff. Last year – in what must have put his studio close to meltdown - he released one track for every month of 2009. Aside from an unquenchable desire to produce and to see his tracks rule en-mass, it seems there was another factor behind this fit of production peak. David had a mental checklist of labels that he wanted to see his music come out on… It was a long one (22 by our count!) and included luminaries like Reset, High Contrast, VANDIT, Fraction, Black Hole, Oxygen & Anjunabeats.

After 10 years the list has been finally exhausted and David is ready to settle down, with one (label) partner… We wouldn’t call it cheating as such (heaven forbid!), but in taking the step with Armada, the potential to have numerous ‘wives’ is abundant. ‘Katsu’ on Andy Moor’s AVA label and 'Samui' on Coldhabour are the firstborn tracks from this agreement, and the last time we looked were parked right next door to each other on Beatport’s trance chart. That can only bode well for the future! You can keep up to date on how it progresses from here through David’s brand new website at www.davidforbes.com

Despite thus far spending one and a half decades at the sharp end of the hard trance scene, Scot Project clearly still has the fire inside. Earlier in 2010 he walked off with the Hard Dance Producer of the Year gong at the Beatport awards and you don’t have to squint hard to see how he tucked that in his belt. ‘Prodigious’ doesn’t do justice to a man that could (should he so wish) feed a whole set exclusively from own output. Take a deep breath… and read on! In terms of what you should be looking out for, well just to kick off with there’s his stripped down, amped-up rebuild of Bart Claessen’s ‘Hartseer’ for Ferry Corsten’s Flashover label. Golden Coast’s ‘Ivory’ – a track which has been cleaning up on the floors of PVD, Gareth Emery and Markus Schulz of late – has also felt the ‘remix love’. And not much further on the horizon and there’ll be a new addition to his signature alphabet catalogue.

After the classics U, X & Y and more recent foot-shifters S2 & F, prepare to greet ‘G’ (Ghost), which he’ll soon have stalking summertime floors. Back in the remix pit he’s also whipped up a floor nitrifying remap of Talla’s ‘Sound of the Crowd’ and just polished off a sterling new version of Alex Kidd’s take on ‘Tom’s Diner’. Having us wonder if he ever takes a break, the dreadlocked floor-avenger is keeping just as active behind the decks.

After making his 4th Trance Energy appearance back in April, he’s been keeping in the festival way, locking in a string of major events across Europe. Coloursfest, Escape Into The Park, Luminosity’s 2010 Beach Festival, 10 Years Of Q Dance, Planet Love and Pleasure Island are just some of the tent-pole event he’s rocked or will be rocking throughout summer 2010.

It’s been too long since we checked in with DJ Observer – Austria’s no.1 proliferator of (Advanced) Electronic Dance Music and his sergeant-at-arms, Daniel Heatcliff. So, to see our gateway-to-summer, bumper June issue out, we thought we’d dial ‘em up and see what they’d been at.

First topic up for discussion was ‘With Me’ – the pair’s new single (the follow-up to ‘Fake Call’ and 'Vision’), which is coming in on fast approach on Black Hole. They’ve brought in newcomer vocalist Hannah Ray to sing on the track and it proved such and instant hit with Richard Durand that he scooped it up for his In Search of Sunrise (The Next Generation anyone?!) compilation.

Back down at the remix end of the desk they’ve been similarly hard at it on Lost Stories ‘Flight 447’, which has been pulling in the plays from spinners like Markus Schulz, Armin van Buuren, First State, Matt Cerf and that man again... Richard Durand. Keen to remind us that A.E.D.M. doesn’t just mean pureform trance, Daniel and Wolfgang are also applying the pressure at the house end with their Steelfish moniker. Under that name their debut release will be out on Robbie Rivera’s Juicy Music label this summer. Called ‘Hot Like Fire’ (can’t argue with that!), it’ll quickly be joined by their remixes of DJ Antoine’s latest. They’ll be playing under the Steelfish moniker with Tiesto at the Beatpatrol event and PvD at the Danube Island Festival... So very clearly Steelfish will be just as much as DJ act as it is a production one! Kudos, boys kudos!

Now this you might find surprising - it is after all hot-ish, down-low industry insider stuff - but for years DJ/artist agencies have been in eye-wateringly short supply. With numbers at near-drought-like levels, the competition to get on them is fierce in the extreme and often down to not what you know... but who. It’s a problem that has doubtless plagued the near-litany of new, ready-to-spin, ready-to-win artists that have been uncovered (with almost unnerving knack) by Enhanced Recordings over the last 18 months.

