Trance Music Book
The Transformative Power of Trance Music
A book by Steve Zenone, published .
A history of Trance music told two ways at once: what I lived, heard and watched unfold, and what the historical record can actually support. The producers who built the sound, the clubs that tested it, the labels that carried it and the floors that made it mean something.
It's a full-genre documented history, not a DJ memoir and not a general EDM survey. The story starts with the electronic records Trance was built on, runs through Frankfurt, Goa, the Dutch scene and the global spread, and carries through to where the genre sits now. Claims get sourced where the record supports them, and the parts that come from memory are marked as memory.
It also covers the working parts most histories skip. How the records were made and what the gear made possible, the labels and regional scenes that kept the music moving, DJ culture and the long set, and what the floor actually feels like to the people on it. If you want the shape of the history first, the timeline and the companion playlist cover the same ground in outline. If you're weighing up what to read, the reading guide to books about Trance compares this one with another book-length work on the genre.
The book runs as 18 chapters with subchapters rather than formal parts, then appendices, a bibliography, a glossary, acknowledgements and an author bio. These are the threads those chapters follow. The five groupings below are mine, made for reading this page, and they aren't parts of the manuscript.
01
Early electronic music, new wave and industrial.
The book opens before anyone used the word Trance. Early electronic music, the synthesizer and sequencer records that made repetition a method, and the new wave and industrial acts that took machine rhythm onto club floors.
House and techno arrive next, and with them the club circuit the sound would eventually borrow.
02
European Trance emergence, then the global spread.
Chapters on the European emergence of Trance, its global expansion and the evolution of the subgenres, from Goa and psytrance to progressive, uplifting, hard and tech strands.
The chronology runs through the EDM and trouse years and into the current state of the genre.
03
The gear, the production and the DJ.
Chapters on technology and Trance, production craft and DJ culture. What the machines made possible, how the records were actually put together and what changes when a DJ has to hold a room for hours.
04
Labels, regional scenes, business and media.
Label profiles, regional scenes, the business of Trance and Trance in media. This is the part of the story about the people who built and ran the labels, venues and networks the scenes actually needed.
05
The floor, and what it means to the people on it.
The closing chapters cover the Trance experience and the dancefloor as sacred space, then the conclusion. Appendices, a bibliography and the full glossary follow.
Formats
The PDF reads well on a laptop or tablet and will be sold direct from this site for $13.99. Print and Kindle are handled by Amazon.
Print and Kindle are available now through Amazon. The direct PDF follows once checkout is enabled here.
Book facts
One ISBN-13 covers the edition. There isn't a separate identifier for the Kindle or the forthcoming PDF.
Common questions