Trance Awards

My Trance Story

Adam White

My first experience of electronic music I would say goes back to listening to artists like Jean Michelle Jarre and Vangellis when I was very young. I am classically trained in piano so listening to this electronic music was an escape from what I spent a lot of my time studying. I always had electric keyboards at home as well as a piano and I used to record the classical music I learnt to play using the weird and wonderful sounds that my keyboards used to make. My first real analogue synth was an old Korg mono-800, which I have still got. I had an old Watkins copycat effects unit and an old tascam 4-track recorder on which I used to make all kinds of weird atmospheric stuff, most of it would sound horrendous now.

When I first started DJing in 1994, I used to play soulful garage and disco music (I'm talking about the real garage sound coming out of Chicago). I didn't really experience trance as it was until I went to see Paul Oakenfold at Spectrum in London. He was DJing with Trevor Fong and it was amazing. He was playing stuff that sounded like the weird noises I use to try and make like Jarre and Vangellis used to use in their music. The other thing that I really noticed about hearing this sort of music in a club was the effect it had on people – it made me, as a DJ want to experiment more with this sort of sound in my sets. We're talking 1996 now before the trance revolution really took place. I had to really hunt for this music as people were not really playing it or buying it. It wasn't until a year later when I heard Jules close a set a Gatecrasher with System F 'Out Of The Blue' that the new trance revolution really sprung into action.

I guess you can say my influences with trance began from a really early age along with my studying of classical music and an audio engineering course at college. Classical music and trance really were not that far away from each other musically and they still are very closely married to be honest. Hearing Oakey mix classical music, soundtracks and even music from heroes of mine like Vangellis into club sets really inspired me to be more creative as a DJ and as a musician and as a result, as a producer.

I think if I could live these moments again, they'd never be as good as they were. The music was so fresh, the ideas were so new and you had to literally chase your favourite records around to world to hear them, let alone buy them.

I consider myself to be a trance DJ even though I play and produce music with influences of classical, rock and house in them. Trance for me has always been about the state of mind music puts you in rather than a formula that people expect from a record.

will always consider the UK to be the hub of great music though playing places like Eastern Europe, Australia and China where clubbers are still so excepting of new sounds really restores my faith in the reasons I love trance music so much. They don't just listen to the music and judge it, they listen to the music to feel and enjoy it too.

www.djadamwhite.com | www.emalodic.com

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