To navigate around this problem en mass for his artists and others, label boss Will Holland has teamed up with Dan ‘Digital Society’ Peters and former Fresh DJs agency man James Wylie to launch (snare-roll please - and make it a euphoric one)... Assured Artists! Opening their doors this month, they will from here on in be managing the burgeoning behind-the-decks interests of Enhanced talent like Arty, Ferry Tayle, Estiva, Tritonal & Temple One, as well as those of a more established nature including TyDi, Activa, Genix & Johns '00' Fleming, Askew & (cheating a bit here!) O’Bir. If you’re a promoter and you’re thinking: why do I keep hearing these names here, there and everywhere at the moment? Well its because, grouped together they're a bona fide 'talent cluster'! If you’re not booking them for your club in the next six months, the one down the road will likely already have done so! In order to ensure that this travesty never takes place, drop Assured a line via their website by clicking here!

Long ago, in a land far, far away, T.I. detected an unusual disturbance (or maybe, more accurately that should be ‘imbalance’!) in the trance music force… In a country the size and scale of the United States there are an unusually low number of trance producers & DJs per capita.

If anything though that just only aids the ones that there are, which brings us to Mr Tom Colontonio. We thought we’d check in and see what the young Philadelphian had up his sleeve for early 2010 and found, to no one’s great surprise, him fully focused on keeping the US end up! On the singles side there are a good few original productions on fast release approach. Already on the receiving end of a not-inconsiderable promo push from Mr Van Dyk, ‘The One’ will soon be out on VANDIT.

Proving a man of quite some multitasking ability, the single is not only produced by Tom but also features him on vocals and lead guitar duties! Elsewhere on the singles scope the honours for his ‘Subdued’ track have gone to Discover - Mike Nichols on remix duties there, and he's also just signed a fresh-off-the-desk track to John O'Callaghan's new Subculture imprint. Keep an eye out for more info on that soon.

Every bit as much a DJ as he is a producer these days, Tom has recently been deck-side at Pacha in New York with Marco V and he’ll soon be back in the Big Apple do the now-annual team-up gig with Sean Tyas and Simon Patterson. And speaking of returns, having played Guvernment last year, in April will return once again to Canada to to spin at Club Vola in Toronto on April the 16th. Busy lad!

The things we like about trance music are legion, but one thing in particular always plays among the best, and that’s a spinner that’s doing something different.

Between his firebrand productions, eye-catching make up and stage apparel, YOJI has been doing that in singular fashion for 10 years now. If we cast our eyes around though, it does appear that he’s inspired a few DJs outside his native Japan to don more than the rather regulation brilliant white long-sleeved t-shirt too! None have nailed it quite the way he has though.

Last year, to mark the 10th anniversary of his premier Japanese EDM imprint, YOJI released a commemorative ‘X Years of Hellhouse’ 3 disc album. Covering all things ‘Hell’, past & present, it featured some of his best known tracks, as well as a fair few new recordings. If you’re a Yoji fan, and it’s not yet found its way into your collection, you can put that to rights by clicking here! With that under his belt, he then went on launch a series of sell-out gigs on his X Years of Hellhouse tour, one which fair blazed its way around Japan in the run up to Christmas. Following those nights, YOJI’s been playing (amongst others) The Electric Daisy Festival in the States, the Tskeh-based fest-a-thon in Moscow alongside Tiësto and he rounded up 2009 at Gatecrasher’s co-flippin-lossal NYE event in Singapore.

Stop Press: The latest word from Yoji is he has a new single ‘Wanna Fuckin’ Dance’ (alongside long time friend and production partner Romeo Toscani) on fast approach along with a thrashing-ly good remix work on Scott Attrill’s ‘The Bleep’.

One of our ‘Hot 10 for 2010’ in T.I’s start-of-the-year special edition, we’ve been hearing ever more of Franz Hlusek’s fine work over the last month. So giving a respectfully wide berth to too-easy adjectives like ‘quick’, ‘speedy’, ‘nippy’ or ‘rapid’ when describing Fast Distance, we thought we’d take an even closer look at what he has pipelined for the early part of the year.

The Roger Shah connection that started with the pair collaborating on their Samara project and the Balearic trance master tipping him as the Breakthrough Artist in his DJ Mag Top 100 interview shows no signs of cooling. He has just joined the remix line-up of Shah’s forthcoming single, ‘Darling Harbour’ and Franz has further been inspired to create some suitably beachside atmospherics for the up coming 3rd installment of ‘Magic Island: Music For Balearic People’.

Cropping up on the tracklisting of Paul van Dyk’s IDMA-nominated VONYC Sessions album, we were loving his ‘Big Ben’ track, and next out of the studio for the young Belgian will be his debut on Kill The Lights. ‘Nuit Blanche’ - a typically powerful trance thunderbolt - will be coming your way on Matt Hardwick’s imprint on the 15th of March.

The gig front is also looking in fine health as he has nights up and coming in Germany, and in April he’ll be making his return to Luminosity. Spinning the Fast Distance sound for all its worth, he’ll be at their now-annual Trance Energy warm-up party @ the Central Studios in Utrecht. If you’re just finding Fast Distance now, there's whole lot more information through the links below.

One of our favorite Trance International regulars, Talla 2XLC dropped us a line at the end of January to fill us in on his well under-starters-orders 2010.

