Three Drives’ “Greece 2000” still comes to mind first. When trance peaked I was living in western Canada, more of a house DJ, but with a couple of trance records I really enjoyed playing, and it felt as though everyone around me was playing the rest. There was a lot of it about, and so many good tracks.
Goa trance started at beach parties in India, got harder and faster in Germany and the UK, and became the sound of the late 1990s superclubs. The superclubs took the tempo and the euphoria and left the rest behind. The revival of the 2020s has gone back for the feeling and skipped the packaging.
Trance
From beach parties in Goa to the superclubs, and back to 138
130 to 150 BPM. German trance sat at 130 to 140. Goa ran up to 150. The revival lives at 138. House, 120 to 130, for reference.
- Born
- Goa, and in parallel in Frankfurt and Berlin, early 1990s
- The room
- Cream, Ministry of Sound and Gatecrasher, late 1990s
- Key record
- Paul van Dyk, For an Angel (1994)
- Listen for
- Arpeggios, long builds and longer breakdowns
21 weeks Robert Miles, Children, on the UK chart from January 1996, ten of them in the Top 10, peaking at No. 2.
Sources: Official Charts
Goa Built It for All Night Escape
Paul Oakenfold was one of the British DJs who found the Goa beach parties around the turn of the nineties, and heard music he hadn’t come across before: a slow building, hypnotic, heavily synthesised style that had been developing there for years. It ran at around 130 to 150 BPM and leaned on the psychedelic and hypnotic rather than the propulsive. It was a genre of escape, built for all night dancing in a place geographically and culturally distant from the clubs of Europe.
Oakenfold became one of its loudest champions back in the UK, through his Perfecto label and his 1994 Goa Mix on Radio 1.
Germany and the UK Made It Faster and Bigger
In Frankfurt and Berlin, German producers were building their own trance in parallel, at around 130 to 140 BPM, keeping the arpeggios but adding a harder kick. Eye Q Records, founded by Sven Väth, became one of the first trance labels, and Paul van Dyk’s For an Angel (1994) became the definitive German trance track.
In the UK, Sasha and John Digweed developed progressive trance. Their Renaissance mix compilations became the definitive statement of the style, with slow hypnotic builds in tracks that could run 8 to 12 minutes before they reached a climax. When the Goa sound met those two scenes, it became one of the most commercially successful dance music forms of the 1990s.
The Superclubs Turned It Into an Industry
Cream in Liverpool, Ministry of Sound in London and Gatecrasher in Sheffield became the temples of trance in the late 1990s, and the music left the clubs for the charts: Robert Miles’ Children spent 21 weeks on the UK chart from January 1996, as the genre card above shows. Armin van Buuren’s A State of Trance radio show, first broadcast in 2001, became the main global platform for the genre.
From western Canada, we were always hunting for mixes: Pete Tong on BBC Radio 1, Paul Oakenfold’s Tranceport, Sasha and Digweed’s Northern Exposure, and the Ministry of Sound mix CDs, especially the Clubber’s Guide series. So many anthems during that time.
By the late 2000s trance had become unfashionable with critical electronic music audiences. What kept it alive was the festival circuit: Boom Festival in Portugal, Ozora in Hungary and multi genre gatherings like Fusion in Germany, holding on to the spirit of Goa’s beach parties.
The Revival Came Through the Youngest People in the Room
Nobody predicted that trance would come back through the youngest people in the room. For a decade the arpeggio was the most unfashionable sound in dance music, and then, somewhere around the hard techno surge, 138 BPM euphoria started closing underground nights again. I’ve watched crowds too young to remember the superclubs lose their minds to builds their parents danced to, and the reaction isn’t ironic.
More People Are Making Trance
Yearly growth in SoundCloud uploads tagged #trance
트랜스, 다시 만들어지기 시작했다
How to read itUploads measure producers, not listeners. Three years of double digit growth means a new generation is making the music, not just streaming the old anthems.
The data backs up what you see on the floor. SoundCloud reported that uploads tagged #trance grew 17% in 2023 and 29% in 2024. On Beatport, the 2025 trance sales chart says the genre “continued its global resurgence”: Armin van Buuren was the top selling trance artist of the year, and the top track was a KI/KI extended remix of Felix’s Don’t You Want Me.
I’m not surprised it’s back. There are some beautiful sounds out there right now. When people call some of it melodic techno, someone my age simply calls it trance. I’m not trying to be difficult; that’s just what I hear. Euphoria doesn’t date. Only its haircuts do.
Trance on Korean Stages in 2026
By the time I arrived in South Korea there was still a progressive house vibe, but trance was mostly gone. It survived, and there are still DJs and events, but there’s no venue dedicated purely to that sound. In Seoul today, Luka in Sinsa (신사) programmes hard techno and trance, which is about as close as it gets.
