Trance Essentials

At heart, contemporary electronic dance music is a euphoric dream set to a 4/4 beat. That vision finds its purest expression in trance, a sleek, streamlined style that centers emotional uplift as its raison d’etre. The genre evolved alongside techno in the late ’80s and early ’90s, with the rigid arpeggios of Belgian new beat guiding its steady groove and glistening synths. Trance largely took shape in Germany, the site of its harder-edged innovations, and Holland, home to superstars like Tiësto and Armin van Buuren, while the trippier subgenre of psytrance took root in Israel and Goa. By the ’00s, aided by the music’s versatility—equally able to absorb pop melodies or get beefed up to main-stage proportions—trance had become a proudly global concern whose soaring melodies and rolling rhythms transcend borders and language. At festivals, trance fans may wear their home countries’ flags flung over their shoulders, but their chief allegiance is to the music and its message of unity.