Before we hit the new year though, Raveline (Germany’s equivalent of Mixmag for all our non-Deutsche readers!) polled their sizeable readership on the year just gone in and announced the results last month. Not only did Talla score high in the Best German DJ and Best Label categories (scoring 6th and 8th place for his Tetsuo imprint respectively), Technoclub Vol.29 also impressively bagged No.1 in the Best Compilation of the Year slot. Technoclub looks well set to continue its long running reign as preparations for the 32nd edition are now in full swing. While its was Giuseppe Ottaviani sharing the honours on 29, partner-in-the-mix on the next one will be none other than leading member of the Irish Trance Mafia, Simon Patterson. In other quickie news Talla and Robert Burian have just finished the follow up to their pretty darn successful first collab ‘Déjà Vu’ with a new powerhouse uplifter called ‘Pro-Life’. That’s forthcoming on the Addicted To Trance label in Feb and while you wait for that you can also check out Talla’s radio show of the same name which goes out on Afterhours on the first Friday of each month. If you patience can’t even last till then you can pick up his ATT Podcast by clicking here.

STOP PRESS: Talla has also got his newly waxed & polished Facebook page up. With all the gigs, pictures, videos and general Talla trivia there for the reading, its one to put on your social network ‘view calendar’ in Feb.

There’s many a marker in a producer’s career that indicates he’s on the way up. Few of them do it with quite the same impact as a first Tiësto remix though.

Such is the happy state of affairs for Ireland’s Paul Webster who has just wrapped production on his rewire of the big man’s ‘Feel It In My Bones’. One of the hottest tracks from the ‘Kaleidoscope’ long-player (if its 900,000+ YouTube hits are anything to go by!), he’s re-primed it for some pretty intense floor-side action. The rewire will be released as part of the ‘Remixed’ edition of the album, which will be touching down in (no-doubt) suitably large fashion on the 29th of March.

Deck-side, Paul will also be joining Tiësto for one of his tour dates in Europe around the same time. Keep an eye/ear out for that!

Elsewhere, Paul’s production schedule is looking equally as seriously-minded for ‘10. Already in launch tube no.1 is his collaboration with Belgium’s Fred Baker and hot on the heels of that will be the just-finished 'Punchbag' (the follow-up to his biggest hit to date, 'The Wolf'). After November '09's 'Time', come the summer we're also in line for another yet-to-be-titled collaboration with Amanda ‘Mrs Judge Jules’ Angelic. To bind all this nicely together, providing a direct info-line to all his latest happenings, Webster’s new website has just gone on live. You can check it out by clicking here and amongst all the other goodness you can sign up to his brand new monthly iTunes Podcast and get the latest on his Afterhours radio show. Who’s a busy lad then!

Mark Sherry… For many a year he was a man all too easily (and possibly a bit lazily!) defined by the words ‘Public’ & ‘Domain’.

When, in 2004, he began to focus some of his not inconsiderable energies on some exceptionally fine remix/boot-leggery, that all came to a none-too-soon end. ‘7 Days & One Week’, ‘Gamemaster’, Ratty’s ‘Sunrise’ and ‘Cosmic Freefall’ – just some of the classics from the annals that have all been re-intoxicated in manners the original producers never dreamed of. If you’ve yet to come across them ‘Tube’ his brilliantly imaginative BBE rewire – you’ll fast see what we mean.

Out in the world’s clubbing highways and byways, Mark has had a concerted, concentrated run of gig goodness of late. Many a premier league event has had its doors flung open by his ram-raiding beats and fission-powered techy synths. Chief among them were his debuts at the Dutch and Australian Trance Energy editions, his very recent Goodgreef/Atomik Weekender performance and the Polish Godskitchen Urban Wave smack-down with Sander van Doorn. Into 2010 and it’s all set to get even more crazy.

To tie in with his much-listened to ‘Outburst Radioshow’, Mark (who lest you didn’t know has been a FM radio DJ for over 10 years!) will be launching his Outburst Records label. Focusing soundly on his tech-trance remit, it should be a force to watch out for.

Rising phoenix-like from the lamentable loss of his supremely long running Radio 1 Dance Anthems show, the Dave Pearce Trancecast has allowed him the full, unencumbered reign to focus on what he spins best.

Having just scored its 1st birthday notch on Podcast-land and with Dave doing his thing every week, the Trancecast has allowed him to shine a very powerful spotlight indeed on the biggest offerings of 2009. Armin van Buuren's ‘Unforgiveable’, the Dash Berlin mix of Medina’s ‘You & I’ and Aly & Fila’s re-shape of Neptune Project’s ‘Aztec’ have all become audio-symbolic of its rush success in 2009. The show’s guest-mixes (which have included massively popular turns at the turntable by Fei-Fei, Giuseppe Ottaviani, Christopher Lawrence & Signum, amongst others) have also, inevitably, become part of its superglue-ish hook.

If you’re sat there reading this in Kharkov, Kenya or Katmandu, you shouldn’t be fooled into thinking this is in anyway just a ‘UK’ thing either.

