As I am writing this, I am listening to Simon Patterson's excellent track titled Miss You. Awesome tune, and amazing producer, one of my favorites, since he is great solo, and was great as part of Dogzilla.

Guess it is now good time to write this, seeing how i have nothing to do and no one to talk to. I'll try my best to describe why i love this genre of music so much. Might be long, so bear with me.

Believe it or not, before i listened to trance and other EDM, I wasn't listening to anything at all. Here you can see that I definitely don't follow "Do something just because it's better than nothing" mentality in my life. Never did, actually. And I am sure it is far from being a bad thing. Anyway, I used to like pop music back when i was 3 or 4. Not proud of it, but i was a stupid kid, what can you expect. I guess it shouldn't even count. Anyway, when i reached age that I could actually make an opinion of my own, i realized that no music that was available to me at that time suited my tastes. So i just wasn't listening at all. It was funny to watch fads come and go. I didn't like pop music for it's cheesiness, and I didn't like rock for what it was portraying. And i won't even mention stuff like metal or Marilyn Manson, which some goth girls were crazy about at my school. Ewwww. How in the world can that be called sexy was and is beyond me. So basically, music to me was something not worth wasting time on.

Little did I knew that all i need was to find a genre of my own, the one who would give me what I was looking for. And i found such genre. One day, somehow, a friend's CD ended up in my house. I knew it was music, but didn't knew what it was. I had really low hopes, but i decided to insert it and look at it. I was surprised, since the CD was full of names i never saw before, and never heard of before. Somehow, curiosity got the best of me, and i decided to copy the CD before returning it. Then later on, I opened up my oldie PC. I picked a track at random, launched it, and... Was completely blown away. The stuff that I heard was so unusual, so different from everything I heard before. And best of all, it was awesome! The tracks really had something magical, mysterious, unknown about them. Was it the fact that they had absolutely no vocals, and the ones that did, were simply stunning? Or was it all the elements of electronic music, including one of core elements, the beats? Or something else? I couldn't explain at that time. So needless to say i was instantly hooked on. All the old names... The tracks that were standouts for me were Plastic Boy - Silver Bath 2002 (Which I later found out was Armada's amazing producer M.I.K.E, who recently brought Plastic Boy alias back to life with new awesome tracks, yay!), Trance Control tracks, Airbase (Both under Airbase and Rah aliases), and others.

What followed after that I remember as quite dark period, surprisingly. The reason behind it being that i listened lots of Eurodance. Eurodance is, basically, EDM's version of pop. But oh well, back then I had no internet, so I had to be happy with what I had. It was still electronic music, so it was good for me. I remember all the countless nights that i spent playing Megaman games while listening to music. Actually, that is where partially my name comes from, but that is story for another day. Epic times those were, indeed.

However, those days passed, and that was for the better, since I matured more, and therefore saw the need for much deeper music. And that is when I became 100% trance fan. And what converted me was none other than Armin van Buuren's radio show, A State of Trance. First episode I ever heard was episode 184. It had parts where Armin talks cut out for whatever reason, but it still was amazing. And after that I listened to more episodes of ASOT, ditched Eurodance forever, and became trance fan, as you know me now.

Of course, my taste is wider now. During all that time, I learned about subgenres, styles, and of course other genres of EDM. Today I like not only trance, but also progressive, house (not the commercial one, the likes of David Guetta and friends, but the good one), Psy-trance, and some techno expired stuff, especially the subgenres where aforementioned ones connect with trance. This is also why I love EDM, such a variety of styles. Trance is still my main favorite, though. There are a few styles I don't really like, such as Drum'n'Bass. Never liked it, all the tracks sound the same to me, or Hardcore\Gabber, which is good for laughs, but I don't know if I could listen to it seriously. Found some nice tracks from it too, though. And the mentioned before Eurodance, which there is no way i could go back to. But most of EDM I like.

Being a trance fan is not easy, of course, since i have to deal with people's narrow mindedness. There were countless times when I heard stuff like "Oh, it's that music where it's just boom-boom-boom and no meaning at all", "Dude, this sucks, why is there no voice?", "How can you listen to the same song for an hour?", and so on. It always really hurts to face intolerance. The most recent moment was when i was in car, with my family. It's usually difficult, since my father only listens to russian pop... He and mother left to the store, and since me and sister were bored, we switched radio, to the one where a house mix was playing at that time. I was really into it, when my father came, and with words, "Who listens to this crap?" turned the station back to his russian pop. It was a really painfull moment, since before he heard my music and said he liked it, then suddenly changed opinion, meaning he was only pretending. Nothing special, since i faced ALOT of lies in my life, but it still hurt. Being a trance fan, however, is still something I wouldn't trade for anything. I am proud of what I like, and I am not going to hide it, just to fit in with others, or anything like that.

Mainly, I love both parts of EDM, DJ'ing and producing. It is only recently that I truly appreciated how hard DJ's job actually is. I only did, when I tried it myself. I remember when my friend thought that making a mix is as easy as pasting a few tracks onto each other. How wrong he was. Too bad he didn't go with his idea, his set would probably sound like a trainwreck, haha. It is actually way more difficult than that. Even making a decent transition was hard for me, which is basic stuff. I'm not even talking of advanced techniques such as beatmatching, adding samples and loops, using various effects, doing live remixing (!), and other. And producing is even more difficult than that. I am really impressed how much good producers can achieve. And there even are awesome ones like Mike Foyle, who is a great piano played, and uses his own piano sounds in his tracks. And whoever said that DJ'ing is profession you can't live of off, think again. For example, Paul van Dyk's earliest set I have in collection is from 1993. You can do the math to find out how long he's doing it, since he is still known and active today. Of course, today situation is different. It is very hard to get over on DJ'ing alone, you need to have own known tracks too. Plus, piracy makes things harder, since most income come from live performances nowadays. It is bad since some guys who would be better off being exclusively producers are forced to DJ, and not always are successful with it, and vice versa. But that's the internet age for you.

One thing that always annoys me is when people say that electronic music has no soul. That is most absurd statement ever. Here are some tracks, that always make me emotional no matter when I listen to them:

Envio - Time to Say Goodbye (Passiva Mix)
Envio - Time to Say Goodbye (Arksun Filmscape Mix)
Envio - For You (Outro Edit, failing that, Original Mix)
Allure - The Loves We Lost (Original Mix)
Solarstone - Solarcoaster (Original Mix)
Kyau & Albert - Made of Sun (Kyau & Albert Hard Dub)
Recluse - Emotional Void (One of darkest, most atmospheric tracks i ever heard. Amazing!)
Giuseppe Ottaviani - Linking People (Original Mix)

And many, many more. With such stuff around, how can people say there is no emotion? There is, and it can even be felt without vocals. That's also what I really love, always a chance to choose. If track is vocal and you don't like vocals, you can choose dub or instrumental versions and enjoy it. If you don't like how track sounds, there's always a high chance that someone will remix it, and you'll find something to enjoy in all the variety of styles. And I enjoy the versatility. Some stuff makes you want to dance, other makes you want to feel. It is just awesome.

Well, that's all for now. Hope it wasn't too boring. But it was enjoyable for me, that's what matters. Gonna continue my search for awesome new music, now.