KLF – What Time is Love (Pure Trance)
This is one of the tunes that helped spawn the electronic sub-genre known as ‘Trance’. It may not sound like much but think back to 1988/89 and you’ll see this track was ahead of its time. The rap vocal version is certainly redolent of the eighties but that acid synth bassline is etched into the recesses of my mind.
I’m pretty sure it was the background music for a music video TV show that aired on Saturday mornings in my youth. I’ve wondered why it took me so long to move my tastes from the mainstream dance/pop of the nineties to the melodic trance of today, now I realize the genre wasn’t invented yet!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYbpGqF1Kaw
From Wikipedia:
Trance Music
The earliest identifiable trance recordings came not from within the trance scene itself, but from the UK acid house movement, and were made by The KLF. The most notable of these were the original 1988 / 1989 versions of What Time Is Love? and 3 a.m. Eternal (the former indeed laying out the entire blueprint for the trance sound – as well as helping to inspire the sounds of hardcore and rave) and the 1988 track Kylie Said Trance.
Their use of the term ‘pure trance’ to describe these recordings reinforces this case strongly. These early recordings were markedly different from the releases and re-releases to huge commercial success around the period of the The White Room album (1991) and are significantly more minimalist, nightclub-oriented and ‘underground’ in sound. While the KLF’s works are clear examples of Proto-trance, two songs, both from 1990, are widely regarded as being the first “true” trance records.
The first, Age of Love’s self-titled debut single was released in early 1990 and is seen as creating the basis for the original trance sound to come out of Germany. The second track was Dance 2 Trance’s “We Came in Peace”, which was actually the b-side of their own self-titled debut single. While “Age of Love” is seen as the track which cemented the early trance sound, it was Dance 2 Trance (as a result of the duo’s name) that probably gave the sound its name.
The Age Of Love (Jam & Spoon mix)
The first part of it sounds kinda like something from Mortal Kombat. Ha. It’s a bit dull listening after awhile for my liking, but you can definitely hear it’s influences in modern trance.
Interesting listening and reading.
It is reminiscent of Mortal Kombat isn’t it! Yeah it gets repetitive and that’s probably because it originally centered around the rap vocals.
That’s exactly the reason why the progressive structure of melodic trance keeps it interesting in my opinion. Otherwise the repetition wears thin.
Yeah I agree. Obviously repetition is a big part of trance music, but it can wear thin if there are a lack of progressive build ups and drops and you are just repeating over and over.
You reminded me how much I like Paul Van Dyk’s remix of Age of Love though, haven’t listened to that in awhile but it’s been on repeat recently. Haha.