BT_ESCM and “Flaming June.” Pure classic trance genius

June 08, 2012

I am somewhat ashamed of myself. And yet glad that I no longer have to be.

I am somewhat of a trancehead and really dig the genre. It is great “work music” and I just plain like it. I’ve been trying to learn more about the history and all the influencers and seminal works and find my own direction, and I’m doing mostly pretty well.

Yet, until recently, I’m ashamed that I had not heard about BT or his “Flaming June” that’s said to be a classic dance anthem. Sure, now in retrospect, I’ve heard fragments of it here or there, but I did not really know the piece.

So, when I heard the Paul Van Dyk remix of it recently on some trance podcast, I became curious. What is this piece that sounds so amazing? There’s a lot of good-sounding trance, but not really a whole lot that’s timeless.

So I found out that an album of “Flaming June” remixes recently came out. I listened to all. Some of them I don’t like. Some of them, in particular Laptop Symphony, Paul Van Dyk and Fred Baker, are OK.

But none come anywhere close to the original. The remixes, like I say, are OK. The original from 1997 is a timeless epic classic anthem masterpiece.

Here’s a low-quality Youtube version of the original.

I did something that I haven’t done in years—I bought a physical CD of BT_ESCM, the album that “Flaming June” was originally on. I just got tired of listening to the low-quality Youtube version. And out of respect for the artist as well as the annoyance of finding the right torrent version, I didn’t want to pirate-torrent it. Good news is, it only cost $6 on Amazon and I got it from Goodwill, so I hope the money goes to the right place.

And… yeah. The original of “Flaming June” is timeless. The rest of the album is fine and BT is a prolific and versatile producer, so it’s not all trance. It’s rock and breakbeat and god knows what. But “Flaming June” for me is definitely the star there.

I’m glad I now have acquired, physically and in spirit, one more piece of the #trancefamily story.