I'm listening to a compilation of all of the biggest Eye Q (prominent European early
trance label) tracks between 91 and 96. I think I've expressed before my feelings of ambivalence towards trance, but I'm really liking this collection, from the scary 303 miasma of Hardfloor's "Acperience" to the swoony piano cascades of Zyon's amazing-for-'91 "No Fate". I think what saves this early trance is that it isn't quite as instant as the current chartfilling style (four bars of a catchy synth hook followed by breakdown), avoiding short attention span acceleration and instead concentrating on reaching spacy pre-orgasmic plateaus where your ears are errogenous zones, alternately scraped and caressed by the hard/dreamy arrangements.
Of course it still makes me want to groove to bad-ass centric drum and bass afterwards, today's antidote of choice being Fresh and Vegas's overwhelmingly funky "Otto's Way" from '98.