Trance Europe Express Volume 1
by McCutcheon
The Trance Europe Express Compilations are from the makers of Volume and put together by Rob Deacon and Helen Mead with contributions by people like writers Dele Fadele, Tommy Udo, DJs Kris Needs and Mixmaster Morri. This is the best value in music today.
Trance Europe Express takes it’s name from the birth of electronic music, those German pioneers Kraftwerk.
Every release gave you up and coming music makers of the finest electronic caliber for the man or woman who didn’t have time to muck about. The fist one was published September 20, 1993 and boasted 2 CDs, 24 exclusive tracks and a 192 full color page book. All this at under twenty bucks!
No longer was dance music this nameless, faceless, hard to figure out what the fuck you were listening to genre. TEX gave it all personality and created fans for the artists involved. And was it relevant? Was it fuck!
That first one featured Orbital, System 7, Spooky, Aphex Twin, The Orb, Moby, and Sabres of Paradise just to name a few. You ever hear of any of those, or better still you ever listen to any? They were probably involved in helping create some of the best nights of your life. That is if you are On the Bus.
In the mid '90's the number of Techno, House, Jungle, ect. compilations that were passed off as cutting edge or even having any musical worth was just pure laughable. Basically it was shit.
And it wasn’t so funny when you were spending your drug and beer money on tunes as disposable as the plastic wrap the compact disc cases came in.
It went something like this:
You would go to your local record store having just cashed in your pay check full of anticipation and inspiration hoping to find something that had the pounding bass and funky beats you heard at the club last night, you would wade through the generic dance music compilation section and then pick out the one with the coolest cover, i.e. the one that looked least like a K-Tel release, or you would pick the expensive import.
Even if your judgement was good the odds were heavily stacked against you. So you spend your money, go home, put it on and then have to use the skip button to even find one track that was worth hearing more than once. One track you could play to impress your girlfriend and mates.
Not so with TEX.. Now I know that there are purists out there, the White label London boys and the die hard deck heads who have no time for anything but vinyl, but truth be told not everyone has the time to spend thirty hours a week shopping for records or the cash to pay for them or the availability to have two decks sent up at their parents house, and let’s face it, not everyone has the DJ dexterity. That is where TEX saved the day. You always got fine tunes and club quality music.
And it wasn’t only the first one that came with 2 CDs, and huge booklet. As they kept coming out every new release seemed to get better. The booklets with their full color pictures added little dancing people in the corners with one image just a little different than the next, like you made as little kids, so when you thumbed through them fast someone was doing a little disco shuffle nineties style.
And the music itself diversified and hit every form invented. They included Intelligent Drum-n Bass, Blunted Techno, Happy Hard House, Experimental Noise and of course the best of European Trance and any other name drop you could care to drop.
Just to show you how on the people were who put this together look no further than the 3rd TEX which featured tracks by u-ziq and Luke Slater, two artists who had great albums come out recently, Lunatic Harness and Freek Funk respectively.
The people who came out with Trance Europe Express, just to show you that they are open minded and into all global dance culture, came out with a couple of Trance Atlantic Express’s to give the North American continent a chance to flaunt it’s talent. Those are filled with the people you would expect like Josh Wink and Ritchie Hawtkins and a few others that you wouldn’t.
Next time you are shopping for dance music on CD look no further than TEX and have a good time creating a disco party down stairs in the basement. People will be bouncing off the walls and on the couch. Yeah, and your mates will be impressed. Even the first one still sounds as fresh as a daisy today. Have fun.
Trance Europe Express takes it’s name from the birth of electronic music, those German pioneers Kraftwerk.
Every release gave you up and coming music makers of the finest electronic caliber for the man or woman who didn’t have time to muck about. The fist one was published September 20, 1993 and boasted 2 CDs, 24 exclusive tracks and a 192 full color page book. All this at under twenty bucks!
No longer was dance music this nameless, faceless, hard to figure out what the fuck you were listening to genre. TEX gave it all personality and created fans for the artists involved. And was it relevant? Was it fuck!
That first one featured Orbital, System 7, Spooky, Aphex Twin, The Orb, Moby, and Sabres of Paradise just to name a few. You ever hear of any of those, or better still you ever listen to any? They were probably involved in helping create some of the best nights of your life. That is if you are On the Bus.
In the mid '90's the number of Techno, House, Jungle, ect. compilations that were passed off as cutting edge or even having any musical worth was just pure laughable. Basically it was shit.
And it wasn’t so funny when you were spending your drug and beer money on tunes as disposable as the plastic wrap the compact disc cases came in.
It went something like this:
You would go to your local record store having just cashed in your pay check full of anticipation and inspiration hoping to find something that had the pounding bass and funky beats you heard at the club last night, you would wade through the generic dance music compilation section and then pick out the one with the coolest cover, i.e. the one that looked least like a K-Tel release, or you would pick the expensive import.
Even if your judgement was good the odds were heavily stacked against you. So you spend your money, go home, put it on and then have to use the skip button to even find one track that was worth hearing more than once. One track you could play to impress your girlfriend and mates.
Not so with TEX.. Now I know that there are purists out there, the White label London boys and the die hard deck heads who have no time for anything but vinyl, but truth be told not everyone has the time to spend thirty hours a week shopping for records or the cash to pay for them or the availability to have two decks sent up at their parents house, and let’s face it, not everyone has the DJ dexterity. That is where TEX saved the day. You always got fine tunes and club quality music.
And it wasn’t only the first one that came with 2 CDs, and huge booklet. As they kept coming out every new release seemed to get better. The booklets with their full color pictures added little dancing people in the corners with one image just a little different than the next, like you made as little kids, so when you thumbed through them fast someone was doing a little disco shuffle nineties style.
And the music itself diversified and hit every form invented. They included Intelligent Drum-n Bass, Blunted Techno, Happy Hard House, Experimental Noise and of course the best of European Trance and any other name drop you could care to drop.
Just to show you how on the people were who put this together look no further than the 3rd TEX which featured tracks by u-ziq and Luke Slater, two artists who had great albums come out recently, Lunatic Harness and Freek Funk respectively.
The people who came out with Trance Europe Express, just to show you that they are open minded and into all global dance culture, came out with a couple of Trance Atlantic Express’s to give the North American continent a chance to flaunt it’s talent. Those are filled with the people you would expect like Josh Wink and Ritchie Hawtkins and a few others that you wouldn’t.
Next time you are shopping for dance music on CD look no further than TEX and have a good time creating a disco party down stairs in the basement. People will be bouncing off the walls and on the couch. Yeah, and your mates will be impressed. Even the first one still sounds as fresh as a daisy today. Have fun.