Who needs kick drums when you have trance?

When you think of countries and good dance music, Italy definitely doesn’t come to mind. The age of Giorgio Moroder and Italo Disco (or as it later became known, disco) are long gone, and we have been left with the Crookers and Gigi D’Agostino. In short, Italian dance music is terrible.

Then came Lorenzo Senni. The man coined the term “pointillistic trance” to describe his music, which consists of trance buildups but with no buildups. To quote his SoundCloud page, Lorenzo is “a sadistic scientist that is ripping the spinal cord out of trance and dangling it in front of our eyes.”

I had my doubts about this. It’s an interesting idea, but that’s all – listening to his Rinse FM mixes is not very enjoyable for example, especially if you’re sexually frustrated. My brother used to listen to trance and I have a bit of a soft spot for it, but even I can’t endure two hours of very repetitive buildups that go absolutely nowhere. Add that to the fact that Lorenzo Senni is quite pretentious and I didn’t have high hopes for this rave. Appearing about half an hour later, all he did was press play on Ableton and then stand there looking conceited, his annoying moustache perched on top of a mouth pursed into what was supposed to be a bassface, but actually just looked like a cat’s bottom. As he stood there, dancing out of time and letting his computer do all the automation on his synth, I started to get quite annoyed.

“About 15 minutes in, I really started enjoying myself, more than I’ve enjoyed any of the DnB nights I’ve been to recently”

After 7 minutes, the first loop (for it was a loop, not a song) ended and the next one started. When I said that Lorenzo wasn’t for those suffering from dry spells, that was a lie – the stabs in this tune were bassy enough to rival any kickdrum, and people were properly dancing. Later in the evening, the synth produced sounds so heavy that despite earplugs, my ears actually hurt from the vibrations, something I’ve only experienced with Dub soundsystems before. Being liberated from a kickdrum meant that the stabs and arpeggiated saws carry the rhythm of the track, and I noticed that people were dancing almost as if they were hearing grime tracks.

At that point, about 15 minutes in, I really started enjoying myself, more than I’ve enjoyed any of the DnB nights I’ve been to recently. And as I quite literally got lost in a trance, I thought to myself that Lorenzo was trying to tell us something important through his music – that the buildup is just as important as the drop, that the best part of a project is doing it and not seeing it realised.

At this point, after only 45 minutes, the music stopped, and after almost an hour of keeping it in I went to relieve myself.