The Trancecast has given Dave both musical policy power and, crucially XXL worldwide reach. Their weekly competitions see entries winging their way in from the furthest corners of the globe - places that even Dave (a man who was DJing in India by his 17th birthday!) has only been to a handful of times. Those that are missing Dave on the airwaves and in the UK though can check out his new show on BBC 6 Music every Sunday night where he focuses on unsigned trance talent with his regular Bedroom Producer slot.

In 2010 Dave will continue to draw in the very best trance music from around the globe and pipe it straight to your desktop. If you’ve not checked the shows yet, heh, its time to step up!

Shy by name perhaps, but not nearly so much by nature - Canada’s Shy Brothers have probably done as much as anyone to lobby the case for trance in their home country.

Sitting pretty and on the threshold of a breakthrough, their nitro-glycerin powered side-by-side live/DJ performances have become buzz topics on internet forums on the world’s trance sites.

Assisting in their quest in no small manner, the brothers are also the driving force behind some of the biggest dance music-based events/festivals Canada gets to enjoy every year. Through their company Solid Entertainment they've hosted a proverbial ‘who’s who’ of big names DJs (including Tiësto, Paul Van Dyk, Armin Van Burren & Ferry Corsten) in their home city of Vancouver over the last 8 years.

Through one-offs like Dooms Night, The International Music Festival, Fusion Dreams and (the appropriately named) Insomnia, they have shared the stage, their sound and their own productions at one-offs that regularly draw crowds of 5,000+.

Outside on the Canadian borders, they're now habitually exporting their sound to major festivals including Dance Valley & Defcon in The Netherlands and Sound Factory in Poland. Showcasing the speaker-testing sound as they go, they describe it as “a fusion of dirty electro/trance and the rawest of tech”. With tracks like ‘My Mind’, ‘Nice & Dirty’, ‘Mystery’ and their latest ‘DFM (Dance Floor Madness)’, they seem to have found their own particular audio niche.

Remixed by (broadly speaking) musically-akin acts like Scot Project, Marcus Schossow, Lee Haslam, Jonas Stenberg, Dumonde, Igor S and DJ Choose, you can check their studio side of their runnings on Beatport now!

This month M.I.K.E. is back with what many are likely to consider a long overdue re-release. Given the regularity that trance anthems past reappear back in the CDJs, “long overdue” is a very rare thing to be able to say about a classic.

After a chain of hits under his Push moniker, ‘Sunrise At Palamos’ was the track that unequivocally opened up the second front for Mike’s musical ventures. It was released with serendipitous timing and (arriving in the year that Balearic Trance went supernova) has gathered a zeitgeist-like legacy. If you go back and take a listen to the original now, you’ll hear that it has barely dated a minute since its release in 2000.

It was Bonzai that brought it to the masses first time around, but this time it’s the new Garuda imprint that’s carrying the honours. MIKE has of course put his hands back to his Tiësto-championed classic with a new Back To Basics mix and Garuda boss Gareth Emery’s also summoned a sterling recreation from the studio boxes. Mike being M.I.K.E. though, that’s far from the only iron he has in the dancefloor fire. On the 19th of this month ‘Tomorrow Is Another Day’, his Push collaboration with Klems will pop the lock on its cage is and there’ll be more Push business to follow just before Christmas in the form of 'Exposed'.

Both of those tracks will be out through Club Elite/Armada and you can also keep a close ear out for the forthcoming remix of his 2004 Armin team-up ‘Intruder’.

Since we last heard from him, back in May, it’s been another period of frenzied activity in the camp of Mr Talla 2XLC. The afterburners have been resoundingly relit on his Tetsuo label (which now features an impressive array of tracks & remixes from names like Deadmau5, Sean Tyas, Fred Baker, Vengeance & Kenneth Thomas in its discography), while the label’s Electric division has also firing on all of its eight of its shiny cylinders.

Now Talla is set to send another new imprint spinning into the EDM sub-sphere when Addicted To Trance (and if you’re not you probably won’t be reading this!) comes to label fruition this month. As is only fitting, the first release comes from the musical brotherhood of Talla and Robert Burian. ‘Déjà vu’ (the follow up to the mucho-smashed ‘Salvation’) and has already been putting clubs into overdrive over the last month. Supported by Armin, PVD, & Ferry Corsten, the release is completed with a fully-Amnesia-road-tested remix from Italian trance-master, Giuseppe Ottaviani.

You can catch a listen to ‘Déjà vu’ here or if you’ve already clocked it and are in ‘buy mode’ you can pick it up through Beatport now! Talla’s new solo number, ‘Pulse’, his latest under the 2XLC name is also fast coming into view. Featuring a fine supporting cast of remixers (including Dean Newton, Manuel De La Mare and Ruben de Ronde) it’s out on Tetsuo Hybrid later on this month.

If you would like to keep up with Talla while you’re out and about, the on-top-of tech maestro has just the thing to keep you up to speed.

