(♫) DJ Cyber - Marco Antonio (Original Mix)
The early A State of Trance playlists Armin Van Buuren put together in the early 2000s were once full of then-new hits. Now? Many of them are classics, and I feel as though lots of people forgot how hard this stuff sounds.
DJ Cyber, also known as Johan Cyber, Ohmna, or his full real name Johan Groenewegen, came straight out of the Netherlands and delivered this 11-minute piece that isn't just a great listen on its own; it seemed tailor-made to be cut, resized, and inserted into a good playlist (like ASOT 007). Like any good trance track of its vintage, it had its share of remixes, but the original is one of those tracks I consider pure classics, because they have the purity of sound, instrumentation, and also progression that define the era.
If this track came today, we'd call it progressive trance, but in 2001 the term wasn't as universally understood as it is now. As Ishkur once pointed out, "progressive" trance is a UK invention, and it is well known that 2001 before September was still the late 1990s.
While Ishkur also specifically calls out Dutch DJs (like DJ Cyber) as the one thing worse than Brit DJs, he was thinking of Paul Oakenfold and other artists that "sold out" and contributed to the mainstreamification of the entire genre throughout the 2000s. I don't blame him. Mainstream trance and its "anthemic" sound and its obsessive focus on turning DJs into rockstars is all very... commercial.
Which this track is not. As far as I know, it was released on vinyl a few times in '01, was reissued as an MP3 download, and has been passed around a million times and went on about as many playlists. It deserves to be called classic trance, not just because it is over 20 years old, but because it is a genuine staple that anyone with any shred of passion for electronic music should hear.