With Trance Energy making its long awaited debut in Australia next month inthemix’s Angus Paterson journeyed to Holland on the weekend to see how the Dutch do it on their home turf. Trance Energy is one of the Netherlands’ most legendary annual events, taking over Jaarbeurs Utrecht for a night of uplifting dance mayhem. Here’s his personal account of the madness!

Getting the chance to party in another country is an opportunity most dance fans would jump at enthusiastically. It’s more than just the novelty of rockin’ out to awesome music while far away from home – Australia might be well served in terms of events and festivals, but over in Europe it’s an entirely different story. Parties like Global Gathering, Creamfields and Dance Valley are looked to from afar with fond eyes, but the event of choice for trance fans would have to be Holland’s Trance Energy. You’ve seen the YouTube clips and trailers, and the production looks out of this world. Not to mention the kind of cutting-edge lineup we can only ever dream of getting in Australia, with the big-name DJs balanced out by an impressive selection of talent that’s new to the scene. I’ve been a big trance fan myself for over a decade, so needless to say I was fairly excited when the opportunity arose to cover Trance Energy in Holland last weekend. Did it manage to live up to the hype?

Arriving shortly before the party officially opened its doors to the 35,000 punters who’d purchased tickets, I got the chance to wander through the maze of a venue, vaguely reminiscent of some of Australia’s larger sporting venues used for dance events except on a whole other scale – there’s four massive rooms, including the simply massive, high-ceiling mainroom that could probably fit around 25,000 people alone, as well as three siderooms each about as big as the main floor of an Australian superclub. The mainsage music didn’t kick off until an hour after people were allowed to start wandering in, but this just kept the tension building for the start of the tunes. As 10pm drew closer there was a subtle sound of feedback emanating from the speakers, rising and falling in tone and pitch, which had the effect of getting everyone even more pumped for what was to come. There was plenty of eager punters ready when Australia’s own Tydi hit the stage for the opening set – nabbing the #1 spot in the inthemix50 last year was impressive enough, but scoring a set at such a revered international event was just as much a coup. Playing to the massive space didn’t seem to faze the Queensland boy at all, as he hit it with all the confidence of playing to a home crowd with a set was full of the sort of deeper, progressive trance that suited that stage of the evening perfectly. The crowd clearly loved it too, making it a homerun for the Aussie DJ/producer.

If you’ve checked out any of the Trance Energy clips from previous events, you’d surely be familiar with the spectacular ‘introductions’ the audience gets treated to every time a new DJ steps up to the decks. Making full use of the elaborate lighting on stage, and the mammoth screens positioned behind the decks as well as to either side of the stage, the theme is the extremely Euro (but oh-so-effective) notion of a cyborg accessing a supercomputer in a search for quality music. A cybernetic voice keeps you informed of its movements as it scans through the different selections on file – it might load up the “incorrect” selection of “rock”, meaning you get assaulted with the sounds of a Coldplay tune for a minute or so, before the supercomputer manages to finally track down the trance that the crowd is gagging for. Sounds cheesy? Maybe so, but it adds the kind of drama and excitement that you just can’t beat. “Correct selection accessed – DJ *John O’Callaghan*”, Mr Cyborg Guy informs us. Next on the decks was one of last year’s fastest rising stars with a set that was executed perfectly, in terms of providing flow for the evening. He’s known for producing trance with a hard techno edge, but he showed how versatile he is by kicking off with softer selections like Nitrous Oxide’s Show Me, before gradually shifting it into the techier stuff. Definitely worthy of mainstage status.

Next up at 12.30am was world #1 DJ Armin van Buuren, who as accompanied by the thousands and thousands of thousands of swarming to the mainroom by this stage. The set was as varied and impeccably programmed as we’ve come to expect from the Dutchman, illustrating how much he’s across all the different types of trance, and the dramatic nature of all the breakdowns and buildups nearly leaves you drained and emotionally exhausted by the time his 2 hours are over. It was during his polished set that the full extent of the party’s spectacular production was switched on – to the amazement of every last person watching.