His new 2XLC iPhone app has a range of features to keep you in the e-loop, including news, special app-only mixes and his latest gig photo galleries to view. You can get a-hold of it later this month by searching for ‘talla 2xlc’ in Apple’s ITunes app-store.

We’ve had a keener than yer average eye/ear on Cliff Coenraad’s musical progression, even before we bumped into him at ADE last year. Like a lot of the 2nd generation of Holland’s trance DJs he approaches the genre with a categorically free-minded auditory remit; one that’s always going to intrigue as much as it satisfies.

‘Modulate’, with its classically Dutch sounding organ riff (brilliantly referencing that bastion of 90’s Netherlands dance eclecticism, Fresh Fruit Records) was an early indicator. Cliff managed a decidedly post-millennial update to that sound and flipped it with the innovative and unusually housey mainline of ‘Nord West.’ The no-nonsense tech-trance of ‘The Hazzolator’ and subsequent ‘Gone South’ (his ’09 Ibizan-gazing melodic trancer) releases followed his tasty rework of Ernesto & Bastian's 2008 Trance Energy theme 'Thrill' and suddenly we’ve become very aware of a production CV that’s as impressive as it is varied. Not bad for someone who's so (relatively speaking) fresh to the game too. Most recently Cliff’s been back at High Contrast’s door with ‘Distorted Reality’. A track that’s picked up plenty of play from Tiësto, Marco V, Sander van Doorn and Gareth Emery.

Coenraad’s also what the industry regularly terms an ‘up-and-comer’ in the spinning dept department. Trance Energy, Digital Society &Germany’s Love Parade have all already born witness to a technically gifted emerging DJ who seems to have sixth-sense when it comes to tune selection. Next on the gig front will be his appearance at that behemoth of middle European clubbing Mysteryland, where he’ll be pushing the speakers into uncharted territory on the High Contrast stage.

MC Kinky once famously ragga-rapped 'Everything Starts With An E' ... Well not according to the gospel of Scot Project, it didn't! It started, in fact, in 1994 with an ‘X’ and continued with a ‘U’, a ‘Y’, an ‘O’, an ‘R’, an ‘S’ and an ‘F’. I suppose, in the end, Kinky wasn’t far off the mark! Frank ‘Scot Project’ Zenker’s alphabetizing of dance music, it has to be said, has produced some of the most memorable hard-trance anthems ever to have ruled the dancefloor. Switching subjects from English to Maths, those quick on the old mental arithmetic will quickly spot that Scot Project has been delivering the right type of damage to dancefloors for an impressive decade and a half now.

A feat ready to be aptly commemorated by the release of his ‘15 Years of Scot Project’ album. For the accompanying tour Zenker will also be hitting clubland square-on with a plentiful supply of Scot Project classics, remixes and re-edits tucked under his arm. In something of a break from the norm, the CD will only be on sale at the gigs themselves, meaning that in order to get the full ’15 Years’ experience you actually need to get out there and see the action first hand. Hardly a chore! Following up his debut album ‘A1’, the 2nd Scot Project long-player is also now in the final production stages. Entitled ‘A2’ (natch!), its boasting a long-overdue clutch of new ferocious beats and rhythms sure to please the S.P. faithful.

If you want to get an early taste, look no further than the already-released remixes of ‘F2 - Future Is Now’, which has been given a right honest-to-goodness pasting club-side by our August headliner Ferry Corsten.

So, Sophie Sugar then Ladies and Gentlemen... indisputably the ‘The First Lady Of Trance’. Not our words mind, those of the esteemed Mr Van Buuren, who's been an ardent adherent of hers since ‘Call of Tomorrow’ on Galactive back in 2005. In those intervening 4 years she’s poured a molten-hot flow of production fire onto the floors with tracks like 'Day Seven', ‘Isis’, ‘Fallen Too Far’ and ‘Redemption’. Most recently ‘Beside You’, her first track to feature a full vocal (from Rebecca Emely), has picked up a satisfyingly large raft of A-lister support when it materialized on Armada’s Soundpiercing off-shoot. Next out of the box will be ‘Together’ and what Sophie says will be “a very exciting collaboration”.

On the DJ side meanwhile things the last 12 months couldn't conceivably have been more hectic for Sugar (and show no signs of abating). She was the only female DJ to make the 70-strong line-up that span at the ASOT400 events and has now DJ'd as far a field as Australia, Canada, South Africa, North Africa & China. Sophie’s notably one of the few DJs to have played in Vietnam too and in September she'll be in bringing her euphoric trance persuasion to Argentina, playing at the SAMC (South American Music Awards). With a 4 date tour in Indonesia as well as spots in Malta, Russia & Germany over the coming months she's probably going to be well in need of a new passport come 2010!

Sophie’s about to take her euphorically uplifting sound radio-side too, taking a much-prized slot on a station that is virtually synonymous with trance.

