Genre-Bender Progressive Man Returns To Trance

Second generation Sasha protege James Holden has centred his upcoming mix CD firmly around trance, he revealed this week, after briefly dabbling with the term 'punk electronics', earlier his year.

The seamlessly mixed top quality double compilation is heavily based on deeply melancholic, mid-tempo instrumentals like FC Kahuna's fantastic Hayling and Gill Norris' Forme and could spark a reappraisal of trance amongst both the media and Holden himself, judging by comments the classically trained Oxford educated made to Australia's Onion magazine last week.

"Now all the music magazines in England are saying 'Oh, house music is so boring, we like punk-funk', and I'm reading that thinking 'No, I prefer progressive, bring it back', he said.

Speaking to Skrufff two years earlier, James blasted big name DJs and correctly predicted that coasting superstar DJs would struggle.

"The whole progressive scene to me seems to have gone wrong, people are too concerned with thinking that they're deep and cool," he said.

"It's the emperor's new clothes and it can only last for so long with people sitting through epic 3 hour sets with just one good tune in the middle."
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