Korea’s biggest dance music weekends show how far the revival has travelled. The 20th World DJ Festival at Seoul Land in Gwacheon (과천) on 13 and 14 June 2026 brought 86 teams from 17 countries, with Armin van Buuren and Eric Prydz on the bill, according to Hankook Ilbo. A State of Trance started in 2001, and twenty five years later its host was on a Korean main stage. EDC Korea’s third edition, on 3 and 4 October at INSPIRE Entertainment Resort in Incheon, put Tiësto next to techno names such as Argy and Sara Landry, according to DJ Mag.
The euphoria is reaching K-pop through a side door, too. IVE’s Bang Bang, a UK hard house track, topped the Melon chart for five weeks in a row in March 2026, according to the Korea Herald. Hard house isn’t trance, but it shares the fast tempo, the rolling bass and the unembarrassed hands in the air build. The hard trance entry on the family tree shows how close those neighbours have always been.
In a Small Room, the Breakdown Is the Test
To be fair to the critics of the 2000s, the superclub years did produce a lot of commercial excess, and the long breakdown was part of it. A festival crowd will wait through a long build because the screens and the lights hold it there. A small, dark basement won’t wait nearly as long, and a long breakdown can empty a floor that was full a minute earlier.
In a booth, I cut breakdowns short, loop the tension instead of the silence, or mix out before the pads take over. Euphoria works best in a club when it arrives a little earlier than the record wants it to. That’s also the honest answer to the critics: the feeling was never the problem, the packaging was.
The best sign of this revival is that it never needed the superclub brands. The feeling travelled on its own, from Goa to Gatecrasher to a main stage in Gwacheon and into a girl group single. The rave era lesson holds: formats die, sensations rotate. My Korean festival guide tracks where it plays next, and the uplifting trance entry covers the branch the superclubs built their nights on.
The haircuts changed again. The build didn’t.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s Goa trance?
Goa trance is a heavily synthesised style of around 130 to 150 BPM that developed at beach parties in Goa, India. It emphasised the psychedelic and hypnotic rather than the propulsive. It was a genre of escape, built for all night dancing far from the clubs of Europe. Our genre BPM chart shows where it sits against its neighbours.
How did trance get from Goa to the clubs of Europe?
Around the turn of the nineties British DJs, Paul Oakenfold among them, found the Goa beach parties and brought the sound home; Oakenfold’s Goa Mix aired on Radio 1 in 1994. German producers in Frankfurt and Berlin built a harder version in parallel at around 130 to 140 BPM. Sven Väth founded Eye Q Records, one of the first trance labels, and Paul van Dyk’s For an Angel (1994) became the definitive German trance track.
Which superclubs defined the trance era?
Cream in Liverpool, Ministry of Sound in London and Gatecrasher in Sheffield became the temples of trance in the late 1990s. Sasha and John Digweed developed progressive trance, and their Renaissance mix compilations became the definitive statement of the style. Armin van Buuren’s A State of Trance radio show, first broadcast in 2001, became the main global platform for the genre.
Is trance music making a comeback?
Yes. Trance has been reviving with younger crowds since around 2024. SoundCloud uploads tagged #trance grew 17% in 2023 and 29% in 2024, and Beatport said trance continued its global resurgence in 2025. In Korea, Armin van Buuren played World DJ Festival in June 2026, and Luka in Seoul’s Sinsa programmes hard techno and trance.
Further Reading
- Paul Oakenfold on The Goa Mix (909originals): Oakenfold on the 1994 Essential Mix that brought the Goa sound to Radio 1.
- The Rise and Fall of Gatecrasher (Vice): how a Sheffield club became the spiritual home of trance, and what went wrong.
- A State of Trance, official site: the history and archive of the radio show that kept trance global for 25 years.
- Boom Festival: background on the Portuguese gathering that keeps the Goa and psytrance ethos alive.
- Energy Flash by Simon Reynolds (Faber): the best long read on how trance, hardcore and house split from the same rave root.
- Wikipedia: Goa trance: the lineage of a beach scene that seeded an industry it wanted nothing to do with.
Sources
- Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture, vol. 4 no. 1 (2012)
- Beatportal: Beatport’s definitive history of trance
- Wikipedia: For an Angel
- Official Charts: Robert Miles, Children
- RouteNote: SoundCloud reveals the emerging music scenes shaping the industry (25 March 2025)
- Beatportal: Trance, the top selling tracks, artists and labels of 2025
- Hankook Ilbo: 20th World DJ Festival (2026)
- DJ Mag: World DJ Festival 2026 full line up
- Newsis: Armin van Buuren at World DJ Festival (16 June 2026)
- Trance History: 25 years of A State of Trance (2 September 2025)
- DJ Mag: EDC Korea 2026 full line up
- JoongAng Ilbo, on dance music sounds in K-pop (2026)
- Korea Herald: K-pop and house music (April 2026)
- RISS (Korean research database): study cited on festival crowds and the long build
Written from Seoul, by someone who has been in the booth for more than twenty years. More on the site, or book a DJ.
Stay in the Loop
New writing on DJ culture, electronic music, and the Seoul underground, delivered when it matters.
More From The DJ Diaries
Play with the history
Four tools built from the same research as this site.