Her new Symphony show kicked off on DI:FM last Friday night and you can now catch 2 hours of highly-refined Sugar every week on the Trance Channel at 18.00 GMT (1pm EST) on the first Friday of every month.

The "Man of the Moment" tag is arguably one that’s fairly quick off the tongue inside the dance music industry. When it out of the mouth of the world’s No.1 DJ though, it comes with a hefty side-helping of gravitas. Such is Armin van Buuren’s assessment of Mr Tom Colontonio’s current state-of-play.

With a non-stop stream of floor-igniting tracks and remixes over the last few months (including ‘Mercury Retrograde’ via Discover and the ‘Sparkover EP’ on Monster Tunes), the continuing Colontonio accession seems assured. One of a handful of artists to be handpicked to collaborate by John O’Callaghan on his ‘Never Fade Away’ artist album, their ‘Through the Light’ firestarter proved the proverbial playlist smash.

Probably the Ying to that Yang, John has latterly remixed ‘Lifetime Connection’ - Colontonio’s forthcoming inaugural Spinnin’ Records outing. And if all that ear-temptation isn’t quite enough for you, check his dance-floor-stampeding revamp of Sean Tyas’ ‘Seven Weeks’ on Doorn Records (Top 10 on Beatport!) – not one to miss. Over at the ‘deck’ end of his runnings, Tom’s been doing comparably hard work, taking both clubs and festivals up to warp speed. This year he’s already put in memorable performances at various EDM institutions including Toronto’s much-revered Guvernment and Miami’s fun-in-the-sun WMC.

On the outdoor front, he’s spun at Poland’s behemoth ‘Sunrise Festival’ and worked a worrying number of tent-pegs loose at the 420 event in Los Angeles. In between all of this he’s still found the time for a 3-city sell-out tour of Australia! This, very much it seems, is the work-schematic of a man ill-at-ease standing still!

Majai are the latest addition to the fast-burgeoning and ever more impressive Tetsuo Records roster. Pairing the twin talents of Washington DC resident MK (the producer & DJ) and Belarusian composer & vocalist Anna Sennikova, they meet musically meet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. That’s the geographical ethos anyway, the pair actually first met in on good old terra firma, in MK’s home city in late 2001! It wasn’t until 2007 that the pair hit their production stride though with the release of ‘Lightwave’. A superbly chilled-out downbeat number that was taken floor-bound courtesy of a furiously kicking rework from Airbase. ‘Phoria’, their first outing for Tetsuo followed hot on its heels last year.

A track that went on to score major floor points from the likes of Tiësto, Armin, Ferry and Above & Beyond. This month they are back with the lush, languid, Med-influenced ‘Strange’. Alongside the chilled, lush melodies of the Anna & MK’s original version, you have 9 (count ‘em up!) remixes options; something we confidently predict to suit any trance or progressive taste. Re:Locate, Nitrous Oxide, Cressida, DJ Preach and Tetsuo mastermind Talla's 2XLC versions are all out, about and on heavy remix maneuvers in support of the track and doing comparably fine things.

You can wrap your (hopefully suitably peeked) ears around ‘Strange’ now by clicking here. The track is out on Tetsuo on vinyl on the 13th of July with the download going online on the 24th, which will be available through Beatport.

Here’s a brain-teaser for you! Why, in a country the size, length, breadth and general massiveness of the United States, has it such a comparably low quota of trance producers? It’s always been a bit of a puzzler, hasn’t it!

Doing more than their fair share of ‘keeping the U.S. end of things up’ are NYC’s Filo & Peri – two men who’ve been on a major mission over the last couple of years. They were one of only a handful of trance producers in 2007 to score major label deals (with both Positiva and Ultra Records) for their zeitgeist-y, mood-of-the-people trancer‘Anthem’. The suitably floor-shaking ‘Shine On’ followed in 2008 and this month they’re back once again with the flat-out power of the ‘Drops of Jupiter EP’. The title track is a jack-of-all-trades number that blends hungry beats, swirling melodic sequences and darker, techier sounds into a killer brew. If that’s not quite enough for you, check out in the bonus track ‘Light @ The End Of the Tunnel'. A record so thrilling it made Trance International’s teeth itch.

Down at the remix end of the studio desk the pair have recently been hard at work reconfiguring a certain‘For An Angel’ track for one Mr Paul van Dyk. Given the track’s legacy as maybe the quintessential trancer of all time, it’s likely a gulp-inducing task and a half for any producer. They were good enough to send it over and the bass-bin-popping results speak for themselves! At the end of this month they also have a spicy-new digital compilation out on VANDIT called ‘The Ibiza Session Mix’ and a host of DJ dates looming, including Cream @ Amnesia and a Belgium’s mightily large Tomorrowland. All in all, busy, busy lads!

Charting well ahead of the curve when it comes to finding that vital original sound, he’s currently the poster boy for forward-thinking German electronic music. If it’s not happened yet, it’s very much time to get ‘audio-acquainted’ with Dennis Sheperd.

