Sometimes you can travel to a thousand places without taking a single step

Here at Transcend, we are all about the musical journey.

It doesn't matter whether we're booking DJing superstars or it's our residents playing, the way the music builds and shifts in a night is important to us. Even before we got together as friends and collaborators, this is a notion that has been a central pillar for each of us individually, as we stepped out onto the world's dancefloors looking for solace and timeless memories. As a collective, we are a product of one or more of clubbing's bygone eras, and we have clocked up a fair few hours on dancefloors between us over the years.

Trance in the UK is no doubt undergoing a significant revival at the moment. There are more nights than ever and scores of passionate people who are as connected and informed as they ever have been.

Yet, in recent times, there has been a musical polarisation; a BPM chasm has opened up. Dancefloors are either big 132 drops or ferocious 140 basslines. The music is framed more as an aural assault than a musical journey. And while the technical standard of DJs across the country can still thoroughly wow, sometimes you do leave venues wondering if there has been any kind of cultural expedition at all.

The new stylistic gulf already makes things harder. Generally, those who prefer the slower end of the spectrum are more likely to avoid the bosh-merchants, while the same is true in reverse. The middle ground is sadly lacking representation.

And while we love all brands and types of trance, this middle ground is really the lulling and coaxing that gives true trance its name. Back in the vinyl era, this type of trance was much more prevalent and it was mixed in more seamlessly with genuine techno and tribal influences. It made the occasional big drop moment or euphoric breakdown much more special.

But this void has been made all the more acute by the tendency to pack line ups with names. 6 or more big names all doing their tried and tested for an hour often leads to the night being samey or disjointed. The logic should be more names, more numbers and more excitement. It stands to reason. But when you've been around the block a bit you realise it doesn't always work like that. Sometimes the magic is lost amidst the endless crashing of beats and drops.

Thankfully, among many promoters, this tendency has started to subside, as the extended set makes its comeback in a noticeable way. Neptune Project have started specialising in it as an outfit; They did a 4 hour set for Journey in Cardiff in February and OTR in Sheffield welcome them for 5 hours in June. Journey have also hosted Mark Sherry for 4 hours recently, Trancecoda had Askew for 5 hours and Menno de Jong did an open till close for OTR only this month.

Any DJ will tell you that the extended set is where the DJ, as an artist, truly gets to shine. Not all DJs are competent at doing it because it requires a prolonged technical consistency and, most importantly, that sense of musical journey. A DJ has to go to a few different places and take the audience with them in the process.

Moreover, the extended set allows the DJ to control the mood and energy of the room in a way that can't really be done in an hour long set. And really the mood and energy are everything. In particular the mood. In this modern EDM age, we have become obsessed by genres and subgenres. And with BPMs, if truth be told. While we'll never get away from them, for the open-minded clubber, they matter very little. The mood will create the journey, and that could be made up of any number of genres. The crossing of genre lines is almost inevitable and to be welcomed.

For us at Transcend, this is always at the very forefront of our minds, and no less so as we approach our second event in London on Saturday 18th of April. There's absolutely noone in the industry that we trust more to do an extended set than Steve Helstrip a.k.a. The Thrillseekers. As a veteran of the bygone eras that shape our own philosophy, noone understands that sense of journey better than Steve. We reckon Steve hasn't done a set as long as this in the UK for about a decade and he's as keen on the idea as we are.

Interestingly for us with this event though, the journey of the whole night is likely to be one that transports us to as many times as it does mental places. Steve has teased us with the prospect of a Past, Present & Future set that will showcase just about everything on trance's available timeline.

But add to this the fact that we also welcome Birmingham-based prodigy, Everlight for a special live hybrid set alongside resident, Ben Dursley. Everlight is already a young artist pushing the boundaries of creativity and technology and we have no doubt that he, like some masked fortune teller, will afford us a tantalising glimpse into the future. One that we will not forget in a hurry. We're confident we'll look back on the event in 10 years time and remember fondly where it all began for one of the then current generation's trance megastars.

The odyssey is about to be begin. We depart London at 10pm sharp. We don't know where we will be going, but that's all part of the fun. Come join us!

Tickets are no longer available for this event