No clip recorded on a mobile phone could ever do it justice: Holland’s Trance Energy really lives up to the hype, and then plenty more. The massive visual screens that flank the front of the room, and the ridiculously intricate lighting installations adorning the stage are only the beginning. The ceiling would have to be about as high as a ten-storey building, and there’d be around 15 to 20 moving lighting installations hanging from the roof, spaced at regular intervals and punching out coloured lights, flashing strobes and the brightest, greenest laser show you’ve ever seen in your life. Seriously, the lasers were just ridiculous. It felt like there wasn’t a single rhythm-matched laser display that was repeated all evening; one second green light was blanketing the whole venue, and the next it was concentrated down into a 15 or so single points that shot around in perfect precision with the music. The scale of the visuals was just staggering, and the lasers were only a single element of the entire show. And every time you looked up the special effects were doing something different. The strobes might be kicking in, or there would be a blinding blast of white light brightening up the whole room. At one point as I was moving through the crowd, I had to stop and just watch for a moment because the flashing yellow lights so forceful that wasn’t able to see a thing in front of me. I’ll resist the urge to rant about it even further, but believe me, the spectacle was so intense that it’s hard to imagine how ID&T (or any other production company for that matter) could step it up any further. Freaking amazing.

After another adrenalin-fuelling “introduction” courtesy of the Trance Energy mainframe, German Leviaton Paul van Dyk was up to smash out the most intense and driving set of the evening. Mashing up multiple tracks and acapellas with the truckload of studio technology he now uses in his DJ sets, there were euphoric melodies and buildups aplenty. But there were also plenty of those “what the fuck” moments… Aggressive hammerings of techno, furious buzzsaw electro basslines that cut right to the back of the room, and a hectic pace that never let up. He effortlessly filled that massive space and delivered a set that, more than anything else heard that evening, lived up the whopping scale of all that production and special effects.

By 4.30am you’ve reached exhaustion from being bombarded with all that spectacle for nearly 7 hours, so it’s time to drag yourself away to check out what the smaller arenas have to offer, in particular the ‘Future’ stage as it’s rocking some of the up-and-coming trance talent we’ll be seeing when Trance Energy tours Australia for the first time over Easter. Marcus Schossow impressed with his unconventional take on the trance sound earlier in the evening, but with 5am drawing near it’s the UK’s Simon Patterson who’s in control with his self-described “hard as nails” brand of tech trance. Finishing things off is one half of the Egyptian duo Aly & Filla; their melodic sound might be traditional as far as trance goes, but their production approach is impeccable and it’s surprising how much driving energy their sound carries when getting belted out over a loud soundsytem. The ‘Future Stage’ DJs were all guns, and it’s worth getting excited about their place on the Australian Trance Energy tour.

Saturday night demonstrated just how high the bar has been set with dance events in Europe, Holland in particular. Cutting-edge lineups, bangin’ sound everywhere you go and the sort of production that simply has to be seen to be believed. You could write a thousand words alone just trying to capture the scale of the lights and lasers, not to mention the cleverness of the creative design, but you’re never gonna understand til you’re getting blasted by it yourself. It’s enough to make you wanna drop everything and move to Europe, just for the big parties. How much of that experience are we gonna see on the Trance Energy tour of Australia? It’s some big boots to fill: but they’ve already cracked it with a lineup that lives up to the heritage of the Holland event, and if they bring even a fraction of the spectacle I witnessed on Saturday it’ll be talked about for some time to come. Bring on Easter…

Stay tuned for more inthemix coverage from Trance Energy in Holland, including videos, interviews and photos. Also, don’t forget that the Australian Trance Energy tour is now onsale:

Thu 9 Apr – Sydney, Hordern Pavilion & Surrounds
Fri 10 Apr – Melbourne, Calder Park Thunderdome
Sat 11 Apr – Brisbane, Riverstage
Sun 12 Apr – Perth, Belvoir Amphitheatre