With a steady but purposeful stream of tracks over the last 36 months (including ‘Infinity’, ‘Prime of Life’ & ‘Not Too Late’), he has already picked up regular support from jocks like Tiësto, Ferry Corsten and Kyau & Albert. If Dennis is already on your radar though, then its more likely than not that his first ping came in the form of ‘A Tribute to Life’. Royally smashed by a universe of A-list trance DJs, it formed the bridgehead of what has been a significant and ongoing career march.

Latterly though it’s been Sheperd’s outings on Euphonic that have been fixing our attention. With its tensely progressive themes and rocking bass-lines ‘Run Away’ opened the batting late in 2008, while the Mediterranean-themed ‘Black Sun’ has been keeping the Trance International speakers running hot over the last two months.

If you want to check out his sound, Dennis is currently doing a ‘Subscription Special’ through his website. If you now subscribe to his newsletter via his website you will get a free, re-mastered 320 kbps download of his first single 'Pressure' (including remixes by Cressida, MoodFreak and DejaVu). Sounds like a good offer to us!

It’s going to be another hyper-hectic couple of months in the life of Herr 2XLC. Time to get caught-up with the German trance pioneer’s forthcomings we-thinks! First out of the hatch and booming plenty-large from a speaker stack near you soon is his new single ‘Salvation’.

With a palpably euphoric edge to the original and 2XLC mixes, it also comes complete with a melodic/harmonic flavored remix turn from TNR. The vinyl’s out at the end of this month with the digital hitting at the start of June. Over at the remix end of the mixing desk he’s also just tied the bow on his reconfiguration of Washington-based duo’s Majai (whose last track ‘Phoria’ on Tetsuo was smashed by Tiësto, Armin, and PVD). Talla’s ‘Technoclub’ compilations hit a landmark with their next release, which is already well advanced down its production pipeline.

The 30th installment (is there any other DJ can claim such a long-running comp series?!) will feature Aly & Fila guesting on the 2nd disc and lest you’d not come across it yet, No.29 (with Giuseppe Ottaviani at the co-controls) is already out and about! Talking Technoclub, he’ll be taking the club night out onto the waves early next month as he sets sail about the good ship Monday Bar.

The Swedish club whose sea-bound activities have become something of latter day clubbing legend have turned over an entire deck to Talla for the Friday night of their June cruise. He has crewed his floor with an appropriately high-profile DJ contingent, including Sied van Riel, John O’Callaghan, Sean Tyas, Scot Project, Robert Burian & Yoji Biomehanika and you can get tickets direct from the website.

Japan. It’s a country that has long held a position right at the top of many a trance DJs ‘I wanna play there’ lists. For a good deal of them the reason is predominantly because they’re so seldom get to do so. That’s not been a problem for CGI honcho Charlie G though. He’s about to embark on his new tour and (get this) it’s his 4th Japanese set of spinning dates in little over a year!

One of the reasons behind his regular presence in the country is that via his label CGI Records he has conclusively managed to tap into (and successfully export back out) Japan’s mainline trance production talent. Remo-Con, Nish, Night Liberator, Overflow, Mad Child & Toshio Ueki have all kept their studio lights bright, reworking tracks for the label including Charlie’s own ‘Synchronicity’ & Night Liberator’s forthcoming ‘Artificial Pervasion’. April’s Charlie G. CGI Tour will roll through Osaka, Nagoya & Nigata (places many of us will probably only see on the fronts and backs of t-shirts).

It all kicks off in Tokyo at Vinylize on April the 3rd and concludes back in the capital’s Shibuya Yu district at WOMB (recently voted the 4th best club in the world!) on the 18th.

You can check out the latest CGI happenings now, via the label’s Website and MySpace.

One of the smaller dance enclaves it may very well be, but Euro-for-Euro, Austria’s clubbing scene is in full-on ’thrive’! Trance International’s got a man on the ground over there (and at the very forefront of the scene) and he’s one that we’ve got a sneaking suspicion may just be about to make the break and go international this year. He is, of course the always-vigilant DJ Observer. So we thought we’d do an early ’09 check-in and see what he’s been up to and what’s coming up...

“Well the big news at the front end of this year is that my production partner Daniel Heatcliff and I will be touching down at the WMC in Miami in March. We’ve been doing a lot of work across a cross-section of styles with Robbie Rivera over the last 12 months and he’s asked us to come and play at his Juicy Beach gig.

I’m also supporting Fedde le Grande when his world tour trucks into Austria this month, so its fair to say that my anticipation levels are sky-high! Our last release of ’08, the ’Boomerang EP’ picked up a good deal of support from Tiësto and Menno de Jong amongst others. That’s really fired us up in the studio, again of late.

We’ve reworked Thomas Datt’s ’Mass’, which is forthcoming through Discover, and a remix of an old track called ’Starfighter’ on Solaris Recordings, as well as the new Black Pearl (aka Roger Shah) track ’Java’, which will be under Daniel’s and my’s Dust & Heatcliff name."

