My youtube channel is reawakened!
Back on YT and re-uploading my album tracks, and climbing videos for you all! Be sure to subscribe, as I have more new videos coming out every week!
Dawnchaser's Top 10 Adventure Trance Albums
On the prowl for some Trance albums to power you through your next hike or road trip? These are the best Trance albums for hikes, road trips, cycling tours, and every other kind of adventure. Load 'em up on yer phone and go nuts.
The Definitive(ish) Guide To All These Crazy Mix Names
If you’ve been scrolling through my recent releases on Spotify, you may have noticed among the tracks out from 2012 onward, that some of them have some oddball Mix titles. Gone Fishin’, Gone Campin’, Alpenglow, and so on. They’re not artist names, so, what the hell does it all mean? They all sound different sure, but why not name them by genre? Why you so weird, Dawnchaser?
Welp, there’s a very good reason for all these alternate mix names, and there’s definitely going to be more oddball names coming along in the future.
To alleviate some of that confusion, here’s a quick list of the types of mixes I’ve been making, and why they’re called what they are.
Original/ Adventure/ Hiking Mix
These would fall under what most folks would call Uplifting/ Hard Trance, although I like to work in tempo and rhythm changes, and whatever combination of folk instruments from Europe, Asia, or the Americas I think fits. Sort of like DuMonde meets Vengeance meets Alphazone meets Simon & Garfunkel meets Djivan Gasparyan. Generally speaking, the idea is to make tracks that sound like trekking around in the mountains, or scaling icy peaks, or racing down open roads with friends.
Gone Fishin’ Mix
These are the progressive trance mixes that aren’t quite at typical house tempo, but borrow rhythmically from house a lot, and I like using sunnier, cheerier synth sounds and ideas for it. Got the idea for this sound from a weekend camping with some friends up at Colonial Creek Campground, right on Diablo Lake. Is meant to sound pretty much exactly like that weekend. Cheerful, bouncy, fun, and bright. Bit like some older Mat Zo tunes.
Gone Campin’ Mix
This is the more chillstep/ electro-influenced trance sound. Initially I was drafting up more electrance a la Ferry Corsten’s Rock Your Body Rock sounds for this style, but after I discovered Seven Lions, I took the sound in a somewhat grittier direction. I like working in moombahcore and extreme tempo variations in these tracks, and wax more experimental with these. This one’s inspiration came from some camping trips back in 2008 and 2009, when I was camping way up in the mountains on dark, windy weekends, and shlepping gear around and getting dirty and muddy. Wanted to make some sounds that had that same gritty, grimy, and still epic, feel.
Alpenglow Mix
This is the most recent of my genre developments. After hearing Johan Gielen’s These Are My People, and some of the deep techno and so-called melodic techno coming out of Europe over the last couple years, I wanted to do a series of mixes (and originals) that straddle the line between deep house, and deep, chilled out, relaxed grooves, and really uplifting synths and melodies. One of the sounds I use a lot in here is a recreation of that pluck from the breakdown of the Ratty tune Sunrise (Here I Am) (Instrumental Mix). It just feels like sitting by a campfire on a ridge overlooking some vast alpine peak, with the glaciers all lit up with alpenglow. But at 144 bpm, that tune is decidedly not a chilled out, drinking beer with buddies type of track. 126 seems a more appropriate tempo.
Green Point Mix
The Green Point Mixes are some of my favorites to write. These are the ambient/ chill out mixes, and growing up on the Myst soundtracks and Spanish guitar and classical music, I find them much easier (and faster) to write than almost anything else. The name comes from a campground I hiked to a long time ago, out on Ross Lake. You can look up Green Point Campground on Google Earth, and marvel at just how remote it is. And then look at this photo, and see how peaceful it is. That’s the mood the Green Point Mixes are out to convey. Whether it’s sunny and cheerful, or melancholy and lonely, those mixes are the sound of that distant little campground way up in the North Cascades.
What Is Adventure Trance?
Adventure Trance is a form of midtempo Trance music that often employs the arrangement style of psytrance with dramatic synth melodies derived from Epic/ Hard Trance, distorted sound effects and noises, frequent (and drastic) tempo changes, breakbeats influenced by dubstep & glitch hop, acoustic instruments from folk music from around the world, and traditional percussion elements.
It creates a sound that feels like every part of a good adventure - driving, intense, at times serene, sometimes furious, sometimes beautiful, sometimes hot and gritty, sometimes clean and cold, and always full of a certain vivacious spirit that captures the feeling of being Out There, in the wild, with friends, far from the confines of civilization.