You can probably feel a little tingle on your back of your neck at the moment. It’s called anticipation and is very likely connected to the fast-shifting-into-view Trance Energy 2009.

Talla is prepping for his third session for the annual apex of the trance lover’s calendar on the 7th of March. He’ll be spinning at the behemoth Jaarbeurs Exhibition Hall in downtown Utrecht, with Armin van Buuren & Paul van Dyk (amongst many others), for what promises to be “an extremely special set” from the trance overlord. Full details at www.talla2xlc.com and ticket information direct from the site at www.trance-energy.nl

Playing true to his fascinating roots Talla, the archetypal electronic music chameleon, is continuing to cross-pollinate his sound in 2009.

First out of the hatch is the hard rocking, funk-fuelled fission of ‘Dante’s Peak’, coming via his Tetsuo Hybrid label. The track (the first to be co-produced with new production partner Robert Burian) is already nosing around the top end of the German dance charts.‘Dante’s Peak’comes with an appropriately volcanic remix for new prog god Jerome Isma-Ae and is out now through Beatport. German’s main electronic music magazine Raveline has unveiled its annual list of the Deutschland’s biggest spinners. Talla was delighted to land at No.6 this year, in the poll that is the Germanic microcosm of the DJ Mag chart.

Bringing to a head trance music's now-annual awards season, Friday the 22nd November saw the good and the great assemble at the Ministry of Sound for TrackItDown's 4th Trance Awards. Presented by none other than PVD, international bright young thing, Sied van Riel scooped the gong for Best New Face. You can hear Sied chatting about his win with The Thrillseekers on the latest episode of the NightMusic Podcast, via The Thrillseekers website. In other Sied-news, the Riel one has teamed up with NYC-based producer R.O.R to deliver a great vocal smash to the bassline. 'Closer To You' Is already storming the Beatport chart and has seen major support from Tiësto, Marco V, Marcus Schulz, Sander van Doorn, Blank & Jones and Above & Beyond.

PVD took home the proverbial grand-slam of trophies at this year’s Trance Awards. Who better (we thought!) to have a word to T.I. about his win than the man himself?! Paul says: “On behalf of myself and the Vandit team, I would like to thank ALL of you for your massive support in voting in 2008 T.A.’s! We were delighted that you chose VANDIT Records as best label, Super8 & Tab’s mix of ‘New York City’ as best track and myself as best DJ and Producer in 2008!

Paul van Dyk's remix added to EA’s ‘Mirror's Edge’ Delving into the world of video gaming, Paul's latest remix work has become an essential component of the global ‘Mirror's Edge’ phenomenon. The release (through gaming giant EA) recently picked up the much-prized ‘Best Action Game’ and ‘Best Original Game’ at the hugely-influential E3 gaming summit in L.A. His remix of ‘Still Alive’ (by Swedish singer Lisa Miskovsky) represents yet another example of the ongoing (and fascinating) convergence of dance music and gaming.
If that wasn’t enough, Paul is also dipping his creative foot into the Hollywood music pool! He will be contributing an exclusive remix track to Warner Bros. much vaunted collector's edition of The Dark Knight O.S. Paul was been handpicked by legendary composer Hans Zimmer (‘Pearl Harbour’, ‘Gladiator’, ‘The Last Samurai’ and, ooh, about 100 others!) to put his unique stamp on The Dark Knight original score. The two disc set will be available in stores from December 9th 2008.

Squirreled away in his magical musical laboratory of wonders (well alright, studio!) and after months of knife-edge experimentation (yes, you’re getting it, we mean ‘production’) Thrillseekers has unveiled his new Podcast! Presented monthly, the NightMusic Podcast holds a mirror up to those ever-evolving worlds of trance & prog... Episode 2 has just gone online, so warm up those internet wires and get downloading. NMP is available via iTunes and The Thrillseekers Website as a download. Each episode features 60 Thrillseeking minutes of the best new music, interviews with DJs and stories from Steve’s global travels...

On Gigs:
The last 12 months have been great, I've visited many countries and I did a couple of great gigs in the Netherlands as well. After the ‘downfall’ of trance in Holland in recent years, it’s been really great to see that the scene is getting bigger again, with more and more enthusiastic people popping up.

On ‘Pictures’:
The last weekend in September was mad for me! I released my debut album ‘Pictures’ with a kick-off party at Club Poema in Utrecht. All my friends were there as well as many people from the record industry. Having pulled it off together with my booking agency made me feel so good! I was walking around with a big smile on my face all night. The next day I woke up to a call from DJ Mag, but I guess you’ll read about what that was about very soon!

On… countries I’ve visited in 08:
I’ve a load of gigs: The Netherlands, Lebanon, Russia, Ukraine, Romania Ireland, Australia, Scotland, England, Poland, Turkey, Macedonia, Greece, Singapore, Mexico, Venezuela, Germany, amongst others, I guess! They’ve all rocked in their own special way and I’m sure 09 will be just as good. See you out there somewhere!